Rabbi Oury Cherki was born in Algeria in 1959. He moved with his family to France where he lived for several years and then immigrated to Israel in 1972. He studied Torah with Rabbi Zvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook in the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva as well as with Rabbi Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi and Rabbi Shlomo Binyamin Ashlag. He was ordained as a rabbi and has been serving as the rabbi of the Bet Yehuda community in Kiriat Moshe, Jerusalem. Rabbi Sherki is the head of the Israeli Department at Machon Meir, the Meir Center for Jewish Studies in French (CMEJ) and the Noahide World Center. He also teaches Judaism at Rosh Yehudi and other places across the country.

Rabbi Yehuda Leon Ashkenazi (Manitou), 1922- 1996, was one of the leading educators, thinkers and restorers of post WWII French Jewry. He was a descendant of the Lurianic Kabbalist Joseph ibn Tabul and the Talmudic commentator, the Rosh. He studied Kabbalah in Algeria and later under the Rabbis Shlomo Binyamin Ashlag and Zvi Yehuda Kook. He studied philosophy, psychology, and anthropology in the University of Paris.

Rabbi Ashkenazi along with Andre Neher and Emmanuel Levinas served as educational directors of French Jewish youth. In 1957, they organized the Annual French Jewish Intellectuals Conferences, which sought to create an academic, philosophical language for understanding the Torah and Jewish culture.

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook (1891-1982 )– Rabbi and leader of Religious Zionism. His teachings include identifying the State of Israel as the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Hebrew Prophets, despite its secular nature. He raised a new generation of Rabbinical leadership for Religious Zionism.

He was the only son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, served as head of the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva as well as the editor of many of his late father’s works. He continued in his father’s path of Religious Zionism and love of all, and was instrumental in encouraging Jews to settle in all areas of the Land of Israel liberated during the Six Day War.

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook (1865-1935), first Chief Rabbi of the holy land, was the leading figure of Jewish thought in the modern era, and the proponent of the religious dimension of Zionism.

Rabbi Kook saw Zionism as the first flowering of the redemption of the Jewish people, the vanguard of the Messianic era. He founded the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva, envisioning it as a place of study that will produce the greatest spiritual leaders of the Jewish people.

“ The pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice; they do not complain of heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain of ignorance, but increase wisdom.”

Arpilei Tohar, p. 27–28