At the time of his death a little more than two years ago Yeshayahu Leibowitz held the position of Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prior to that he was head of the Biological Chemistry Department at the Hebrew University and Professor of Neurophysiology at the Hebrew University Medical School. He was born in Riga in 1903 and educated in Germany and Switzerland before he made Aliyah in 1934. In the last few years of his life, his fame spread beyond Israel and even Jewish circles, in recognition of his religious and moral presence. Isaiah Berlin, who knew him when both were young boys in Riga, wrote of him: "I have followed with admiration the views and actions of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and what makes such a profound impression on me is the unshakable moral and political stand which he took for so many years in the face of so much pressure from those well-meaning persons who urged him to be sensible, realistic, not to let down the side, not to give comfort to the enemy, not to fight against current conventional wisdom. But he did resist these pressures and did not lower his flag." Of him, "I believe it can be said more truly than of anyone else, that he is the conscience of Israel. Yeshayahu Leibowitz is surely one of Israel's greatest moral assets. . . . Fortunate the society which still has such men to speak for it." These words of Berlin are printed on the cover of a book of Leibowitz essays, which were translated into English by Eliezer Goldman and published as Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State.[1]

Berlindid not exaggerate. Few people who read Leibowitz will not feel humbled and nourished by their contact with the thoughts of this truly great man even when they disagree with them. I shall quote freely from this volume for I want to try to convey not just some thoughts of Leibowitz, but also, if possible, something of the character of the man himself.

I begin by saying something about Leibowitz's conception of Zionism, for this is something most Jews and most Israelis did not, and still do not, understand. Leibowitz's conception of Zionism was an extremely modest and unambitious one. He claimed that "it is not an ideology, but a complex of activities undertaken to restore independence to the Jewish nation in its own land." It is as he poignantly put it "an expression of our being fed up with being ruled by the Goyim." He was therefore able to say, and he said it to the end of his life, that he was "one who hasn't been at all disappointed by the state of Israel," for it has achieved all that he had hoped for it. How is this possible you may ask. How could a person who was such a severe critic of much Israeli policy, especially someone who was so evidently pained by the injustices committed by Israel against the Palestinians, say that he was not disappointed by the state of Israel. The answer lies in his minimal conception of the state. The state he claimed was "essentially secular," and in the specific case of the state of Israel it "should be an arena in which the struggle for Judaism takes place . . . a struggle between the value of the world of Torah and the Mitzvoth and the value of the declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen."[2]He personally was disappointed by the outcome of that struggle, but he did not blame the state for it.

The main features of Leibowitz's contribution to the debate over what should be the relationship between the state of Israel and the Jewish religion are these. First he argues that religious Jews should become clear about the character of their religiosity. He summarizes his views in the following way: "Judaism is a particular way of serving God and not any particular conception of man, of the world, or of history.... Judaism is a system of halakhic praxis, a program fixing detailed arrangements of the every day, and the effort to carry out this program is what constitutes faith. Love of God is but the observance of the Mitzvoth. Their justification is not national, and not moral and not social. Had the rationale of the mitzvoth been national welfare, fulfilling them would express love of Israel. Had it been moral, their observance would indicate the love of mankind. Had it been social, observing them would serve important human needs."[3]

Secondly, he claimed that historically only Judaism as constituted by halakhic praxis has determined Jewish identity and despite the fact that many, perhaps most, Jews today wish to be Jews without Judaism, Leibowitz believed that no plausible and honest account of how that is possible would be forthcoming. Thirdly, he was persistently concerned both to expose and to warn against the tendency to avodah zarah, to idolatry, amongst both his religious and non-religious fellow citizens.

Ever since the beginning of the Zionist movement there has been a debate over the place of religion in the constitution of Jewish identity and the relationship between Judaism and the Jewish State. This debate within Israel has at times been so bitter that many have expressed the fear that it could lead to a civil war. Leibowitz was never really a participant in that debate. For him, all states, even the Jewish state of Israel, are "essentially secular." This was not his struggle. His struggle was against many on either side in that debate. Thus most of the vociferous religious sects taking part in that debate are in his judgment, idolaters: They "have deified the nation, adopted patriotism as their faith and made the state their religion. Their concern is not with the Jewish people as (potentially or in actuality) the People of the Torah, but with the Torah as serving the interests of the nation and the state."[4]

Moreover, he believed that many of those who are religious and who are not idolaters have so compromised their religion in their pursuit of power in the Knesset and other corridors of power that they fell into the trap set for them by Ben Gurion who, Leibowitz claimed, once told him: "I will never agree to the separation of religion from the state. I want the state to hold religion in the palm of its hand."[5]This is the basis for Leibowitz's claim that "the status of religion in Israel is that of a kept mistress of the secular government."[6]

For these and other reasons he notes that "The state of Israel does not radiate the light of Judaism to the nations, not even to the Jews."[7]He also says, "I do not expect our state to be a light to all nations. It is not a light even to the people of Israel who walk in darkness."[8]These remarks may sound similar, but for Leibowitz their difference is important. Leibowitz had no sympathy for the wish that Israel should be "a light to all the nations." He insists that "The idea that the people of Israel have been endowed with a capacity for instructing and girding all of humanity has no basis in authentic Jewish sources.... This idea was fabricated by the heretics - from the Apostle Paul to Ben Gurion - who meant to cast off the yoke of the Torah by substituting for it a faith in an abstract 'vocation.' The Jewish people were not given a mission, they were rather charged with a task - the task of being servants of God."[9]

What Leibowitz wanted for Israel may be inferred from the following; "Instead of inciting the Jewish youngster in the Diaspora to rebel against his parents, instead of arousing a critical attitude towards them and himself and enlivening the implicit though barely conscious conflict over their Jewish identity, we come to his parents appealing for funds which become a surrogate for genuine participation in the life of Israel. And so, instead of a movement of rebellion in the interest of a renewal of Jewish life, Zionism and with it the state of Israel have become a tranquilizer relieving Jews of personal engagement with the problems of Jewish existence."[10]

That is the main reason why he argued for the separation of religion from the state: not so that religion may be, as it mostly is in Western countries, a private affair, but so that Judaism may regain the integrity necessary for it to participate in the struggle for authentic Jewish identity - and so that it may have the deserved authority to pronounce on and to judge the affairs of state.

Leibowitz's preoccupation with the tendency of religion to decline into idolatry, and with the disposition to idolatry - as treating as being of absolute religious value what is only of relative human value - even amongst those who are not religious - is at the center of his religious, moral, and political thought. Throughout his writings he insisted that applying the religious category of holiness to social, national, and political values and interests was idolatry, and in conjunction with it usually entered the following plea: "Abrogation of the distinctive religious category of holiness and imputation of sanctity to human functions and drives is one of the most vicious phenomena of our times, socially, educationally and morally."[11]

Leibowitz's stern criticism of the evils which he believed were the inevitable consequences of the Israeli occupation of the territories conquered in the Six Day War earned him bitter condemnation. The real character of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is, he claimed, distorted by talk of competing rights, even by talk of the conflict between claims of equal justice.

In the consciousness of a people, the tie binding it to its country is unconditioned and not defensible on legal grounds. By the same token it is equally impossible to justify on such grounds. For the people in question it is part of their reality. As such it is far more living and poignant than any legal bond or "right." The country we live in was in ancient times the land of the people of Israel. Even when, in the wake of destruction and exile, the people were physically severed from their country the nation continued to exist with its national consciousness. Jews whose national consciousness is still alive consider this country the "Land of Israel" even without regard to claims of right. No counterclaim can deprive them of this feeling. It is the same for the Arab inhabitants.[12]

Leibowitz believed that only "one way out of this historically created impasse is feasible . . . even if neither side recognizes it as justified or finds it really acceptable: partition of the country between the two peoples."[13]Leibowitz consistently claimed from the first day following the Six Day War till the day he died that Israel should unilaterally offer to withdraw from the occupied territories. This he claimed is a precondition for peace, but he was never under any illusion that it would immediately lead to a state of peace: peace, he said, is a "vision for the distant future." His main reason for calling for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territories was to end the corruption of Jewish life in Israel caused by the evils of occupation.

Jews both inside and outside of Israel often criticize non-Jews for what they (often rightly) judge to be their one-sided and hypocritical condemnation of Israel. Many of the same Jews say or imply that serious criticism of Israeli policies should be limited to Jewish circles. Then there are those Israeli Jews who claim that only Israelis have a right to criticize Israel. If this were to happen then Jews would speak of such matters to Jews, and Gentiles only to Gentiles, and in the extreme case Israeli Jews only with Israeli Jews. Perhaps we Israelis do not need discussion with non-Israeli Jews about Israeli affairs, but non-Israeli Jews and Gentiles need honest and forthright dialogue with us. If they do not get it, then they cannot fairly be criticized for lacking sobriety in their criticism of Israel, or with regard to the Gentiles for failing to understand the many dimensions of Jewish pain in the face of such criticism.

There has been Jewish pain in the face of such criticism, especially since the early 1970s when Western intellectuals ended their romance with Israel. It would, however, be a mistake to think that the deep sense among many Jews that serious criticism of Israel should remain amongst themselves is only an example of a familiar - if foolish and counterproductive - political tactic. It is sustained by a sense that in the final analysis we Jews are not answerable to the goyim. The gentile world has time and time again undermined its moral authority to hold the Jews, all the Jews, answerable for the crimes of the Jewish state. The centuries of persecution, the Holocaust, the resurgent anti-Semitism both in Europe and in other places, the crassly insensitive tendency to say that it is time to put the Holocaust behind us, the double standard deployed in the judgment of Israel and other nations - all these, and more, reinforce the suspicion Jews have of gentiles. Yet it is quite clear that Israel, being a member of the community of nations, is answerable to that community. And that fact alone, notwithstanding all the comprehensible and legitimate reasons for Jewish resentment, would be sufficient to answer the question: What right do the goyim (and non-Israeli Jews) have to involve themselves in the affairs of the Jewish state?

That, I think, is clear enough, but it is by no means the end of the matter. One does not always have the right or authority to say what one believes to be true even to those whom one (rightly) considers most in need of hearing it. I assume that to be uncontroversial, but there are deep difficulties about the nature and scope of the right or authority to speak, and these are felt by all attentive readers of Leibowitz's writings.

Consider for example his discussion of Jewish identity. This is some of what he wrote: "The distinctiveness of the Jewish people as a historic national entity began to be blurred some 200 years ago. Until then a Jew who cast off the yoke of the Torah and Mitzvoth usually recognized that he thereby loosened his ties with the Jewish people. The innovation of recent generations is the phenomenon of Jews - a great number of them and today the vast majority of those considered Jews - who have abandoned the Jewish way of life without severing themselves from their people. There is no authentic 'Jewish' content to their lives which might distinguish them from Gentiles. Nevertheless, they continue to regard themselves as Jews and to be regarded as such by others."[14]

Now it is clear to anyone who reads this, Jews and gentiles alike, that what Leibowitz says is far from definitive. Much could be said in response to it, much in the tone of protest - that the issue is not so simple, that considerations have been left out, that distinctions have failed to be acknowledged, or not acknowledged at all. And so on. That is surely fair. But the problem of what to make of such protest remains. Which distinctions are to be drawn? Which would clarify and which would obscure?

The answers to these questions depend on one's sense of what kind of discussion one is a part of. Treat what Leibowitz says as a sketchy scholarly account, universal in its address, and one response will be appropriate. Treat it as a call to sobriety and honesty by one Jew to his fellow Jews and another response will be appropriate. It is quite clear to me that Leibowitz thought that one should do the latter. Consider a remark I have heard Amos Oz make in response to the question "Who is a Jew?" He says, "Whoever wants to be a Jew is a Jew. Anyone in this day and age who is crazy enough to call himself a Jew is a Jew by definition." This is clearly silly, as silly as to say that one is a Jew if one feels like a Jew, or that one is a Jew because one likes gefilte fish. All these assertions deny that in claiming to be a Jew one is answerable to the kind of challenge put by Leibowitz: that one may need to explain, if only to oneself, with what right one calls oneself a Jew, or to answer to the professed content of one's feelings for the thoughts and beliefs which give them character and identity and which determine whether they are shallow (even if intense) or deep. All this is obvious. But the fact that someone as intelligent and as informed as Amos Oz could say what he did shows that something is surely fundamentally wrong with the discussion of Jewish identity.

But both Jews and Gentiles take heed. Part of what needs to be taken into account when judging the seriousness of a discussion is that what counts changes over time. Today there can be no discussion of Jewish identity which ignores the effect of persecution and, of course, of the Holocaust. And there can be no discussion of Jewish persecution in general and of the Holocaust in particular without truthful and painful speaking about the corrupt and opportunistic ways in which these have been used in the service of more than one Jewish political cause. But to point that out is something only for a Jew to say. A gentile may think it but if he or she is sensitive he or she will realize that it is a discussion which they have no right or authority to take part in. This is a view in which I am sure Leibowitz would have concurred.

