36 Facts About Hillel Kook

Hillel Kook, known as Peter Bergson, was a Revisionist Zionist activist and politician.

Hillel Kook later served in Israel's first Knesset, but resigned in 1951 after becoming disillusioned with Israeli politics.

Hillel Kook was born in Kriukai in the Russian Empire in 1915, the son of Rabbi Dov Kook, the younger brother of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine.

Hillel Kook received a religious education in Afula and attended his uncle's Religious Zionist yeshiva, Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem.

Hillel Kook attended classes in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University, where he became a member of Sohba, a group of students who would later become prominent in the Revisionist movement, including David Raziel and Avraham Stern.

Hillel Kook joined the pre-state Haganah militia in 1930 following widespread Arab riots.

In 1931, Hillel Kook helped found the Irgun, a group of militant Haganah dissidents, and fought with them in Palestine through most of the 1930s.

Hillel Kook served as a post commander in 1936, and eventually became a member of the Irgun General Staff.

In 1937, Hillel Kook began his career as an international spokesperson for the Irgun and Revisionist Zionism.

Hillel Kook first went to Poland, where he was involved in fundraising and establishing Irgun cells in Eastern Europe.

At the founders' request, Hillel Kook traveled to the United States with Jabotinsky in 1940, where he soon served as the head of the Irgun and revisionist mission in America, following the elder's death in August.

In 1943, Hillel Kook established the Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry.

Hillel Kook remained strongly affiliated with the Revisionist camp after the war during the creation of the State of Israel.

In 1946 Hillel Kook received a letter from Menachem Begin, who had become chief of the Irgun in 1943.

At the time Hillel Kook established the Hebrew Embassy in Washington and was in the habit of saying "Palestine Free State", which Begin thought left too much potential for bi-nationalism.

The British embassy and several American Zionist groups, including the World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee and other political opponents sought to have Hillel Kook deported or drafted for the war.

Hillel Kook served in the first Knesset as part of the Herut party list, but quit the party with his close friend and fellow Herut Member of the Knesset Eri Jabotinsky.

Hillel Kook, who had returned to Israel after a ten-year absence, was now confronted with the reality that the country and movement he had fought for bore little resemblance to his ideals.

Profoundly disillusioned with the Israeli political process and future of the Revisionist movement, Hillel Kook moved to the United States in 1951 with his wife and daughter and built a career as a Wall Street stockbroker.

Hillel Kook remarried in 1975 and lived near Tel Aviv in Kfar Shmaryahu until his death in 2001.

Hillel Kook held that Jabotinsky's primary goal in creating a Jewish state was in making a country to which all Jews would want to belong, and that once Israel had been created, any Jews who refused to make aliyah had made a conscious choice to become "integrated" citizens of their naturalized countries.

Hillel Kook specifically excluded American Jews from the "Right of Return" to the Land of Israel and wanted to limit that right in general to a very short period.

Hillel Kook envisioned Israel having a "Hebrew Nation": an amalgam of all residents.

Hillel Kook's views have been described as a more moderate version of the "Canaanist" ideology espoused by Yonatan Ratosh.

Hillel Kook had a specific body of critiques concerning what he saw as the distortion of Zionist philosophy and idealism by Israeli politics.

Hillel Kook maintained that he had always conceived of Israel being a "Jewish state" by having a majority of Jewish citizens, not through specific associations to Jewish nationalism.

Hillel Kook suggested amending the Law of Return for Jews residing outside Israel to be limited to a few years after Independence and to consider prospective immigrants on an individual, and not on a national or religious basis, except for cases of immediate danger.

Hillel Kook was a strong supporter of Israel's constitution, which had been stalled during its writing in 1948 and never completed.

Hillel Kook claimed that a formal constitution could have solved many ongoing issues in Israeli society, such as discrimination against Israeli Arabs, by providing all of Israel's citizens with a clearly defined, and egalitarian, role in Israeli nationalism.

Hillel Kook once remarked that the lack of a constitution was "Israel's greatest tragedy": that Ben-Gurion's decision to change the Israeli governing body from a Constituent Assembly to a Parliament had been a putsch, and that he regretted not having resigned from the Knesset immediately after the decision had been made.

Hillel Kook favored the creation of a Palestinian state, albeit one established in modern-day Jordan.

Hillel Kook was one of the first Israelis to call for a Palestinian state shortly after the Six-Day War.

Hillel Kook repeatedly referred to himself as a post-Zionist, and was one of the first in Israeli society to voluntarily adopt the term.

David Wyman and Rafael Medoff, co-authors of a 2002 Hillel Kook biography, suggested that, despite the frequent obstruction by the modern mainstream American Jewish and Zionist establishment, Hillel Kook's rescue group's activism was the major factor in establishment of the War Refugee Board and that it was an instrument rescuing approximately 200,000, partly by means of the Raoul Wallenberg mission.

The above main obstructors of the rescue committee Hillel Kook formed and led received much recognition and very high positions after the war in the mainstream Jewish and Zionist world.

The role of Hillel Kook was played twice onstage by actor Steven Schub, in 2008 at The Fountain Theatre and in 2009 at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles.