Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Torah from Sinai as a Normative Statement

[1] For broader discussion of similarities and differences between Soloveitchik’s and Leibowitz’s approach to Scripture, see Avi Sagi, “Contending with Modernity: Scripture in the Thought of Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Joseph Soloveitchik”, The Journal of Religion, vol. 77:3 (July 1997), pp. 421-441.

[2] See below, n.8

[3]  Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “Faith, Religion and Science” (Heb.), in Yahadut, Am Yehudi u-Medinat Yisrael (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1976), p. 347.

[4] Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “Faith, Religion and Science”, pp. 348-350.  For further exposition of this position, see Avi Sagi: Leibowitz, “A Breakthrough in Jewish Philosophy: Religion without Metaphysics”, Religious Studies 33 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.203-216.  See also Gilad Bareli’s formulation in his essay: “Faith and Mitzvot: ‘The Content contains no more than what is embodied in its shell’: Leibowitz’s and Witgenstein’s content-laden shells” (Hebrew), in Y. Leibowitz: Bein Shamranut le-Radicaliyyut- Diyunim beMishnato, ed A. Ravitzky (Jerusalem, Van Leer/Hakibbutz ha-Meuhad, 2007), pp. 275-276:

“On the one hand the religious Jew accepts the mitzvot as the mitzvot of God and accepts the yoke of the Torah as the word of God. On the other hand, he knows that thesemitzvot and this word are human creations set down at a certain place and time. Is this not a contradiction?… [No.] The “word of God” does not point to a fact; it points to a special category of awareness on the part of the believer. To see a certain matter as the word of God is to maintain that it possesses a special status in the consciousness of the believer … in terms of his attitude to the world and to humanity and to fashioning his mode of life” (trans. Lawrence Kaplan, on Allan Brill’s blogsite, Feb. 11^th, 2003;http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/conversation-with-james-kugel-a-follow-up/#comment-7550).

[5] As aptly formulated by Sagi, “Yeshayahu Leibowitz – A Breakthrough in Jewish Philosophy,” (ibid), p. 213.

[6] Taken from a lecture of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “Religion and Science”, that was translated into English, , in Judaism, Human Values, and the State of Israel, edited and translated by Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 140.  For a similar formulation, see: Leibowitz, “Faith, Religion and Science”, pp. 340-341

[7]  Sagi, “Yeshayahu Leibowitz – A Breakthrough in Jewish Philosophy”, p. 213.  Is Leibowitz claiming that the Torah’s mythological phraseology was adopted at the outset with this anti-metaphysical understanding in mind?  To the best of my knowledge, Leibowitz reveals no interest in this question.

[8]  The degree of reliability Leibowitz attached to the biblical account of the Sinai event, beyond its theocentric import, is not clear.  According to Yaakov Levinger’s testimony, as reported by Avi Sagi in “Dat le-lo Metaphysica? Bein Leibowitz le-Wittgenstein”, in Mahshavot 67, April 1995, p. 9 (Hebrew),   Leibowitz’s  somewhat circumspect response to that question was that if the significance of the Sinai revelation lay in the event itself, it failed. Biblical history teaches that there is no correlation between God’s revelation and intervention in Jewish history affairs on one hand and the willingness of the Jewish people to believe in and worship God on the other.  Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran (see The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books, p. 433), however, suggest that,

“it would be a mistake to think that Leibowitz ascribed  no value to the veracity of the historical description in the Bible… in particular formative events such as the Exodus from Egypt and the theophany on Mt. Sinai… His writings show that he also considered these as historical events not only because the Oral Law views them as such, but also because their veracity is self-evident.”

Barring the unlikely possibility that Leibowitz couched his language esoterically when necessitated by the nature of his audience (similar to the policy attributed by Leo Strauss to Maimonides), this suggestion appears to be corroborated by Leibowitz’s a-historical attitude regarding some laws of biblical origin (see Tamar Ross, “The Status of Woman in Judaism: Several Reservations Regarding the Stance of Leibowitz” [Hebrew], in Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Olamo ve-Haguoto, edited by Avi Sagi [Jerusalem: Keter, 1995], pp. 151). It is further corroborated by his dismissive remarks regarding “heretical scientific and pseudo-scientific biblical research, better known as ‘biblical criticism’, when considering suggestions of post-Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy (see his Sheva Shanim shel Sikhot al Parshat ha-Shavua – 1976-1983, edited by Mira Ofran [Jerusalem: Dvus Hemed, 2003], pp. 827-828). These examples, as others, indicate that Leibowitz’s naturalistic view of revelation is more accurately attributed to his affinity with Maimonidian theology (see Guide of the Perplexed, II,32), according to which prophecy reflects some genuine, man-initiated absorption of the eternal divine effluence, than to the influence of modern biblical scholarship and its critical methods.

[9] It is this insistence upon God’s utter “Otherness” that leads to Leibowitz’s radical emphasis upon theocentrism – i.e., that all religious worship must be conducted “lishmah” (for its own sake, without any ulterior motive).  Any introduction of human considerations is a form of idolatry, in Leibowitz’s view, reducing God to the image of man by applying categories drawn from human experience to the divine.