The Thirteen

Articles of
Spinozan
Judaism
Rabbi Edmond H. Weiss, Ph.D..
 Enlightened Judaism
• Spinoza was a father of The Age of Enlightenment.
• This age prized science and reason over religion and faith.
• Reform/liberal Judaism began as an attempt to apply
Enlightenment values to Judaism.
• Recently, though, the search for “spirituality” has lured
modern Judaism back to mysticism and esotericism.
• Spinozan Judaism is a program for restoring enlightened
ideas to the practice of Judaism, so as to attract disaffected
intellectuals to Jewish studies.

Rabbi Edmond H. Weiss

Rabbi Edmond H Weiss 2

Einstein on Spinoza
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an
anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel
also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human
sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for
the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order
and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only
imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with
our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values
and moral obligations as a purely human problem — the
most important of all human problems.

Rabbi Edmond H Weiss 3

Nature does not work with an end in view. For
the eternal and infinite Being, which we call
God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as
that whereby it exists…. Therefore, as he does
not exist for the sake of an end, so neither does
he act for the sake of an end; of his existence
and of his action there is neither origin nor
end.

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The Meaning of God
1. THE NAME “GOD” IS A FIGURATIVE
EXPRESSION REFERRING TO EVERYTHING IN
THE UNIVERSE NECESSARY FOR ITS
PERSISTENCE : ALL NATURAL AND PHYSICAL
LAWS AND CAUSES.
1.1 No being, object, or entity corresponds to this God.
1.2 This God has no consciousness, and therefore no
plans, goals, or favorites.
1.3 This God does not communicate with humankind,
either directly or through hidden messages. It does not
speak, or write.
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By the help of God, I mean the fixed and
unchangeable order of nature or the chain of
natural events: for I have said before and shown
elsewhere that the universal laws of nature,
according to which all things exist and are
determined, are only another name for the eternal
decrees of God, which always involve eternal
truth and necessity.

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Contemplation of God

2. THE PROPER APPROACH TO GOD IS

CONTEMPLATION AND STUDY, ESPECIALLY
THROUGH PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE.
2.1 The contemplation of God produces strong
feelings and intense pleasure.
2.2 These feelings are activated by our intellect and
imagination, not by some external presence.

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The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and
the mind's highest virtue is to know God. Our highest
happiness is in … the knowledge of God … We may thus
clearly understand how far astray from a true estimate of
virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with
high rewards for their virtue …; as if virtue and the
service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect
freedom.

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The Supernatural
3. GOD IS NOT SUPERNATURAL OR
MIRACULOUS; RATHER GOD AND NATURE (DEUS
SIVE NATURA) ARE A SINGLE CONSTRUCT.
3.1 No magical or miraculous event, no violation of
natural law, has ever occurred or can ever occur.
3.2 Apparent violations of natural law are either illusions
or the manifestation of a previously unknown facet of
nature.

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Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and
to understand the things of nature as philosophers,
and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools,
are soon considered heretical and impious, and
proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as
the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men
know that, once ignorance is put aside, that
wonderment would be taken away, which is the only
means by which their authority is preserved.

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The Uses of Judaism
4. THE PRACTICES AND TEXTS OF JUDAISM ARE USEFUL IN
THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD, BUT THEY ARE NEITHER
NECESSARY NOR SUFFICIENT.
4.1 Torah, in the broad sense that includes Talmud and the recorded
wisdom of the Jewish sages, is a powerful stimulant for the
intellect—even when its reasoning and arguments typically lack
sound philosophical foundations or justifications.
4.2 The commandments and precepts of the Torah are not “from
heaven” and may be analyzed with any apt scholarly discipline;
when they meet the test of reason, they should be honored.

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The narrow focus of Jewish texts, the frequency of
fictitious and contradictory items, and the
undisciplined logic of rabbinic argumentation mean
that one cannot understand God nearly as well
through these texts as with those of philosophy.

