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The Example of Yeshayahu Leibowitz Anne Fiebig From ScepticismtoToleranceof“the Other”: The Example of Yeshayahu Leibowitz Introduction The European-born Israeli thinker Yeshayahu Leibowitz wasasprovocative as he was popularamong the Israeli public, and he influenced more thanone generation of society both in Israel and abroad. Born in Rigain1903,hestudied chemistry in Berlin, medicine in Cologne and Heidelberg, and later took his MD in Basel. After participatinginthe religious-Zionist Mizrachi movement in Germany, he latermigrat- ed to Palestine, wherehelived from 1934 until his death in Jerusalemin1994.Leibo- witz was widelyinterpreted as provocative yethighlytopical due to his harsh criti- cism of the Israeli government—particularlyafter the Six-DayWar (1967)—and his interpretation of the Jewishreligion, which was “ahighlyresilient form of Jewishre- ligiosity,capable of enduringthe most vigorous philosophicaland ethical criticism from the Enlightenmenttoour time.”¹ To this day, there is discussion as to whether Leibowitz can be defined as aphilosopher and whether he waspart of the tradition of serious Israeli philosophy, as his roots wereinnatural science. Perhaps this is one reason whyhis thought has regrettablynever gained much popularityoutside of Israel. YetLeibowitz is worth engagingwith. At the very least,hewas an important thinker in ageneration and time that was occupied with asking: “What would be the character of the new Jewish society?”² He is worth engagingwith because of his vast spectrum and originality of thoughtabout the Israeli state and the role of its religious Jewry,and because of his interesting personal development from ayoung ambitious religious-Zionistthinker into anear-existentialist.³ Finally, he is worth engagingwith because his interpretation of Jewish religion allows space for amodern form of Jew- ish religiosity within amostlysecular Jewish democratic state, as he himself said that his approach was not historical, but contemporary,for the “here and now.”⁴ This article wasintended as part of an ongoing dialoguewith Roi Benbassatonhowtointerpret scep- ticism in Leibowitz. Roi Benbassat, “YeshayahuLeibowitz: Jewish Existentialism,” Religious Studies 51,no. 2(2015): 141. Ernst Akiva Simon, “AreWeIsraelis Still Jews?The Search for Judaism in the New Society,” in Ar- guments and Doctrines:AReader of JewishThinking in the Aftermath of the Holocaust,ed. Arthur A. Cohen (New York: Harper &Row,1970), 392. Leibowitz was lookingfor the roleofreligious Jewry and of faith in general within an autonomous Jewish statehood. See Benbassat, “Jewish Existentialism.” YeshayahuLeibowitz (1953), Judaism, Human Values,and the JewishState, ed. Eliezer Goldman, trans. Eliezer Goldman, YoramNavon, Zvi Jacobson, Gershon Levi and Raphael Levy (Cambridge, OpenAccess. ©2020Anne Fiebig, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110618839-013 244 Anne Fiebig The highlytopical nature of Leibowitz’sthought can inspire ageneration of young religious Israelis who aspire to be both followers of the Halakhah and modern citi- zens of ademocratic state. In 2017,Roi Benbassat published an article that identified scepticism in the thoughtofthe religious thinker.⁵ The essentialquestion of this paper will be:IfLei- bowitzcan provide an example of Jewish faith and scepticism, does he alsoprovide an example of tolerance that stems from his sceptical approach?This question is based on the premise that scepticism is aroute to tolerance. Inquiries into the roots of toleration⁶ have shown thatanattitude that doubts or questions the possi- bility of knowledge opensthe possibility of tolerating, for example, differences in re- ligion or culture.⁷ The topic raises particulardifficulties because Leibowitz, unlike other religious thinkers,never analysed the great phenomenonoftolerance himself. As in the analysis of scepticism, we have to look for implicit evidence in the literary heritageofthis great thinker. Iwill first give an introduction detailing Leibowitz’sdefinition of the Jewish re- ligion and present his assumption of the co-existenceofdifferent value systems which is acrucial element of the analysis of tolerance in his thought.After this, Iwill present some arguments which have been made in the analysis of scepticism in Leibowitz’sthought. As scepticism has been widelydiscussed as aroute to toler- ance,⁸ Iwill then look for tolerant approaches in Leibowitz’sphilosophy. Iwillthen show evidence of errors in Benbassat’sapproach to scepticism in Leibowitz’sthought and willfurther present anew methodological approach to analysinghis sceptical MA and London: HarvardUniversity Press, 1995), 1. Iwill always writethe essay’sdate of publication, as thereisawide variety of dates and Leibowitz’searlythought differs from his later thought. See Roi Benbassat, “Jewish Faith and