Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Abraham Isaac Kook" in English language version.
Many of them were not ritually observant; some were openly hostile to religion. Despite this, Rabbi Kook defended them, and even hailed them as playing a role, by their labors, in hastening the messianic deliverance. For the religious establishment of the old yishuv this was a heretical distortion which imperiled everything holy in Judaism, and they denounced Rabbi Kook as a misleader of his people.
There quickly followed a pamphlet banning Orot, which included frontal attacks on Kook and Charlap, and a declaration signed by Zonnenfeld, Diskin, and others: "We were astonished to see and hear gross things, foreign to the entire Torah, and we see that which we feared before his coming here, that he will introduce new forms of deviance that our rabbis and ancestors could not have imagined… He turns light to darkness, and darkness to light... It is to be deemed a sorcerer's book, and let it be known that it is forbidden to study [let alone] rely on all his nonsense and dreams.
בקונטרס זה מופיע בפעם הראשונה דימויו של הרב קוק לשבתי צבי "וקאי באיסורא כיחידאי דאיהו נמי שיטתיה כיחידאי הש״ץ״. ולפני שהוא מביא ממאמרי הרב באות ׳תעודות׳ כגון מכתב בנו של הרבי מבלז, המזכיר את דברי הרבי: "וידוע דהרב דשם מירושלים ושמו קוק ימ"ש הוא רשע גמור וכבר טימא כמה צעירי עמנו ע"י מצודתו של חלקות לשונו ובספרים הטמאים, וד' יזכנו ויעביר רוח הטומאה מכל נפוצות עמו, ונזכה לעלות לציון ברנה, וכשנזכה שיהי' עת רצון מהש"י ולא עתה על ידיהם
When Rav Kook called for public fasts on October 22, 1928, to protest the indignities at the Kotel, the ultra-Orthodox ignored him, as they studiously ignored every prayer meeting and fast day that he called.
A major scholar of impeccable ultra-Orthodox credentials, Meltzer resolutely defended Kook against attackers on the right. He was wont to say, "Let them, any of us, pray on Yom Kippur the way Rav Kook prays on an average weekday."
According to the report, Chofetz-Chaim condemned the pamphlet against Kook as well.
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(help)In formulating religious Zionism, Kook broke with most other Orthodox rabbis, who saw nothing but evil in the early Zionist pioneers, with their atheism, their Sabbath desecration, and their belief that their labor rather than God would save the Jewish people.