20 Facts About Israel Shahak

Dr Israel Shahak was an Israeli professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Holocaust survivor, an intellectual of liberal political bent, and a civil-rights advocate and activist on behalf of both Jews and Gentiles.

Israel Shahak was born Israel Himmelstaub, in 1933, in Warsaw, Poland, and was the youngest child of a cultured, Zionist family of Ashkenazi Jews.

Post-war, the twelve-year-old Israel Shahak worked and studied and supported his mother, whose health had deteriorated in Bergen-Belsen.

In 1961, Shahak pursued post-doctoral studies at Stanford University, in the US; in 1963, he returned to Israel, where he became a popular lecturer and researcher in chemistry, at Hebrew University; moreover, by 1965, Shahak actively participated in the Israeli politics of the day.

In 1990, the academic Israel Shahak retired from the faculty of Hebrew University, because of poor health and greater interest in research work in other fields of intellectual enquiry.

For most of his adult life, Israel Shahak resided in the Rehavia neighborhood in West Jerusalem; at the age of 68 years, he died of diabetic complications, and was buried in the Givat Shaul cemetery.

Israel Shahak was regularly spat on, frequently given death threats, and decried variously as an Israel basher, self-hating Jew, traitor, and enemy of the people.

The League, composed of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel Shahak, protested and publicized Israel Shahak's restrictive policies against Palestinians and provided legal aid to them.

In 1970, Israel Shahak established the Committee Against Administrative Detentions to formally oppose such legalised political repression.

In letters published in the Ha'aretz and Kol Ha'ir newspapers, Israel Shahak criticized the political hypocrisy demonstrated by the radical Left in their uncritical support of the Palestinian nationalist movements.

Israel Shahak detested nationalism and religion, and made no secret of his contempt for the grasping Arafat entourage.

Israel Shahak was active in protesting the public burning of Christian books such as occurred on 23 March 1980 when Yad Le-akhim, a religious organization that was at the time a beneficiary of subsidies from the Ministry of Religion, ceremonially incinerated hundreds of copies of the New Testament publicly in Jerusalem.

Israel Shahak added that the Beth din, the rabbinical court of Jerusalem, had confirmed that the Orthodox Jew correctly understood Halakha law on Pikuach nefesh regarding non-Jews and the Sabbath, and quoted passages from a recent legal compilation.

In 1966, Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits disputed the veracity of Shahak's story, claiming that Israel Shahak had been compelled to admit that the incident had not occurred.

Israel Shahak cited a lengthy responsum, by Isser Yehuda Unterman, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, who said that "the Sabbath must be violated to save non-Jewish life no less than Jewish lives", and cited a ruling by Rabbi Menachem Meiri that Jews should desecrate the Sabbath to save a gentile's life.

In 1994, Israel Shahak published Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, about Jewish fundamentalism, which history professor Norton Mezvinsky, at Central Connecticut State University, said is a:.

Israel Shahak goes on to describe Shahak as "un- and anti-racist" and emphasizes Shahak's consistency in applying a single standard for infractions against human rights.

Israel Shahak ignores [the dialectical nature and humanist] aspects of the sources.

Israel Shahak died of diabetes in July 2001 and was buried in Giv'at Shaul cemetery, Jerusalem.

Gore Vidal said Israel Shahak was "the latest, if not the last, of the great prophets", regarding the influence of religion upon the civil law of society.