On Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s Birthday, Let’s Remember To Be Suspicious

Today Jan 29, is the birthday of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the late Israeli Orthodox Jewish thinker and agent provocateur. I’ve been reading his weekly Torah commentary, Accepting The Yoke of Heaven. The parsha of Veyechi, which passed just before the New Year started, tells of Jacob’s death, while it’s haftarah tells of King David’s death. Leibowitz’ bold and typically prophetic words on the difference between the two deaths struck me with particular force.

First, though, who was the now largely forgotten Leibowitz? Leibowitz was an esteemed Israeli intellectual who won the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest civilian honor, in 1993 (then refused the prize). He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry and neurophysiology at Hebrew University where he taught for nearly six decades. Leibowitz was a polymath known for his bold, strongly held, and sometimes confrontational opinions on ethics, religion and Israeli politics. Former President Ezer Weizman, who had previously been Minister of Defence, hailed him as “one of the greatest figures in the life of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in recent generations,” adding that he was “a spiritual conscience for many.”

He may also have been amongst the first people to compare the IDF to Nazis.

Born in Riga, Latvia, in 1903, Leibowitz studied chemistry and philosophy in…