Scepticism—The Example of YeshayahuLeibowitz,” in Year- bookofthe Maimonides Centrefor Advanced Studies 2017,ed. Bill Rebiger(Berlin: De Gruyter,2017), 161–81. Iamusingthe words “tolerance” and “toleration” as synonyms. See Giuseppe Veltri, “The Limits of Scepticism and Tolerance,” Bollettino della società filosofica italiano 2(2017): 49.Referringto, for example, Jean Bodin, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), and the Essais of Michel de Montaigne (1580–88), Veltri states: “[The] attitude to doubt (start- ing from the recognition of the human incapacity to discern the truth and based on the admission that humans can err in choosingthe right way) or questioning the possibilityofknowledge opens up the possibilityofrecognizingdifferences in religion, culture, and economy.” And further: “Despite differences amongthem, these texts contributedtothe development of the question of tolerance […]. At their base, they concernliberty of conscience, libertas philosophandi,and the possibility of erring from the correct way.” See, for example, Sam Black, “Lockeand the Skeptical Argument for Toleration,” HistoryofPhilos- ophyQuarterly 24,no. 4(2007): 355–75;Bican Sahin, “ADefense of Toleration on the Basis of Scep- ticism: The Case of Michel de Montaigne,” Hacettepe University Journal of Economics and Administra- tiveSciences 23,no. 2(2005): 283–304. From Scepticism to Toleranceof“the Other”:The Example of Yeshayahu Leibowitz 245 attitude. Finally, Iwill present further important questions regardingthe practice and principle of tolerance within Leibowitz’sthought.⁹ 1Leibowitz’sDefinition of JewishReligion One essential element which enables us to integrate scepticism and tolerance in Lei- bowitz’sthoughtwas his conception of Jewish faith.¹⁰ This was original when com- pared with previous Jewish thinkers and quite radical for an Orthodox thinker like Leibowitz. In contrast to the most popularpost-Haskalah Jewishthinkers, “Leibowitz did not attempt to reconcile Judaism within universal moral values, basically posit- ing it instead as conflicting with all aspects of humanism.”¹¹ He launched aso-called “Leibowitzian” or “Copernican” revolution¹² in Jewishreligious thought that was constituted in an absolute removal of theological and metaphysical elements from Regarding the current state of research, allow me to makesome general remarks. In Israel, there arenumerous discussions about Leibowitz’sdefinition of faith and statehood, comparisons to other philosophers—such as,for example, Kant,Kierkegaard, or Levinas—and analysesofhis relationship to individualism, subjectivity,and even feminism.Outside the Israeli state,not much has been pub- lished about Leibowitz’sthought, and hardly anythinginGermany. From his literary legacy,onlyone large anthology of his essays has been translated intoEnglish (Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the JewishState). Also translatedwere an anthology of his commentaries on the weeklyTorah portion (Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Accepting the Yoke of Heaven: Commentaryonthe Weekly TorahPor- tion,trans. Shmuel Himelstein [Jerusalem: Urim Publications,2002])and his monographabout Mai- monides’sfaith (Yeshayahu Leibowitz, The Faith of Maimonides,trans. John Glucker [Tel-Aviv:MOD Books, 1989]). There areseveral translations of his works intoFrench and Spanish, but onlytwo trans- lations into German fromhis entireliterary corpus.See Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Vorträgeüber die Sprü- che der Väter: Aufden Spurendes Maimonides,trans.Grete Leibowitz (Obertshausen: Context-Verlag, 1984); YeshayahuLeibowitz and Michael Shashar, Gespräche über Gott und die Welt,3rd edition (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1994). Idonot know of anyother German textabout this Israeli thinker, with the followingexceptions:one textaboutaxiology in Leibowitz’sthought(Ottfried Fraisse, “Ent-Geisterungder Rheologie. ZurAxiologie vonYeshayahuLeibowitz’ Denken,” In Alles Wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.Festschrift zumvierzigjährigen Bestehen von Studium Israel e.V.,ed. Jo- hannes Ehmann,Joachim J. Krause, and Bernd Schröder [Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2018], 305–17), one lexical entry (MatthiasMorgenstern, “Jeschajahu Leibowitz,” in Metzler Lexikon jüdisch- er Philosophen: Philosophisches Denken des Judentums von der Antikebis zurGegenwart,ed. Andreas B. Kilcher,Ottfried Fraisse, and Yossef Schwartz [Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler,2003], 403–7), and acontri- bution to an anthology about religion and democracy(Ines Jaqueline Werkner et al., eds., Religionen und Demokratie. BeiträgezuGenese, GeltungundWirkung eines aktuellenpolitischen Spannungsfeldes [Wiesbaden: VS Verlag,2009]). See Benbassat, “Jewish Faith and Scepticism,”
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