Hillel Kook - Early Life

Early Life

Hillel Kook was born in Kriukai, Lithuania in 1915, the son of Rabbi Dov Kook, the younger brother of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate in Palestine. In 1924, his family immigrated to Palestine, where his father became the first Chief Rabbi of Afula. Hillel Kook received a religious education in Afula and at the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav in Jerusalem and was an unregistered student of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University. While there, he became a member of Sohba, or "Comradeship", a group of students who would later become prominent in the Revisionist movement, including David Raziel and Avraham Stern.

Kook joined the pre-state Haganah militia in 1930 following widespread Arab riots. In 1931, Kook helped found the Irgun, a group of militant Haganah dissidents, and fought with them in Palestine through most of the 1930s. He served as a post commander in 1936, and eventually became a member of the Irgun General Headquarters.