Leibowitz was not a consistent thinker, though always a provocative one. His view of ethics is troubling. Utilitarianism, for example, is an ethic; no one, not even Leibowitz would deny that, but utilitarianism does not regard man as "the supreme end and value." And there are other ethical theories which also do not. Leibowitz makes no mention of any of them. He says that there are only two forms of morality: "Morality as guidance of man's will in accordance with nature and of himself (the stoics, Spinoza), or [morality] in accordance with what the individual considers his duty towards man as an end-in-himself (Kant)."[15]It is only the second, the Kantian conception which Leibowitz takes seriously. However he claims of it that it deifies man. Against the claim that human beings are ends in themselves, he says repeatedly that they have "no intrinsic significance."[16]Why, then, does he not say that from a religious point of view only a religiously informed or religiously grounded ethic can express a conception of the absolute which is not counterfeit?

"Absolute" is a tricky term and one with which to make mischief. Leibowitz often uses it to refer to a standard by which to judge everything else. That is a legitimate use of the term, but it obscures rather than clarifies what is at issue in this discussion, for according to it a hedonist treats pleasure as of absolute value. But no one would on that account wish to say that hedonists possessed an absolute conception of value. So much I think is clear, but it is no easy matter to move forward. If, however, one wished to give examples of philosophers who expressed the latter sense of absolute value, then Plato and Kant would be clear contenders, whereas Bentham and Protagoras would not. I assume that it is for that reason that Kant is Leibowitz's favored idolater. But why does he not then say that the sense in which Kant's ethic expresses a conception of absolute value is a sense which requires religious underpinning? Or, more generally, that anything which is worthy of the label "absolute ethic" depends on religious grounding? It is hard to answer on his behalf, but I think he would have claimed that ethics is inescapably connected with human needs, desires, and interests, whereas religion worthy of that name is not. I think what he was after was an ethic whose character was determined by religion, as distinct from a religious duty to obey an ethic whose character was determined independently of religion. That would be an ethic of an anthropocentric religion, that is, of a religion unworthy of the name.

In terms of values, I am familiar with two basic conceptions of man's essential nature. Both are legitimate, though they differ greatly from each other. One is the theocentric view embodied in the Judaism of the Torah, as expressed in the opening paragraph of the Shul Khan Arakh: "Gird up your strength like a lion to rise in the morning for the service of your creator." Not, mind you, to serve man, reform society, redeem humanity, but to serve God. This is the entire meaning of Judaism, of the Torah, and Mitzvoth. It is not mere chance that the supreme symbol of faith in Judaism is the sacrifice of Isaac: "Take your son your favored one whom you love and offer him there as a burnt offering ... so early next morning Abraham saddled his ass, and took the firestone and the knife and his son Isaac. And the two of them walked on together." Because of this deed alone it was said that Abraham was a God-fearing man: that is to say, he suspended all human values for the sake of the service of God. A second axiological conception is the anthropocentric one: the view of man as pivotal. In effect this is a view of man as God, and this is Kant's great idea - man as an end in himself. It is the ultimate logical consequence of atheism. Both conceptions are legitimate; the theocentric conception represented by the Judaism of the Torah, and the anthropocentric concept embodied in the highest form in the philosophy of Kant, and, less authentically, in Christianity. But there is a third conception, one that is vicious and despicable. In it man is judged from the standpoint of a deified collective, not in respect of his position before God, or of his intrinsic worth. This is the ethnocentric view which regards as central a particular human collective, a people or a race rather than God or man. The idea has generated much evil and has been the source of great calamities. I am afraid that those who honestly cling to their relationship to the historic chain of the Jewish people, who hope it will be continued and look upon themselves as a link in the chain even though they have become alienated from the theocentric core of Judaism, unwittingly assume this ethnocentric position.[17]

This passage has led some to think that Leibowitz's criticism of Israeli injustices in the territories divides between this religious criticism of Jews who have unwittingly (and sometimes wittingly) assumed the ethnocentric position, and his moral criticism of the injustices they have committed because of it, a moral criticism whose character and tone is uninformed by his religiosity. There are passages in his writings where Leibowitz comes close to saying something like this himself. However to the best of my knowledge he never says this precisely. It is important when reading the cited passage and others similar to it to pay attention to their tone, and if this is done what is clear is that Leibowitz is drawing attention to the tensions between morality and religion.

A religious duty to be moral cannot be an occasional duty nor can it also be a religious duty to violate morality. If that is true or if only the former is true, then the connection between morality and religion would be closer than Leibowitz allows. If the religious duty to be moral cannot be an occasional duty, then the suspicion arises that "cannot" marks a conceptual connection between religion "worthy of the name" and morality.

