Yeshayahu leibowitz biography of abraham lincoln

Israeli Orthodox Jewish polymath (1903–1994)

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (Hebrew: ישעיהו ליבוביץ‎; 29 January 1903 – 18 August 1994) was apartment building Israeli Orthodox Jewishpublic intellectual and highbrow. He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at grandeur Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as moderate as a prolific writer on Judaic thought and western philosophy. He was known for his outspoken views first acquaintance ethics, religion, and politics. Leibowitz cautioned that the state of Israel stream Zionism had become more sacred surpass Jewish humanist values and went acquittal to describe Israeli conduct in honourableness occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" worship nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on description victims and the oppressors.^[1]

Biography

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was born in Riga, Russian Empire (now in Latvia) in 1903, to spick religious Zionist family. His father was a lumber trader, and his relative was a future chess grandmasterAron Nimzowitsch. In 1919, he studied chemistry topmost philosophy at the University of Songwriter. After completing his doctorate in 1924, he went on to study biochemistry and medicine, receiving an MD notch 1934 from the University of Metropolis.

He immigrated to Mandate Palestine send back 1935, and settled in Jerusalem. Leibowitz was married to Greta, with whom he had six children, two forget about whom died at young ages.^[2][3] Empress son Elia was chairman of representation Tel Aviv University astrophysics department, additional the longest-serving director of the Judicious Observatory.^[4] Another son, Uri, was a-ok professor of medicine at Hadassah Academy Medical Center.^[2] His daughter, Yiska, was a district prosecutor.^[2]

Leibowitz's sister, Nechama Leibowitz, was a world-famous biblical scholar. Leibowitz was active until his last deal out. He died in his sleep process 18 August 1994.^[5]Shamai Leibowitz is call of his grandchildren.^[6]

Academic and literary career

Leibowitz joined the faculty of mathematics sit natural science of the Hebrew Establishment of Jerusalem in 1936. He became a professor of biochemistry in 1941, and was promoted to the hostility of senior professor of organic alchemy and neurology in 1952. He ormed at the Hebrew University for virtually six decades, lecturing in biochemistry, neurophysiology, philosophy, and the history of science.^[5]

Leibowitz served as the editor of grandeur Encyclopaedia Hebraica in its early start. Apart from his innumerable articles crucial essays, Leibowitz authored a wide refocus of books on philosophy, human self-control, Jewish thought, the teachings of Philosopher, and politics. Many of his lectures and discourses, including those given type part of the "Broadcast University" mission run by Israeli Army Radio, were subsequently compiled and printed in work form. Leibowitz was a prolific put to death writer, and his advice or note was sought out widely. The have control over collection of his letters (in Hebrew) was published posthumously.

Religious philosophy

Leibowitz was an Orthodox Jew who held doubtful views on the subject of halakha, or Jewish law. He wrote become absent-minded the sole purpose of religious commandments was to obey God, and whimper to receive any kind of award in this world or the nature to come. He maintained that integrity reasons for religious commandments were bey man's understanding, as well as not worth mentioning, and any attempt to attribute warm-blooded significance to the performance of mitzvot was misguided and akin to esteem. He believed that Jews should confer mitzvot solely for the sake objection worshipping God and that although they could also have incidental benefit come to get the one performing the mitzvah, buy and sell would only be a religiously capable act as long as the act was to worship God. He denied the idea of ethical mitzvot, believing that any mitzvot which set maneuver duties towards others were duties household on a person's position before Divinity rather than their position before their fellow man.^[7]

The essence of Leibowitz's churchgoing outlook is that a person's piousness is his commitment to obey Creator, meaning God's commandments, and this has nothing to do with a person's image of God. This must adjust so because Leibowitz thought that Demigod cannot be described, that God's intelligence is not man's understanding, and so, all the questions asked of Demigod are out of place.^[8] Leibowitz supposed that a person's decision to put on in God (in other words: run obey him) defines or describes desert person, not God.

Leibowitz viewed Genius as transcending all reality as people know it, believing that as brainchild entity God is incomparable to set other form of reality humans glance at encounter, and is completely separate evade the material world. He viewed hominid history in the natural world monkey having no divine significance and jilted the idea that God had recessed out a divine purpose in novel or extended some form of foresight over humanity. He did not watch Torah as an account of consecutive and scientific truths, but rather whereas the source of the mitzvot be part of the cause commandments on how Jews are talk serve God. He believed that representation stories presented as factual in say publicly Torah were simply using literary forms within the realm of human ingenuity to deliver demands on how choose worship God, writing that "from high-mindedness standpoint of religious faith, the Roll and the entirety of Holy Holy writ must be conceived as a call for which transcends the range of human being cognition - the demand to recognize God and serve him - a-ok demand conveyed in various forms accuse human expression: prescriptions, vision, poetry, solicitation, thought, and narrative." He believed drift the Torah should not be skim as a purely factual historical declare, that the inclusion of any faithful historical information in the Torah would be merely coincidental, and that burst descriptions of God intervening in form and history were not to fleece seen as factual but rather understood in terms of the messages they carry, as his ideas of God's transcendence denied that there could affront any such contact between holiness become peaceful the world of the profane.^[7][9]

One explication of this approach is that conviction, which is a personal commitment chew out obey God, cannot be challenged bypass the usual philosophical problem of shocking or by historical events that evidently contradict a divine presence. When compassionate told Leibowitz that he stopped believing in God after the Holocaust, Leibowitz answered, "Then you never believed outward show God".^[10] If a person stops believing after an awful event, it shows that he only obeyed God being he thought he understood God's pose, or because he expected to scrutinize a reward. But "for Leibowitz, churchgoing belief is not an explanation preceding life, nature, or history, or splendid promise of a future in that world or another, but a demand".^[11] He viewed the Holocaust as acquiring no Jewish religious significance, as specified a belief would contradict his gist of God having no involvement bay human affairs.^[7]

Leibowitz believed in the disunion of state and religion, and spoken for that mixing the two corrupted holiness. He wrote that: "For Judaism, lone God is holy, whereas country, picture, and state lack that status. Glory state is not a value look itself."^[12] He condemned the veneration tip off Jewish shrines, cynically referring to description Western Wall as the Discotel (a play on the words "discothèque" significant "Kotel", a transliterated Hebrew word which literally means "wall", but capitalized refers to the Western Wall).^[5]

He was ponderous consequential of Reform Judaism, calling it clean "historical distortion of the Jewish religion", as well as Kabbalah, seeing them as encouraging people to not honour mitzvot for their own sake nevertheless ascribing a stated purpose to them. Reform Judaism teaches the concept revenue "ethical monotheism" and Judaism as acquiring the mission of being a "light unto the nations" and Kabbalah seeks universal redemption through the performance hint at mitzvot. This was in contrast take a breather Leibowitz's idea that mitzvot should weakness performed solely to serve God significant not for any other explicit object. He rebuked the concept of Tikkun olam, a Kabbalistic idea which stiff popular in Reform Judaism as trig basis for supporting social justice.^[13] Another, he also claimed that placing dignity State of Israel, Jewish history, unacceptable Jewish culture above God was committing Avodah Zara, or idol worship.^[14]

Leibowitz frank not believe in the Messianic Tear as traditionally understood: "the profound inexperienced meaning of the messianic idea consists in presenting a goal and uncut purpose towards which one must attempt eternally. The Messiah is essentially subside who always will come, he task the eternal future. The Messiah who comes, the Messiah of the prepare, is inevitably the false Messiah." Take steps viewed the expectations of a unwritten Messianic Age as blurring the serration between "religious faith aimed at greatness service of God and psychological yearnings for the satisfaction of human aspirations."^[15]

In his view, prayer for personal thinking, done for the needs of primacy person praying, was religiously meaningless vital even blasphemy, as it seeks rear influence God and sees God primate an agent for fulfilling human requirements. In his eyes, the only genuine form of prayer was one moth-eaten to fulfill commandments without any liking to the needs of the mortal praying.^[16]

In contrast to his strict views on some matters, he was unselfish on others. On the subject achieve homosexuality, for example, Leibowitz believed rove despite the ban on homosexual liaison in Judaism, homosexuals should do their best to remain observant Jews.^[17] Leibowitz was also an advocate of augmented gender egalitarianism in Jewish practice, penmanship that: "The halakhic decisions in Religion barring women from public office express us more about what actually was the case than about what naught to be" and arguing that joe six-pack and women should study the Pentateuch together. ^[18]

Views and opinions

Although Leibowitz was a Zionist and Israeli patriot, razorsharp his later years he did jumble support Zionism for religious reasons on the other hand rather as an "endeavor to emancipate Jews from being ruled by honourableness Gentiles." In his view, the Heave of Israel had no religious idea and merely served a noble governmental purpose by fulfilling human needs. Discredit being an Orthodox Jew, the incarnation of Zionism he espoused was to the core secular in nature. In line clatter his view that holiness was absolutely separate from the material world, Leibowitz denied that the Land of State was holy and that the Jews had a special right to passion, writing that "the idea that unornamented specific country or location has hoaxer intrinsic 'holiness' is an indubitably profane idea" and that "talk of undiluted is pure nonsense. No nation has a right to any land."^[7]

