{"id":27641,"date":"2015-12-15T06:25:55","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T12:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=27641"},"modified":"2015-12-15T07:53:43","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T13:53:43","slug":"3-centuries-after-excommunication-is-it-time-to-lift-ban-on-spinoza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/3-centuries-after-excommunication-is-it-time-to-lift-ban-on-spinoza\/","title":{"rendered":"3 centuries after excommunication, is it time to lift ban on Spinoza?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ<\/p>\n<p>AMSTERDAM (JTA) \u2013 More than 350 years after this city&#8217;s Portuguese Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and banned his writings for eternity, the philosopher&#8217;s books are for sale at the souvenir shop of the community&#8217;s synagogue.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_27643\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27643\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-27643 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3-300x210.jpg\" alt=\"Circa 1660, Dutch philosopher Benedicto De Spinoza (1632 - 1677). (Photo by Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3.jpg 1000w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/210;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27643\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-27643\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3-300x210.jpg\" alt=\"Circa 1660, Dutch philosopher Benedicto De Spinoza (1632 - 1677). (Photo by Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3-300x210.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza3.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-27643\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Circa 1660, Dutch philosopher Benedicto De Spinoza (1632 &#8211; 1677). (Photo by Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Spinoza, a Dutch-born Jewish philosopher who laid the intellectual foundations of the Enlightenment and is sometimes referred to as history&#8217;s first secular Jew, was banished by Amsterdam&#8217;s Portuguese Jews in 1656 for heresy. The fact that his works are now being sold by the very community from which he was once ostracized is cited by some as evidence that the ban is effectively no longer operative.<\/p>\n<p>But to the philosopher&#8217;s admirers, the fact that it was never formally rescinded remains a blot on the community and reinforces Spinoza&#8217;s view that Judaism is\u00a0a narrow-minded, dogmatic faith.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why hundreds of them gathered here Sunday for a landmark debate on whether to formally lift the ban and, perhaps, even effect Spinoza\u2019s symbolic rehabilitation into the fold of the Jewish people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis ideas are a part of Dutch heritage,\u201d said Ronit Palache, a secular Dutch Jew in her 30s and self-described Spinoza aficionado who organized the symposium. \u201cThe time to lift the ban is long overdue. It\u2019s in a way a black mark on Jewish history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The symposium, a sold-out event that featured an address by the head of the Dutch Portuguese Jewish community and leading Spinoza scholars from four continents, offered a rare glimpse of the original writ, which is held in the community&#8217;s library. An unusually long and vicious text, the writ of banishment \u2013 &#8220;herem&#8221; in Hebrew \u2013 was read aloud in Portuguese, its citation of unspecified \u201cevil opinions and acts\u201d followed by a string of curses against Spinoza, who was then just 24 years old.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_27645\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27645\" class=\"wp-image-27645 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"spinoza2\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2-1024x675.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2.jpg 1760w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/198;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27645\" class=\"wp-image-27645 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"spinoza2\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2-1024x675.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza2.jpg 1760w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-27645\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Attendees at an Amsterdam symposium on whether to lift the ancient order of excommunication against the philosopher Baruch Spinoza examining a copy of the original writ against him, Dec. 6, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cCursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in,\u201d it reads, adding: \u201cThe Lord will not spare him, but the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man \u2026 [and] blot out his name from under heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following the ban &#8212; as well as an assassination attempt by a knife-wielding Jewish fanatic outside the synagogue &#8212; Spinoza left his native Amsterdam and the Jewish community. Devoting his life to the study of optics and the development of his philosophy, he published his magnum opus \u201cEthics\u201d in 1677, the year of his death from lung disease at 44. Spinoza was buried in a churchyard in The Hague.<\/p>\n<p>Why Spinoza was so passionately detested is a matter of some speculation, said Steven Nadler, an American professor of history at the University of Wisconsin and an international authority on Spinoza. The herem document does not specify Spinoza&#8217;s &#8220;evil&#8221; actions, but Nadler believes it derives from several of his assertions, including that God does not exist, the Jews are not a chosen people and the Hebrew Bible has no divine provenance.<\/p>\n<p>Spinoza elaborated these ideas in \u201cEthics\u201d and other writings, where he argued that Judaism and its scriptures were manmade constructs intended to exert control over the ancient Israelites. His criticisms were later seized upon by Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel in some of their anti-Semitic writings.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_27646\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27646\" class=\"wp-image-27646 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"spinoza\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza-1024x676.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza.jpg 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/198;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-27646\" class=\"wp-image-27646 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza-300x198.jpg\" alt=\"spinoza\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza-1024x676.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/spinoza.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-27646\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dutch Portuguese Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo arguing for the lifting of the ban on Baruch Spinoza, Dec. 6, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>At the symposium, Nadler argued that herem was imposed for Spinoza\u2019s revolutionary philosophy, but he also proposed several political explanations.<\/p>\n<p>One hypothesis concerns the fact that Spinoza appeared before Dutch courts to rid himself of his father\u2019s debts at a time when members of his community were expected to appear only before a Jewish court.<\/p>\n<p>Another theory suggests Spinoza threatened to invite revenge upon other Jews for his heresy, which was deeply resented by the state and the wider religious public. In 1678, the Dutch government also banned his writings and set heavy punishments against anyone selling his books. Disavowing Spinoza was a necessary public act for a community eager to avoid angering its generally tolerant hosts.<\/p>\n<p>But while the Dutch state\u2019s ban was rescinded long ago, the Jewish community has resisted repeated appeals to follow suit, including one from Israel\u2019s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s symposium would not be a turning point on this issue, the chief rabbi of the Portuguese Jewish community, Pinchas Toledano, told the crowd. Noting the de facto disappearance of the ban and the lack of any limitation on freedom of thought (he cited the gift shop as proof), Toledano nonetheless said he had neither the authority nor the will to rescind the measure.<\/p>\n<p>Lifting the herem \u201cwould clearly imply we share the views of Spinoza that state that God does not exist\u201d and that \u201cthe law of Moses is no longer relevant,\u201d Toledano said. These ideas \u201ctear apart the very foundations of our religion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other Dutch Portuguese Jews disagree. Nathan Lopes Cardozo, an influential Orthodox rabbi, began his address by holding up a portrait of Spinoza that Cardozo\u2019s father, a secular Jew, had drawn in the 1940s while he was living in hiding from the Nazi occupation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was our family\u2019s only rabbi,\u201d Cardozo said of Spinoza.<\/p>\n<p>Cardozo said he opposes Spinoza\u2019s observations on Judaism, which he said were \u201cdeliberately biased\u201d and \u201cultimately based on Spinoza\u2019s utter ignorance\u201d of the Talmud. Still, lifting the ban \u201cwould remove a huge stigma from Judaism as being dogmatic and narrow-minded, as Spinoza mistakenly argued.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the debate continued, Toledano became an unlikely interpreter of Spinoza\u2019s own feelings about the herem.<\/p>\n<p>He \u201cnever requested to rescind the herem,\u201d Toledano said, and \u201cprobably even laughed at the whole concept of the herem and [at] the rabbis who imposed it.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"3%20centuries%20after%20excommunication%2C%20is%20it%20time%20to%20lift%20ban%20on%20Spinoza%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1884],"tags":[1998,7535,8790,8795,1999,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27641"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27647,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27641\/revisions\/27647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}