The War of the Wild Ox and the Leviathan – The Battle Between Religious Holiness and the Holiness in Nature

"הלוויתן" - איור של דפנה אנגלנדר

The Book of Job describes a battle between two fearsome beasts: the Wild Ox (שור הבר) and the Leviathan (לוויתן). The Sages explain that in the future, special righteous individuals will be the spectators of this mythical battle, in which the two giant creatures fight each other fiercely. At the end of the battle, the Wild Ox and the Leviathan kill each other, and the righteous will feast on their flesh.

But what is the meaning of the allegory? In "Arpilei Tohar" (ערפילי הטוהר), Rav Kook explains that this biblical battle is not an ancient story, but a drama occurring right now, before our eyes.

"שור הבר" - איור של דפנה אנגלנדר

Two Types of Holiness

According to Rav Kook, the Wild Ox symbolizes religious holiness – that spiritual holiness, above nature, which opposes and distances itself from the forces of matter and the body. For a long historical period, as a nation in exile, we dealt only with this holiness, which Rav Kook calls 'ordinary holiness.' We built fences that separated us from nature. The Wild Ox, it is written, eats the produce of a thousand mountains in one day – meaning, it consumes materiality, earthliness, nature.

But Rav Kook innovates and reveals that there is another type of holiness, much greater and immense. This holiness hides in the depths of reality, beneath the water. This is the holiness in nature, and it is symbolized by the Leviathan. An encounter with this holiness reveals the movement of the forces of life in their nakedness – mighty, full of vigor, and sublime.

The Battle Between Religion and Secularism

So, whoever wants complete holiness needs both types of holiness. But for generations, Judaism was forced to reject the holiness in nature. This is because nature also harbors cruelty, indifference, and immorality. The command was to choose the holiness that transcends nature.

But in the end, the stage arrives to reconnect with nature. According to Rav Kook, this renewed encounter is revealed in our generation in the form of the emergence of secularism.

In Rav Kook's view, secularism is not a marginal disease, but a profound divine process. It is the way history brings the religious holiness (the Wild Ox) into contact with the immense holiness in nature (the Leviathan).

holiness in nature (the Leviathan).

Therefore, the difficult struggle we witness between the religious and the secular, between progress and tradition, is actually the modern revelation of the mythical battle. The Wild Ox consumes materiality; the Leviathan is deeply immersed in nature itself.

But in this war, there are no winners. They defeat each other.

The real winners are those righteous individuals watching from the side. Those who are connected to the supernal root, the common root of both types of holiness, and the contradiction does not shock them. They are the ones capable of seeing that there is really no contradiction between the two.

"This is the unifying perception of Rav Kook... if there is one God, then all the contradictions we see are destined to be resolved. The aspiration is the unification of reality. This is the inner demand of the Jewish soul: reconciliation between the two holinesses." - From the words of Rabbi Uri Sharki

The Zionist process of the return to the Land was also intended to rediscover the holiness in nature. We, the Israelis, came to reconcile. "We are returning here to restore to the world the prophetic culture in which the naturalness of the sacred is also revealed," explains Rabbi Sharki. "The revelation of divine unity is one of the missions of the State of Israel. If we succeed, it will serve as a model for the nations of the world."

Pre-Prophetic Cinema: Space as a Character

Pre-Prophetic Cinema, following the teachings of Rav Kook, proposes to perceive the filmed space, especially in the Holy Land, not as a static background but as an entity with divine vitality.

Nature is not inanimate; it has a will.

"Eretz" (ארץ - Land) – from the word "Ratzon" (רצון - Will). The Holy Land is the place where the sacred and nature unite.

The frame filmed in Israel is not landscape photography, but an opportunity for the revelation of the divine will hidden in all existence.

The holiness in nature, suppressed for generations, now seeks to burst forth and be revealed.

In the dramatic structure of the film, there is a role for the nature of the Land of Israel and even for inanimate objects, as the Sages said: "There is nothing that does not have a place."

The new creation is an opportunity for an encounter and dramatic reconciliation between nature and the sacred.

The film becomes a documentation of the expansion of the soul in space and time, in a place where every stone and every hill carries will and meaning.

(Based on the lectures of Rabbi Uri Sharki on the teachings of Rav Kook)

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מוקדש באהבה גדולה לחברה ואמנית דפנה אנגלנדר.