The tremendous blossoming of the Jewish return to Judea and Samaria can be credited to Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook's vision and leadership.
We have just marked 37 years since the passing of our great teacher and rabbi, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, of saintly blessed memory. He was a Torah genius, an expert in Kabbalah, a saintly and righteous tzaddik, and a giant leader enwrapped totally in the Torah of Israel. He enveloped himself day and night in "the four cubits" of Jewish Law and love of Israel, and in the editing and publication of the works of his holy father, HaRav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, the first modern-day Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land. He raised generations of Torah scholar students, giants in Gemara and Halakhah, and experts in the light of Redemptive Torah, blessed with understanding and knowledge of the depth of the unique period of the beginning of our Redemption in which we live.
I would like to illuminate another aspect of the multi-faceted leadership personality of Rav Tzvi Yehuda. I was privileged to see it in action in 5735 (1975), after the first attempts to settle the Sebastia area in Samaria. These took place under the leadership of the late Rabbis Moshe Levinger and Chanan Porat, and Rabbi Menachem Felix and Benny Katzover – joint founders of the "Gush Emunim" Torah settlement movement.
Rav Tzvi Yehuda received a letter at that time from none other than IDF military commando hero Meir Har-Tzion – described by Moshe Dayan as "the best soldier ever to arise in the IDF." Har-Tzion asked the Rav, as the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, to send him someone who could plan meetings and lectures by Gush Emunim representatives in the mostly-secular kibbutzim and communities in northern Israel. As an admirer of Gush Emunim, he desired to have it presented to the northern residents in a clear and forthright manner.
At this time I was studying in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav, following four years of army service during which I was seriously wounded in the Yom Kippur War. Together with others in the Yeshiva, I had been very busy with organizing Gush Emunim activities, including mainly the attempts to settle in various areas of Judea and Samaria, and I was happy to be able to return to my studies. But one day I was abruptly summoned to the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda – and of course I arrived in his home that very day.
The Rav showed me the letter from Meir Har-Tzion, and informed me that I was hereby named his emissary to the northern communities for the purpose outlined in the letter. He even instructed me to relocate to Ahuzat Shoshana, Har-Tzion's home near Beit She'an, for the duration of the "mission." He agreed that my brother, Rav Chaim Katz, would accompany me for the task. And so, for the next six months, we and other Yeshiva students whom we invited from time to time, gave talk after talk to the working settlers in the kibbutzim and moshavim of the Galilee.
Rav Tzvi Yehuda firmly instructed that all those giving these talks would be his students – young men who understood the profound Divine connection between the Torah of Israel, the Nation of Israel, and the Land of Israel. Every Shabbat we would return home to our families, and would report to the Rav on what we had done and on the progress we had made.
The bottom line was that our meetings and talks in the Galilee, as directed by Rav Tzvi Yehuda, made a revolution in the "working communities" at the time. They were even an important part of the political revolution of 1977 that brought the Likud, headed by Menachem Begin, to power.
Most notably, in April 1976, a sizable group of secular "working settlers" convened the Ein Vered Conference, in which they expressed their support for the building of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. They carried out this resolution with zest, sending workers, food, and guards to help build a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria.
It must be remembered that during those years, only a few hundred Jews lived throughout Judea and Samaria – in Hebron, Kfar Etzion, Ofrah and Kedumim. Today, of course, with great thanks to G-d, there are over 450,000 Jews (!). Add to this another 350,000 in the Jerusalem neighborhoods liberated in the Six Day War – may they increase and prosper! And this can all be credited to the strength and boldness of spirit of the great leader, our Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook.