Rav Kook is quoted as follows explaining the place of Shir HaShirim in the canon of Jewish Holy Writings:
Any person from whom God has not withheld wisdom will recognize and feel that there cannot possibly be a wealth of holy writings of a holy nation - whose entire history is replete with compostions expressing love to the Rock of its Fortress, during its says of greatness and glory that came about through divine kindness replete with glory, and in its days of being impoverished and downtrodden through rivers of blood and a flood of terrible calamaties, which all awakened the love, strengthened it and actualized it - there is no way possible that all of these longings are not transcribed in a book in the national storehouse where all holy expressions find a place.
Only someone (Rabbi Akiva) who as his skin was being combed with iron combs was able to say, "My entire life I was concerned if I would ever have the opportunity to fulfill the verse 'with your entire life,'" and to elongate his saying the word Echad until his soul left him, only he could say that nothing in the history of existence is as valuable as the day that Shir HaShirim was given to the Jewish people. That all of the Writings are Holy, but Shir HaShirim is the Holy of Holies.
Any person from whom God has not withheld wisdom will recognize and feel that there cannot possibly be a wealth of holy writings of a holy nation - whose entire history is replete with compostions expressing love to the Rock of its Fortress, during its says of greatness and glory that came about through divine kindness replete with glory, and in its days of being impoverished and downtrodden through rivers of blood and a flood of terrible calamaties, which all awakened the love, strengthened it and actualized it - there is no way possible that all of these longings are not transcribed in a book in the national storehouse where all holy expressions find a place.
Only someone (Rabbi Akiva) who as his skin was being combed with iron combs was able to say, "My entire life I was concerned if I would ever have the opportunity to fulfill the verse 'with your entire life,'" and to elongate his saying the word Echad until his soul left him, only he could say that nothing in the history of existence is as valuable as the day that Shir HaShirim was given to the Jewish people. That all of the Writings are Holy, but Shir HaShirim is the Holy of Holies.
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