Yehuda Liebes

Liebes angered National Religious Jews in Israel when he claimed to find a Christian allusion in the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. Liebes asserted that the conclusion of the 14th blessing, "keren yeshua" ("horn of salvation") refers not to David, but to Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew).

Challenging the traditional ascription of the Zohar to the 2nd-century disciples of Shimon bar Yochai in Israel, Liebes asserts that a group of 13th-century Spanish Kabbalists, which included Moses de León, composed the work, each reflecting his own approach to Kabbalah. Liebes claims that the Ketem Paz on the Zohar and the Kabbalistic hymn Bar Yochai were written by two different authors with similar names, not the one Shimon Lavi who is traditionally credited with authoring both works. Liebes also finds Christian and Sabbatean inspiration in the ideas of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and, at the same time, Sabbatean influences on the disciples of the Vilna Gaon who opposed Hasidism.

Liebes received the 1997 Bialik Prize for his book The Secret of the Sabbatean Faith (1995). In 1999 he received the Peace Prize for the study of Kabbalah and the Gershom Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research. He was awarded the 2006 EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture, in the category of Humanities, for his work on Sabbateanism. In 2017 he received the Israel Prize for his work on Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism.

Liebes and his wife, Dr. Esther Liebes, have three children. In 1977, after he completed his doctorate, they joined the nucleus of the new Israeli settlement of Shilo in the West Bank, living in a caravan near Ofra, but left after nine months. The couple resides in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem. Esther, a scholar of Hasidism, formerly worked as the director of the Gershom Scholem Collection for Kabbalah and Hasidism at the National Library of Israel. She edited some of the works of Gershom Scholem.

Liebes began lecturing in the Hebrew University's Department of Jewish Thought in 1971. He became a full professor in 1993. His course subjects include Kabbalah, Jewish myth, and the Zohar. He has also taught on Zohar at the University of Chicago.

In 1967, Liebes began his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees, he pursued his doctoral research under Scholem. Scholem gave Liebes access to handwritten note cards he had prepared for a lexicon of Zohar terminology that he never wrote, and Liebes submitted his dissertation on Peraḳim be-milon sefer ha-Zohar (Chapters in the Dictionary of the Book of the Zohar) (1976).

Liebes graduated from the Hebrew University Secondary School. In 1965, he enlisted in the Paratroopers Brigade for his compulsory army service, and in 1967, served in the Six-Day War as a non-commissioned officer. During reserve duty in 1969, he was injured during a Palestinian attack on his post in the Jordan Valley, lost several teeth, and was hospitalized for several months.

Yehuda Liebes (Hebrew: יהודה ליבס; born 1947) is an Israeli academic and scholar. He is the Gershom Scholem Professor Emeritus of Kabbalah at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is considered a leading scholar of Kabbalah; his other research interests include Jewish myth, Sabbateanism, and the links between Judaism and ancient Greek religion, Christianity, and Islam. He is the recipient of the 1997 Bialik Prize, the 1999 Gershom Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research, the 2006 EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture, and the 2017 Israel Prize in Jewish thought.

Yehuda Liebes was born in Jerusalem. His father, Joseph Gerhard Liebes (1910–1988), a noted Hebrew translator of classic literature, left his native Germany at the age of 18 to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He returned to his homeland to continue his education, but was expelled from his university due to the Nuremberg Laws. He then undertook agricultural training in Latvia with a Zionist movement. There he married his first wife, with whom he settled in Pardes Hanna in Mandatory Palestine and had two daughters before they divorced. In 1941 Liebes married his second wife, Mira, a native of Riga who had grown up in Berlin. They had two children, a daughter (Tamar, today head of the Department of Communications at Hebrew University) and a son (Yehuda). On his mother's side, Liebes was a cousin of Israeli intellectual Yeshayahu Leibowitz.