A Clearly Democratic Religious-Zionist Philosophy: The Early Thought of Yeshayahu Leibowitz

Abstract

In his early teaching, from the 1920s through the 1950s, Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903Leibowitz ( -1994 stands out as one of the most fascinating religious Zionist thinkers. He strives to establish a Jewish democratic state whose democratic aspects will be channeled toward the establishment of an exemplary society, one that can express its religious roots within a modern democratic context.Leibowitz thus attaches enormous importance to democracy in terms of both its political components and its modern Orthodox aspirations. In this respect, he is the most radical spokesman of the Neo-Orthodox notion of Torah with Derekh Eretz, as translated into religious-Zionist terms.

Post-Enlightenment of Leibowitz and al-Jaberi: Philosophy and Religion

“…In comparison with the other voices within Jewish and Israeli Maimonideanism (Robinson 2009),5 Leibowitz's Maimonidean thought is considered one of the most articulate and coherent religious philosophies with a significant social and political output (Rechnitzer 2008). The latter aspect is more salient in his philosophical conceptualisation of faith as commandment and idolatry expressed in his reading of Maimonides's Mishneh Torah and the Guide after his intellectual ideological shift from being a religious-Zionist to becoming a radical critic of it in the 1960s (Hellinger 2008). As we shall see below, Leibowitz's theoretical approach should be seen in conjunction with his social and political views as an active public intellectual and educator.…”