Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap—Mei Marom רב יעקב משה חרל"פ — «מי מרום»
the closest disciple of Rav Kook; head of the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva and rabbi of Shaarei Chesed
Born in Jerusalem into an Old Yishuv family, he lived his whole life in the city. From 1908 he was rabbi of the Shaarei Chesed quarter. When Rav Kook came to Jerusalem a friendship began between them of a kind rare in the history of thought: a disciple, but also an interlocutor, whose letters the teacher read as his own.
After Rav Kook's death in 1935 he headed the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva and led it to the end of his life together with Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook. His books—the many-volumed Mei Marom, "Waters of the Heights"—are on faith, on the soul of Israel, on how to understand the events of the century from within the Torah. The proclamation of the state he met with a text on the beginning of redemption—and in that remained Rav Kook's disciple to the end.
He died in Kislev 1951. His books are read in the yeshivot of religious Zionism as the continuation of his teacher.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Mei Marom by Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap — his teaching on faith and redemption
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, Shaarei Chesed from 1908, Merkaz HaRav from 1935, death in 1951
Basis: documents and evidence.