Leibowitz wrote time after time that from the theocentric religious point of view human beings have no "special significance." He wrote that "if religion has a function it is to place man's limited values in perspective."[18]One way in which we reveal our sense of the "significance" of human beings is in our understanding of what it means to wrong them - in our understanding of the very particular way that murder and torture, for example, are terrible.

Leibowitz argues that "From the standpoint of Judaism man as such has no intrinsic value. He is an image of God, and only as such does he possess special significance."[19]Yet his willingness to face the conundrums of good and evil led him to claim that "Those who would ground morality on the image of God in man may remember that Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann were created in God's image like you and me, and also every rapist and murderer as well as the most righteous of men. The ultimate message of the Day of Atonement, is that man, as such, has no intrinsic value; he acquires value insofar as he stands before God.... Man - any man - is by nature beast-like; it is only the service of God that raises him from nullity to significance and confers value upon him."[20]The first part of this passage seems to say that even Hitler and Eichmann constitute that kind of limit to our moral will, are owed that kind of respect, whose character is conditioned by the fact that all human beings are created in God's image. But the latter part of the passage appears to deny it and to claim instead that only those whose acts are intentionally in the service of God are raised from "nullity" and have value. But that is a wicked conclusion and cannot be what he means. It is unfortunate that Leibowitz should express himself so carelessly on a matter of such importance.

A similar difficulty affects his discussion of the story of Abraham and Isaac. He says that Abraham "suspended all human values for the sake of the service of God."[21]This is paralleled by his comment that "Faith requires one to subdue his inclinations,"[22]which is reinforced with almost Nietzschean hubris: "The highest symbol of Jewish faith is the stance of Abraham on Mount Moriah, where all human values were annulled and overridden by fear and love of God.... The Aqedah is man's absolute mastery over his own nature - this nature includes all the benevolent sentiments as well as man's conscience; all the actors in man's make up which an atheistic humanism regards as 'good.' It was Abraham who first burst the bounds of the universal human bondage - the bondage of man to the forces of his own nature.'"[23]

These quotations reveal quite clearly that when Leibowitz spoke of Abraham "overcoming human values," he spoke indiscriminately of, on the one hand, human desires, attachments, and longings - everything in fact which Kant referred to as inclination - and, on the other hand, moral values. Indeed that such a homogenization of "human values" occurs in the perspective of religion seems exactly to be his point. But, while it makes sense to speak of forgoing or renouncing our longings and attachments, it makes dubious, if any, sense to speak of forgoing the requirements of morality.

The difficulty in the story of Abraham can be brought out this way. We cannot conceive that anyone who would try to do anything like what Abraham was prepared to do would for us be an exemplar of faith and love of God. Such a person we would say deserved to be locked up. This is not because we do not know what in our society would count as "sacrifice," that is what today would count as "doing, or being prepared to do the same thing" as Abraham did or was prepared to do. Our central difficulty is that we cannot look on murder, rape, and torture as acts which could truly be "for the sake of God" or "for the sake of Heaven." Now if we cannot conceive this - if it is part of our understanding of what it is for an act truly to be "for the sake of God" or "for the sake of Heaven" that we cannot conceive it - then the talk of abrogating all human values including the value of conscience is just rhetoric, empty rhetoric. On this view, someone like Yigal Amir who believes that murder can be done for the sake of God must be mistaken.

For that reason the story of Abraham differs markedly from the story of Job. But for Leibowitz, "The trial of Job is a duplicate trial of Abraham; both stories seek to teach the meaning of the fear of God."[24]The lesson of Job for Leibowitz is that Job comes to love the world as God's creation and stands fast in his love of God irrespective of what happens in the world. After God speaks to him from the whirlwind, Job's love of God is no longer provisional on his approval of God's management of the universe; his is no longer the kind of religiosity which is often expressed when people speak of "the problem of evil." This gives substance to much of Leibowitz's talk of a theocentric religion, of a religion which is not the servant of human needs. But it gives no support to the Nietzchean hubris which characterize some of his remarks. And whatever polemical point may be achieved by saying that religion does not serve human interests and needs, it is likely to be undermined if one takes that to mean that religion may be indifferent to human needs, human suffering, and human fears. A religion "worthy of the name" will offer a deepened perspective on them. Yet, paradoxically, Leibowitz is aware of this point and the power of his best religious writings depends on it: "The religion of Halakhah is concerned with man and addresses him in his drab day to day existence. The Mitzvoth are a norm for the prosaic life that constitute the true and enduring condition of man. . . . Resting religions on Halakhah assigns to it the prosaic aspects of life and therein lies its great strength. Only a religion addressed to life's prose, a religion of the dull routine of daily activity is worthy of the name - the fundamental and enduring aspects of human existence are in life's prose and not in its poetry."[25]

