Yeschajahu Leibowitz

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Jeschajahu Leibowitz in the 1930s.

Jeschajahu Leibowitz ( Hebrew ישעיהו ליבוביץ, also Yeshayahu ; born on January 29, 1903 in Riga , Russian Empire ; died August 18, 1994 in Jerusalem ) was an Israeli scientist and religious philosopher . As an Orthodox Jew , Leibowitz is best known for his writings on the philosophy of religion and for his sharp criticism of Israeli politics.

Life

Jeschajahu Leibowitz came from an upper-class Jewish- Zionist family. His parents were Mordechai Kalman and Frieda Leibowitz. According to his own statements, he learned Yiddish , German and Hebrew at the same time and, as a child, also learned Russian and French; that was the norm around his family. He and his sister were given private lessons; only later did he attend the general high school in Riga .

During the Russian Civil War in 1919, the Leibowitz family left Riga and, like many other Baltic Jews, came to the Weimar Republic. Jeschajahu Leibowitz studied chemistry in Berlin . His academic teachers were Fritz Haber , Walther Nernst , Otto Fritz Meyerhof and Otto Warburg . In 1924 he received his doctorate in chemistry (at the philosophical faculty). From 1926 to 1930 he was an assistant biochemist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and later at the University of Cologne . From 1929 he studied medicine in Cologne and Heidelberg .

Yeshayahu Leibowitz in the lecture hall, around 1964.

In 1934 he completed his habilitation in medicine in Basel (because this was no longer possible for him as a Jew in Berlin) and emigrated to Palestine in the same year . In 1936 he entered the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , where he was given a chair in biochemistry in 1941 and was promoted to full professor of organic chemistry and neurophysiology in 1952 . In 1970 he retired, but continued to teach philosophy and the history of science.

From the beginning Leibowitz worked as an editor on the Hebrew Encyclopedia and in 1953 became its editor-in-chief. In addition to hundreds of articles and essays, he published numerous books on philosophy, politics, and the writings of Maimonides . Some of his lectures were first broadcast as part of the Israel Army Radio Open University and later published as a book.

The Israeli journalist and politician Michael Shashar , born in Berlin in 1933 , Secretary of Mosche Dajan and Consul General in New York, son of Leibowitz's childhood friends from his student days in Germany, conducted a lengthy interview with Leibowitz in 1987, which he published in book form and which in 1990 The title Talks about God and the World was also published in German.

In 1993 Leibowitz was to receive the Israel Prize . When it became clear that the then Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin would refuse to attend the ceremony, Leibowitz rejected the award. After his death in 1994, President Ezer Weizman called him "one of the greatest figures in the life of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in recent generations."

Leibowitz's younger sister, Nechama Leibowitz , was a well-known biblical scholar; the important Polish-French composer , music theorist and conductor René Leibowitz was his cousin.

Religious positions

Yeshaia Leibowitz. Photograph by Grubner. Wellcome V0026693.jpg

In his thinking, Jeschajahu Leibowitz is strongly influenced by Maimonides , as well as by the Jewish orthodoxy of Lithuanian stamps.

“On the one hand the oral Torah is without a doubt a human product, on the other hand we accept it as the divine Torah; the Torah that we wrote ourselves is the divine Torah! "

For him, the self-commitment to do the mitzvot is fundamental , and for its own sake. From this he draws conclusions that put him in opposition to Hasidic positions, but also to liberal Judaism:

  • Prayer is a mitzvah; to perform prayer for one's own sake means to renounce the prayer of trying to change the course of the world or personal fate. Prayer is not an "emotional sport". Like the sacrificial cult in the temple, the prayer after the destruction of the temple is a "formalism of worship".
  • The dietary laws and other rules of everyday life should be followed for their own sake, they have no medical relevance.
  • The mitzvah of Torah study should also be practiced strictly for its own sake, i.e. without payment or exemption from any duties. The Jew who studies the Torah after work and only comes to a superficial understanding practices this mitzvah more than the yeshiva student who has acquired a profound knowledge but does not pursue a livelihood. Torah study should be open to Orthodox women as it is an essential aspect of Jewish life.