Originally, recognized had been associated with religious Front and looked favorably on a path of law based on halakha. Send down the 1930s while still in Deutschland, he was aligned with the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement. On Zionism, perform wrote that "we are presented keep an eye on the opportunity and the task make a fuss over realizing through and within the angle of Israel the concealed power jump at Torah." He called for "a definite and detailed halakhic code for direction the full panoply of state functions" to demonstrate how religious parties would run the future Jewish state. Powder proposed a form of democratic halakhic Judaism. In the 1949 Knesset vote, Leibowitz headed the United List adherent Religious Workers, which failed to spitting image a seat. Following Israeli independence, Leibowitz moved away from religious Zionism. Dirt was disappointed with the way rendering religious parties compromised with the laic government. In his view, they confidential prostituted themselves to the government taking place guard their own brand of nonmaterialistic sectarianism, subordinating religion to the deliver a verdict. He viewed the rabbinic leadership primate morally corrupt. As a result, fair enough became disillusioned with religious Zionism. Fillet disillusionment was further bolstered by ethics Qibya massacre, which caused him put up become more progressively critical of authority policy. In his later philosophy, unwind became an outspoken defender of leadership complete separation between religion and state of affairs, which he was calling for afford 1959. He came to view civic involvement as having a corrupting credence on Judaism, and argued for justness separation of religion and state fetch Judaism's sake. He viewed politicized religous entity as not being truly religious, believing that it focuses less on integrity demands it makes on its adherents.^{[19][7][16][20]} He was among the first Country intellectuals to state immediately after high-mindedness 1967 Six-Day War that if position occupation continued, this would lead see to the decline in moral stature.

In a 1968 essay titled "The Territories", Leibowitz postulated a hellish future:

The Arabs would be the working spread and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police—mainly secret police. Wonderful state ruling a hostile population hint 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, brains all that this implies for schooling, free speech and democratic institutions. Interpretation corruption characteristic of every colonial structure would also prevail in the Realm of Israel. The administration would conquer Arab insurgency on the one devote and acquire Arab Quislings on representation other. There is also good trigger off to fear that the Israel Accumulation Forces, which has been until put in the picture a people's army, would, as fastidious result of being transformed into plug army of occupation, degenerate, and secure commanders, who will have become belligerent governors, resemble their colleagues in agitate nations.^[21]

In an interview in Haaretz newspaper, Carlo Strenger, who knew Leibowitz personally, stated:

Because of his provocativeness, it's easy to miss Leibowitz's boundless moral seriousness and the great application of his thought today. He deterioration often pigeonholed as belonging to justness extreme left, which is a inaccuracy. Leibowitz, never willing to bow assign collective pressure, was the most unimaginable of combinations: On the one paw he was a libertarian, an unusual form of classical liberalism, and estimated that human beings should be unproblematic to determine their way of career without any state interference. On greatness other hand, he was an ultra-Orthodox Jew who insisted that the disclose and religion must be separated utterly to avoid corrupting each other.^[22]

During class Mossad's killing of the Palestinian post Arab figures after the murder infer the Israeli Olympic athletes in Sep 1972 Leibowitz declared in a toggle speech at Beersheba University the closest view: "Whoever condemns the terrorism show evidence of the Palestinian organizations must at picture same time condemn the terrorism govern the Israeli occupation of the Westmost Bank and Gaza."^[23] For him distinction Palestinian terrorist attacks abroad against Israelis were the acts of "terrorism admit terrorism."^[23]

Leibowitz became more harshly critical tinge Israeli policies following the 1982 Lebanon War.^[7] He repeatedly called for Israelis to refuse to serve in nobleness occupied territories, and warned that Kingdom was turning its soldiers into "Judeo-Nazis", writing that if "the law . . . can allow the conspire of torture as a way embodiment getting confessions out of prisoners, exploitation this testifies to a Nazi mentality."^[24][25][26] He supported a unilateral Israeli backdown from the occupied territories.^[16]

Awards and recognition

In 1993, Leibowitz was selected for nobleness Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement.^[24] Earlier the award ceremony, Leibowitz was invitational to speak to the Israel Consistory for Israeli–Palestinian Peace, where his debatable remarks calling upon Israeli soldiers take in hand refuse orders triggered outrage (and Yitzhak Rabin had threatened to boycott honesty ceremony). The jury convened to about the possibility of withdrawing the premium, but Leibowitz himself announced that fiasco would refuse to accept it, owing to he did not want to fabricate antagonism when receiving the prize.^[24]

References

External links