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The Status of the Torah
5. THE TORAH, LIKE ALL OTHER BOOKS REVERED
BY THE JEWISH PEOPLE, AS WELL AS ALL OTHER
BOOKS IN THE WORLD, IS THE WORK OF
HUMAN WRITERS AND EDITORS.
5.1 No revered text may be insulated from educated
criticism or analysis; criticism, analysis, and disputation
are essential Jewish approaches to ideas.
5.2 No personage in the Jewish texts should be regarded
as divine, quasi-divine, or saintly; all instances of
magical or prophetic powers should be understood as
imaginative literature or fiction.

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The Bible leaves reason absolutely free, [and] has
nothing in common with philosophy; in fact, Revelation
and Philosophy stand on different footings…

The task of Scriptural interpretation requires us to make

a straightforward study of Scripture, and from this, as
the source of our fixed data and principles, to deduce by
logical inference the meaning of the authors of Scripture
… allowing no other principles or data for the
interpretation of Scripture and study of its contents
except those that can be gathered only from Scripture
itself and from a historical study of Scripture.
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The Discipline of Philosophy
6. THE SINGLE GOAL OF PHILOSOPHY (INCLUDING
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OR SCIENCE) IS TO ESTABLISH
TRUTH; THIS IS ITS ONLY FUNCTION.
6.1 All propositions, claims, and predictions must be presented with
sound argument and convincing evidence, rather than based on
feelings, mystical experiences, or institutional authority.
6.2 General claims—especially claims of causality-- must be
qualified according the logical and scientific rules of proof and
inference.
6.3 Claims that are neither falsifiable nor verifiable have almost no
value in intellectual discourse.

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Between faith or theology, and philosophy, there
is no connection nor affinity. I think no one will
dispute the fact who has knowledge of the aims
and foundations of the two subjects, for they are
as wide apart as the poles.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth: faith,

as we have abundantly proved, looks for nothing
but obedience and piety.

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Our Relationship with God
7 GOD DOES NOT LOVE, THINK OR CARE ABOUT
HUMANKIND; HUMANKIND’S STUDY,
CONTEMPLATION, AND AFFECTION FOR GOD,
HOWEVER, BRINGS DIVINE LOVE INTO
EXISTENCE.
7.1 God, not being a body or person, is incapable of
expressing anything or preferring anything.
7.2 What is called “divine reward” or “divine
punishment,” is an illusion, deriving from odd
coincidence, defective observation, and/or failures of
memory or honesty.

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Love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly
with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it
is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength.

Things are conceived by us as actual in two ways; either as

existing in relation to a given time and place, or as contained in
God and following from the necessity of the divine nature.

Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the
form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of
God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God

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The Afterlife
8.THE BODY AND THE MIND ARE TWO ASPECTS
OF THE SAME ENTITY, BOTH SUBJECT TO
NATURAL LAW, AND BOTH CEASE WITH DEATH;
WHAT IS IMMORTAL IN US IS OUR KNOWLEDGE.
8.1 God, as nature, affects the length our lives, but offers
no reward or punishment for our conduct in an afterlife.
8.2 People who believe they can communicate with dead
persons, or that dead persons are “watching over” them,
are actually communicating with their own
imaginations.

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Death is less harmful to us the greater the mind’s
clear and distinct knowledge, and hence, the more
the mind loves God... The part of the mind that
perishes with the body [the durational mind] … is of
no moment to what remains…
If we attend to the common opinion of men, we shall
see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of
their mind, but that they confuse it with duration,
and attribute to it imagination, or memory, which
they believe remains after death.
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Falsehood and Superstition
9. FALSEHOOD AND SUPERSTITION ENABLE THE
UNDESERVING TO HAVE POWER OVER, AND ABUSE,
THE WEAK AND INSECURE; THEY MUST BE WEEDED
OUT BY PHILOSOPHY.
9.1 When a person demonstrates that a widely held belief is
false, there must never be a penalty or punishment imposed
on that person when the finding is announced and published.
9.2 Superstitions—false cause-and-effect relationships—must
be investigated and exposed; especially when they are
“official,” they are the greatest impediment to the
development of the intellect.