Now listen to him on prayer: "The concept of prayer has two different meanings: first, prayer in the sense of 'a prayer of the afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before God' (Ps 102:1); second, prayer as defined in the prayer book, which is more constitutive of Judaism than the Bible, since the latter was adopted by a large proportion of humanity who did not embrace Judaism." The prayer book "does not express the spontaneous outpourings of the soul. It contains a text of fixed prayer, imposed on one as a duty and not conditioned by his spiritual needs or by his feelings. The same eighteen benedictions are recited by the bridegroom before his wedding ceremony, the widower returning from the funeral of his wife, and the father who has buried his only son. Recitation of the identical set of psalms is the daily duty of the person enjoying the beauties and bounties of this world and the one whose world has collapsed. The same supplications are prescribed for those who feel the need for them and those who do not."[26]The psychological phenomenon of the soul's overflow is religiously irrelevant. That prayer is great when a person views a work and prays "regardless of whether or not it suits his taste. Everyone is capable of reciting verses of praise when in good spirits. To utter many Hallelujahs when one finds no joy in nature or in life is the act of a truly religious person, committed to prayer imprinted with the stamp of the sages."[27]

These are wonderful examples of what Leibowitz means by "religion worthy of the name." Passages such as these, rather than definitions or his misleading philosophical explanations, best reveal why he says that true religion is theocentric. But they do not reveal that it is accidental to religion that it should illuminate rather than turn away from human life: that it should deepen rather than cheapen our understanding of our needs, fears, joys, and woes. The point is beautifully made by Simone Weil:

The soul's attitude towards God is not a thing that can be verified, even by the soul itself, because God is elsewhere, in heaven, in secret. If one thinks to have verified it, there is really some earthly thing masquerading under the label of God. One can only verify whether the behavior of the soul as regards this world hears the mark of an experience of God. . . . It is not the way a man talks about God, but the way he talks about the world that best shows whether his soul has passed through the fire of the love of God. . . . If I light an electric torch at night out of doors I don't judge its power by looking at the bulb, but by seeing how many objects it lights up. The brightness of a source of light is appreciated by the illumination it projects upon non-luminous objects. The value of a religious, or more generally a spiritual, way of life is appreciated by the amount of illumination thrown upon things of this word. Earthly things are the criterion of spiritual things. . . . If on the pretext that only spiritual things are of value, we refuse to take the light thrown on earthly things as a criterion, then we are in danger of having a non-existent treasure. Only spiritual things are of value, but only physical things have a verifiable existence. Therefore the value of the former can only be verified as an illumination projected on the latter. . . . If a man took my left-hand glove, passed it behind his back and returned it to me as a right-hand glove, I should know that he had access to the fourth dimension. No other proof is possible. In the same way, if a man gives bread to a beggar in a certain way or speaks in a certain way about a defeated army I know that his thought has been outside this world and sat with the Father who is in Heaven.[28]

It was the way Leibowitz spoke and wrote of the injustices performed by those he called his people, and of the suffering of those who were not his people, which shows how fully religion informed his life and thought, and which makes it very moving.

[1]Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, translated by Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

[2]Ibid., pp. 193-194.

[3]Ibid., p. 73.

[4]Ibid., p.150.

[5]Ibid., p.115.

[6]Ibid., p.115.

[7]Ibid., p.115.

[8]Ibid., p.118.

[9]Ibid., p.108.

[10]Ibid., p. 201.

[11]Ibid., p. 176.

[12]Ibid., p. 212.

[13]Ibid., p. 235.

[14]Ibid., p. 83.

[15]Ibid., p. 6.

[16]Ibid., p. 90.

[17]Ibid., pp. 208-209.

[18]Ibid., p. 210.

[19]Ibid., p. 90.

[20]Ibid., p. 107.

[21]Ibid., p. 42.

[22]Ibid., p. 43.

[23]Ibid., p. 14.

[24]Ibid., p. 49.

[25]Ibid., pp. 11-12.

[26]Ibid., p. 16.

[27]Ibid., p. 17.

[28]Quoted by J.J. Holmes in The Efficacy of Religion (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1975), p. 92.