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1. In an eightieth birthdaytribute to Leibowitz published in Hebrew translation as “TheConscience of Israel” in the newspaperHa’aretz, 4 March 1983, 18.

2. SeeSihot,54. Leibowitz states here that he believed Levinas’ work wassignificantly shaped by his Judaism, as much in his general philosophyas in his Jewish writings.

3. These remarks onlyappear in the original Hebrew version of thispiece—“Mitzvot Ma’asiyot,” inTorahu-Mitzvot. Though I have generally tried to refer to the Englishtranslations fromJudaism throughout, on the few occasionswhen quotations from Leibowitz’s Hebrew texts are required, thetranslations are my own.

4. This comparison assumesSteven Nadler’s view that Spinoza’s pantheism is reductive and thus“extensionally equivalent to atheism,” Nadler 2006,119. Notably, this is a point that Leibowitz himself often makes,defining atheism as the view that “the world is the totality ofbeing, or, in other words, that it is God” (Accepting theYoke, 14).

5. While, as we will seepresently, parallels are often drawn between elements of Leibowitz’sthought and that of Kant, here it is notable just how closelyLeibowitz’s ideas parallel those of the Neo-Kantian Jewish thinkerHermann Cohen, for whom the uniqueness of God is described in terms ofhis nonsensible "being," which is to be sharply distinguished from"existence," which is "attested by the senses" (Cohen, 1919,44). God’s being, moreover, "does not admit any mixture, anyconnection with sensible existence," (ibid., 44-45), and toconnect the two in any manner similarly leads directly to pantheismaccording to Cohen.

6. The Temple, for example,does not have any intrinsic property ofholiness—“holiness” is a function of religious actsas we will see, and does not exist independently of thoseactions. Only activity directed to God is holy and the holiness of theTemple thus consists only of the holy actions performedthere. SeeJudaism, 46–47.

7. Hanoch Ben-Pazi, however, hasattempted to argue that despite Leibowitz’s explicit statements tothe contrary, whether consciously or not the holocaust is in factfoundational to his thought. Indeed, it is the prime motivation forhis complete elimination of God from history, which is based on the"crisis of faith" engendered by the sheer impossibility of anytheodic reconciliation between traditional conceptions of God and anevil of such magnitude. (See Ben-Pazi 2008).

8.See for examplehis statement at the beginning of “Lishmah andNot-Lishmah,” inJudaism, 61–78.

9. Additional reasons forLeibowitz’s denial that the Torah is a work that contains cognitiveinformation are detailed in Sagi 1997, 432ff. A more wide ranging discussion of arguments against reading science into the opening chapters of Genesis that includes consideration of a Leibowitzian position can be found in Shatz 2008.

10.Of the varioussources of rabbinic authority in the Torah, the most oft cited isDeuteronomy 17: 8–11, which tells of coming for judgment to the“priests, the Levites and the judge that shall be in thosedays,” and to not deviate from their judgment. Rabbinicinterpretation and comment on this is voluminous. Particularly relevantto this discussion is Moses Maimonides,Mishneh Torah,“Laws of Rebels,” 1: 1–2.

11. For example,“Theacceptance of the yoke of Torah and Mitzvoth isthe love of God, and it is this thatconstitutes faith inGod.” (Judaism, 44–45, emphasis added).

12.Leibowitz doesnote the possibility of exceptions where individuals arrive at practicebased on “faith,” rather than practice, though he believesthat it must indicate a prior religious propensity. SeeJudaism, 7. The phenomenon within Judaism ofBa’alei Teshuvah—the term used to describe Jewswho decide to turn to Jewish practice without having been practitionersto that point, might fall into this category for him.

13.Unsurprisingly given the foregoing discussion, there are those seeLeibowitz as suggesting a Kierkegaardian “leap of faith”type of theology – or non-theology – albeit one where theleap is taken retrospectively, consequent to the very practices thatconstitute it, by which time whatever independent specification oneattempts to give of faith ends up either transgressing boundaries thatLeibowitzian transcendence sets on language and thought, or collapsingback into talk of commitment to the practice. The Kierkegaardianallusion here is one to which we will return.

14.See,for example,Judaism, 20 and 22 for the view that suchworship is idolatrous. In contrast,Judaism, 40 and 66speak of it as permitted.

15.Interestingly, Levinas here may split the difference between Kantand Leibowitz, agreeing with the former that ethics is a form ofcontact with the noumenal, but agreeing with Leibowitz that it is not adeliverance of practical reason. See Fagenblat 2004 for furtherdiscussion of these issues.

16. A further stickingpoint here will also be how one understands “rationality.”Brafman 2105 touches on many of these criticisms.