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The superstitious know how to reproach people
for their vices better than they know how to
teach them virtues, and they strive, not to guide
men by reason, but to restrain them by fear, so
that they flee the evil rather than love virtues.
Such people aim only to make others as
wretched as they themselves are, so it is no
wonder that they are generally burdensome and
hateful to men.

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The Dangers of Religion
10. RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS TEND TO BE MORE
CONCERNED WITH OBEDIENCE AND POWER THAN WITH
ESTABLISHING THE TRUTH; THEY ARE FREQUENTLY
PURVEYORS OF FALSEHOOD AND SUPERSTITION.
10.1 While the goal of philosophy is truth, the goal of religions and
their sacred texts is obedience; typically, they enforce obedience
through fear.
10.2 When disobeyed, religions and their institutions have the real
power to drive people from their communities and impose genuine
hardship.
10.3 Religions and their institutions have no power, however, to
deprive people of salvation or redemption in the afterlife—because
there is no such thing.

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The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men
deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion
the fear by which they must be checked, so that they
will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and
will think it not shameful, but a most honorable
achievement, to give their life and blood that one man
may have a ground for boasting.

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 Religion and Government
11. BECAUSE HUMAN BEINGS HAVE REASON THEY CANNOT,
WITHOUT COERCION, BE OBLIGED TO ACCEPT AS TRUE
WHAT THEY KNOW TO BE FALSE; THEREFORE, THE
AFFILIATION OF RELIGION WITH GOVERNMENT RESULTS
NOT ONLY IN LOSS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BUT ALSO IN THE
LOSS OF POLITICAL FREEDOM.
11.1 Governments and religious institutions are capable of several forms
of coercion—threats, fines, prison, torture, execution—to compel assent
to a falsehood or superstition. Nothing they can do, however, alters the
truth.
11.2 An official state religion eliminates nearly all forms of freedom,
most especially the freedom to express one’s thought and challenge
falsehood and superstition.
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The more a government tries to curtail freedom of
speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not by
the avaricious…but by those whom good
education, sound morality, and virtue have
rendered more free. Men in general are so
constituted that there is nothing they will endure
with so little patience as that views which they
believe to be true should be counted as crimes
against the laws…

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Personal Freedom
12 ALL PERSONS ARE ENDOWED BY NATURE’S
GOD WITH REASON, AND THE RIGHT TO
EXERCISE THAT REASON IS INALIENABLE.
12.1 Compelling people to assent to claims that are
untrue is among the greatest crimes committed by
individuals, institutions, and official organizations.
12.2 No person, however, is obliged to risk his or her life
to redress such grievances.

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The ultimate aim of government is not to rule, or
restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but to free
every man from fear that he may live in all possible
security... In fact the true aim of government is
liberty.

[I call a man] so far free, as he is led by reason…

The free man never acts fraudulently, but always in

good faith.

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The Nature of Will
13. THINKING AND DECIDING OCCUR IN THE BODY, AND
ARE, THEREFORE, SUBJECT TO THE LAWS OF NATURE;
EVERY THOUGHT HAS A CAUSE, WHICH IN TURN HAS A
CAUSE, AD INFINITUM. FREE WILL, THEREFORE, IS NO
FREER THAN ANY OTHER BODILY ACTION.
13.1 Mental, emotional, and “spiritual” experiences occur in the
brain and are shaped by experience and the current environment,
and constrained by the laws of physical chemistry; the brain is a
machine, always acting under mechanical determinants.
13.2 Although it is unfair to hold people responsible for actions
shaped by others and constrained by natural laws, this is
nevertheless just one of the several ways in which God or Nature
distributes its gifts without much regard for justice or fairness.

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There is in the mind no absolute or free will, but
the mind is determined for willing this or that by
a cause which is determined in its turn by
another cause, and this one again by another,
and so on to infinity. ... A body in motion or at
rest must be determined for motion or rest by
some other body, which, likewise, was
determined for motion or rest by some other
body, and this by a third and so on to infinity.

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Be not astonished by new ideas; for
it is well known to you that a thing
does not cease to be true because it
is not accepted by many.
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