In Leibowitz's view, liberal Judaism disqualifies itself through its selective handling of the halacha: “What is the difference between a person who never went to the synagogue and never will go, and a person who explicitly violates the halachic rules in a synagogue builds? "

Leibowitz was thoroughly involved in interreligious discussions with Christians, but made no secret of the fact that he rejected Christianity or "deeply despised" it. Christianity is a religion without mitzvot, yes, it has fought against the practice of mitzvot as legalism.

Political opinions

Yeshayahu Leibowitz.jpg

Leibowitz immigrated to Israel as a staunch Zionist. Even before the state was founded, he advocated an absolute separation of religion and state . He was very suspicious of the connection between mystical thinking and nationalism in people as diverse as Abraham Isaak Kook and Gershom Scholem . He rejected the idea that the State of Israel, the land or the army were “holy”.

Immediately after the Six Day War he spoke out against annexing the occupied territories. Although he was often called an anti-Zionist by opponents , towards the end of his life he reiterated his support for the Zionist idea.

After the Qibya massacre, he developed a continuously more critical attitude towards the Israeli government. In his later writings, he denied any religious significance to Israel and repeatedly emphasized what he believed to be a necessary separation of religion and state. After the Six Day War in 1967, Leibowitz was among the first Israeli intellectuals to warn of the catastrophic consequences of a prolonged occupation of the conquered territories.

In an essay entitled The Territories published in the Israeli daily Jedi'ot Acharonot in 1968 , he wrote:

“The Arabs are turning into the working class, and the Jews into administrators, inspectors, administrators and police officers - but above all into secret police officers. A state ruled by an unfriendly population of one and a half to two million strangers will inevitably become a state ruled by a secret police - with all its implications for education, freedom of speech and democracy. The corrupting forces of any colonial regime will also show up in the Israeli state. The administration will suppress the Arab uprising with one hand and take care of Arab quislings with the other . There are also good reasons to fear that the Israel Defense Forces , which until now have been a people's army, will, as a result of this development, turn into an army of occupation, degenerate, their officers will mutate into military administrators and will then resemble their colleagues in other nations. "

Literature (German selection)

  • Yeschaiahu Leibowitz: Lectures on the sayings of the fathers - In the footsteps of Maimonides , 2nd edition. Obertshausen 1999, ISBN 3-924072-03-5 .
  • Michael Shashar (Ed.): Jeshajahu Leibowitz. Conversations about God and the world . Frankfurt 1990, ISBN 3-458-33268-5 , Insel Taschenbuch No. it 1568
  • Matthias Morgenstern : Article by Jeschajahu Leibowitz. In: Metzler Lexicon of Jewish Philosophers. Philosophical thinking of Judaism from antiquity to the present. Edited by Andreas B. Kilcher and Otfried Fraisse with the collaboration of Yossef Schwartz. Stuttgart 2003, pp. 403-407.
  • Jewish-Orthodox Paths to Biblical Criticism. I. Scriptural interpretation of the oral Torah: From Drasch to Pschat . In: Judaica. Contributions to the understanding of Judaism , 56, 2000, pp. 178–192 (on Leibowitz: pp. 188–192).

Honors

After many years of discussion, the city of Herzlia decided in 2011 to name a street after Jeschajahu Leibowitz. It was the first time that an Israeli city honored him in this way.

In 2014 a street in Jerusalem was named after him.

Web links

Commons : Jeschajahu Leibowitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David B. Green: 1994: A Scientist Adored by Israelis, Though Most Hated His Opinions, Dies . In: Haaretz . 18th August 2016.
  2. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 264 .
  3. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 129 .
  4. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 159 .
  5. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 255 .
  6. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 157 .
  7. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 166 .
  8. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 162 .
  9. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 81 .
  10. ↑ Conversations about God and the World . S. 87-88 .
  11. ^ A b Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1995): Judaism, Human Values ​​and the Jewish State . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  12. ↑ 52 years of occupation - 52 years of resistance. In: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Israel Office. Retrieved October 15, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Newsletter of the Embassy of the State of Israel from August 18, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Leibowitz, Yeschajahu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leibowitz, Yeshayahu; ישעיהו ליבוביץ (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli religious philosopher and biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1994
Place of death Jerusalem