Last week marked the 80th anniversary of the death of the theologian and religious-Zionist philosopher Abraham Isaac Kook, who served as the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine. His biographer Yehudah Mirsky reflects on his legacy:

In the summer of 1904 Kook moved to Palestine after accepting an offer to become the rabbi of Jaffa and the surrounding colonies. . . . The year of his arrival [coincided with] the beginning of the Second Aliyah, the wave of migration that brought a small but influential cadre of young intellectuals and revolutionaries [to the land of Israel]. . . . In public, he became the leading rabbinic champion of [Zionism], and thus the target of traditionalist attacks. In private, . . . he wrote more and more furiously and extensively in his diaries, lost in a torrent of thought as he began to train the dialectical worldview—which he had developed to understand the complex mix of his own soul and the ideological debates of Eastern Europe—onto larger historical patterns. His thinking also became explicitly messianic.

[I]n his reading, which astonished and enraged many of his rabbinic peers, the rebelliousness of the [Zionist] pioneers [against traditional Judaism] was neither accidental, nor evil, but in fact nothing less than part of God’s plan to restore to Judaism a vitality and universal spirit worn thin during centuries of exile. The young rebels against tradition in the name of Jewish nationalism and social justice were nothing less than the bearers of a new revelation. . . .

On his return to Palestine, Kook became, first, chief rabbi of Jerusalem, and in 1921, the co-founder, with his Sephardi colleague Yaacov Meir, of the chief rabbinate. What was for the British an extension of established colonial policy of delegating religious services and some legal jurisdiction to local religious authorities was for him an opening to institutions that would gradually reshape the law into a new Torah for a redeemed land of Israel. He hoped to create institutions that would move the historical progression forward, creating the halakhah and institutions to guide the great changes to come.

The reality was more complicated. That which made him the obvious choice to head the rabbinate and indispensable to the burgeoning project of building the Jewish national home—his mix of erudition and piety, his engagement with modern thought and culture, a deeply conciliatory personality, and a theology and historical perspective to make that conciliation the basis of a new philosophy, [in short], his ability to square seemingly incommensurate circles—left him out of the political mix and unable to make headway on his most prized projects: the new rabbinate and bringing the Zionist movement into [serious and meaningful] dialogue with Judaism.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”