38 Facts About Yeshayahu Leibowitz

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Israeli Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a prolific writer on Jewish thought and western philosophy.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was known for his outspoken views on ethics, religion, and politics.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was born in Riga, Russian Empire in 1903, to a religious Zionist family.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz's father was a lumber trader, and his cousin was a future chess grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1935, and settled in Jerusalem.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was married to Greta, with whom he had six children, two of whom died at young ages.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz died in his sleep on 18 August 1994.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz joined the faculty of mathematics and natural science of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1936.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz became a professor of biochemistry in 1941, and was promoted to the position of senior professor of organic chemistry and neurology in 1952.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz taught at the Hebrew University for nearly six decades, lecturing in biochemistry, neurophysiology, philosophy, and the history of science.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz served as the editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica in its early stages.

Apart from his innumerable articles and essays, Yeshayahu Leibowitz authored a wide range of books on philosophy, human values, Jewish thought, the teachings of Maimonides, and politics.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was a prolific letter writer, and his advice or comment was sought out widely.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an Orthodox Jew who held controversial views on the subject of halakha, or Jewish law.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote that the sole purpose of religious commandments was to obey God, and not to receive any kind of reward in this world or the world to come.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz maintained that the reasons for religious commandments were beyond man's understanding, as well as irrelevant, and any attempt to attribute emotional significance to the performance of mitzvot was misguided and akin to idolatry.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz believed that Jews should perform mitzvot solely for the sake of worshipping God and that although they could have incidental benefit to the one performing the mitzvah, it would only be a religiously worthy act as long as the motivation was to worship God.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz denied the idea of ethical mitzvot, believing that any mitzvot which set out duties towards others were duties based on a person's position before God rather than their position before their fellow man.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz claimed that a person's decision to believe in God defines or describes that person, not God.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz viewed God as transcending all reality as humans know it, believing that as an entity God is incomparable to any other form of reality humans can encounter, and is completely separate from the material world.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz viewed human history in the natural world as having no divine significance and rejected the idea that God had set out a divine purpose in history or extended some form of providence over humanity.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz did not see Torah as an account of historical and scientific truths, but rather as the source of the mitzvot or commandments on how Jews are to serve God.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz viewed the Holocaust as having no Jewish religious significance, as such a belief would contradict his ideas of God having no involvement in human affairs.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz believed in the separation of state and religion, and held that mixing the two corrupted faith.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was critical of Reform Judaism, calling it a "historical distortion of the Jewish religion", as well as Kabbalah, seeing them as encouraging people to not perform mitzvot for their own sake but ascribing a stated purpose to them.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz rebuked the concept of Tikkun olam, a Kabbalistic idea which remains popular in Reform Judaism as a basis for supporting social justice.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was an advocate of increased gender egalitarianism in Jewish practice, writing that: "The halakhic decisions in Judaism barring women from public office tell us more about what actually was the case than about what ought to be" and arguing that men and women should study the Torah together.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was disappointed with the way the religious parties compromised with the secular government.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz's disillusionment was further bolstered by the Qibya massacre in 1953, which caused him to become more progressively critical of government policy.

In 1956, Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote an article in Haaretz following the initial failure of the authorities to punish the perpetrators of the Kafr Qasim massacre, commenting with sharp irony that, in the name of the justice Israel claims to uphold, one might as well call for the Nuremberg laws to be overturned and the convicted Nazi officials to be exonerated, since they too had only followed orders from their superiors.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz came to view political involvement as having a corrupting influence on Judaism, and argued for the separation of religion and state for Judaism's sake.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz viewed politicized religion as not being truly religious, believing that it focuses less on the demands it makes on its adherents.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz was among the first Israeli intellectuals to state immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War that if the occupation continued, this would lead to the decline in moral stature.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz is often pigeonholed as belonging to the extreme left, which is a mistake.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, never willing to bow to collective pressure, was the most unlikely of combinations: On the one hand he was a libertarian, an extreme form of classical liberalism, and believed that human beings should be free to determine their way of life without any state interference.

In 1993, Yeshayahu Leibowitz was selected for the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

The jury convened to discuss the possibility of withdrawing the prize, but Yeshayahu Leibowitz himself announced that he would refuse to accept it, because he did not want to create antagonism when receiving the prize.