Yeshayahu Leibowitz (Hebrew: ישעיהו ליבוביץ‎; 29 January 1903 – 18 August 1994) was an Israeli anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish public intellectual and polymath.

He was a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as a prolific writer on Jewish thought and western philosophy.

Leibowitz cautioned that the state of Israel and Zionism had become more sacred than Jewish humanist values and went on to describe Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors.

[3][4] His son Elia was chairman of the Tel Aviv University astrophysics department, and the longest-serving director of the Wise Observatory.

Apart from his innumerable articles and essays, Leibowitz authored a wide range of books on philosophy, human values, Jewish thought, the teachings of Maimonides, and politics.

Many of his lectures and discourses, including those given as part of the "Broadcast University" project run by Israeli Army Radio, were subsequently compiled and printed in book form.

He maintained that the reasons for religious commandments were beyond man's understanding, as well as irrelevant, and any attempt to attribute emotional significance to the performance of mitzvot was misguided and akin to idolatry.

He did not see Torah as an account of historical and scientific truths, but rather as the source of the mitzvot or commandments on how Jews are to serve God.

[8][10] One result of this approach is that faith, which is a personal commitment to obey God, cannot be challenged by the usual philosophical problem of evil or by historical events that seemingly contradict a divine presence.

[12] He viewed the Holocaust as having no Jewish religious significance, as such a belief would contradict his ideas of God having no involvement in human affairs.

[6] He was critical of Reform Judaism, calling it a "historical distortion of the Jewish religion", as well as Kabbalah, seeing them as encouraging people to not perform mitzvot for their own sake but ascribing a stated purpose to them.

He rebuked the concept of Tikkun olam, a Kabbalistic idea which remains popular in Reform Judaism as a basis for supporting social justice.

He viewed the expectations of a literal Messianic Age as blurring the line between "religious faith aimed at the service of God and psychological yearnings for the satisfaction of human aspirations.

[19] Although Leibowitz was a Zionist and Israeli patriot, in his later years he did not support Zionism for religious reasons but rather as an "endeavor to liberate Jews from being ruled by the Gentiles."

In line with his view that holiness was totally separate from the material world, Leibowitz denied that the Land of Israel was holy and that the Jews had a special right to it, writing that "the idea that a specific country or location has an intrinsic 'holiness' is an indubitably idolatrous idea" and that "talk of rights is pure nonsense.

In the 1949 Knesset election, Leibowitz headed the United List of Religious Workers, which failed to win a seat.

[20][8][17][21] He was among the first Israeli intellectuals to state immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War that if the occupation continued, this would lead to the decline in moral stature.

In a 1968 essay titled "The Territories", Leibowitz postulated a hellish future: The Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police—mainly secret police.

[23]During the Mossad's killing of the Palestinian and Arab figures after the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes in September 1972 Leibowitz declared in a public speech at Beersheba University the following view: "Whoever condemns the terrorism of the Palestinian organizations must at the same time condemn the terrorism of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

[8] He repeatedly called for Israelis to refuse to serve in the occupied territories, and warned that Israel was turning its soldiers into "Judeo-Nazis", writing that if "the law .