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    The Blessings of Baruch

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    Tibor Krausz
    These days Spinoza's ideas might seem relatively innocuous. In his day, though, they were anything but

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    The Blessings of Baruch

    Uploaded by

    Tibor Krausz
    32 views2 pages
    These days Spinoza's ideas might seem relatively innocuous. In his day, though, they were anything but

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    These days Spinoza's ideas might seem relatively innocuous. In his day, though, they were anything but

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    32 views2 pages

    The Blessings of Baruch

    Uploaded by

    Tibor Krausz
    These days Spinoza's ideas might seem relatively innocuous. In his day, though, they were anything but

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    THE people & the book Tibor Krausz

    The blessings of Baruch


    Spinoza helped pave the way for a secular Jewish identity

    In the beginning was Uriel da Costa. Then Some of them lauded him for his borderline the Calvinist town, but behave they did. And
    came Baruch Spinoza. atheism; others for his scientific naturalism if saving face required turning their noses up
    A mercurial recusant born in 1585 in Por- and rejection of superstition; still others for at their uncouth Ashkenazi brethren, so be it,
    to, Portugal, da Costa was a Catholic scion of his alleged proto-Zionism; and the rest for his for these refugees fleeing religious persecution
    prosperous Portuguese crypto-Jewish Con- psychological insights in the vein of “Know farther east were “filthy, penniless, dressed in
    versos who relocated first to Hamburg, then thyself,” the ancient Greek apothegm of intro- rags and had to beg,” the author writes. “The
    to Amsterdam, a mercantile and tolerant city spective inquiry. fine manners of the Spanish gentry were evi-
    where Jews thrived. Well versed in Christi- In some biographies of Spinoza, da Costa, dent even in Spinoza’s behavior, although he
    anity, da Costa embraced Judaism, then re- a distant relation of Spinoza’s, is relegated to had no aspirations toward any kind of high life
    nounced it, finding as much fault with his new a footnote. Not so in Ian Bu- or grandiosity.”
    faith as he had done with his old one. He espe- ruma’s new book, Spinoza: After his father’s death,

    WIKIPEDIA
    cially took umbrage at regimented rabbinical Freedom’s Messiah, where Spinoza was to take over the
    rules and rituals, which he saw as bereft of da Costa’s no-holds-barred faltering family business, but
    spirituality and perversions of the Torah. skepticism lays the ground- he had other ideas. Leaving
    Then again, it’s not as if he worshiped the work for his landsman’s his younger brother Gabriel
    Torah. The Pentateuch, he insisted, had been own refutation of normative in charge of his patrimony,
    neither divinely inspired nor authored by religious beliefs. The Dutch he fell in with a bohemian
    Moses. Ah, and there was no such thing as journalist and author, who crowd of kindred spirits lured
    an immortal soul, and so the afterlife was a is of Christian and Jewish by the siren call of Enlighten-
    delusion. His opinion mirrored the belief of descent, calls Spinoza “free- ment philosophy. In 1656, as
    ancient Sadducees, who denied the existence dom’s messiah” as per Hein- the bubonic plague ravaged
    of undying souls and the hereafter but lost out rich Heine’s view of him as a Europe, Spinoza was ostra-
    to the Pharisees, who believed in both despite Christ-like figure. If we are to cized in absentia by Amster-
    no scriptural backing for them in the Tanach. take this epithet at face value, dam’s rabbinical authorities.
    Yet da Costa went even further by declaring all then da Costa prefigured Spi- Author Ian Buruma (Courtesy He was just 23. In the herem,
    religions to be man-made creations. noza the same way that John Ilvy Njiokiktjien) vituperative curses were is-
    Such views were beyond blasphemous and the Baptist heralds Jesus of sued against him for “abom-
    da Costa, a stubborn fellow, was declared her- Nazareth in the Gospels. What da Costa start- inable heresies,” but what these were are now
    em (excommunicated) not once but twice. He ed, Spinoza completed. obscure, as Spinoza had yet to publish any of
    was shunned, castigated, and maltreated by A Sephardi merchant’s cerebral son who his treatises, albeit his outspoken views on
    local Jews, his relatives among them. Alone studied in a yeshiva, Spinoza was a learned religion echoed those of da Costa’s and other
    and miserable, he decided to recant. This he man in Europe’s most liberal city during a rationalists. In any case, he didn’t seem much
    did, but then he was also whipped and forced period of febrile intellectual ferment at the bothered by it. To get away from the madding
    to lie prostrate at a synagogue’s threshold for height of the Dutch Golden Age. Gedogen, the crowds, though, he moved to the countryside
    people to step over him. He never recovered prudent Dutch practice of turning a blind eye and thence to The Hague, where he made do
    from such debasement and shot himself in to certain unlawful and undesirable activities, by grinding and polishing lenses for micro-
    April 1640. benefited freethinkers like Spinoza, whose scopes and telescopes, two seminal inventions
    Baruch Spinoza, a fellow Portuguese Jew, family lived in the waterlogged city’s Jewish of the time. He also put pen to paper on his
    was a boy of seven in Amsterdam that year, quarter in Vlooienburg, a rectangular artificial philosophical works, of which two would be
    but he too would soon be excommunicated. islet in the Amstel River. Among the Spinozas’ published in his lifetime, earning him fame
    Da Costa’s iconoclasm probably influenced neighbors was Rembrandt, a philosemitic and infamy in equal measure across Europe.
    Spinoza’s interrogative philosophy, yet where- Protestant who resided among Jews and used Today, Spinoza’s ideas might seem fairly
    as the former, a quixotic contrarian, has been them as models for his Bible-themed paint- innocuous, but they were radical in his day.
    largely forgotten, the latter, a more profound ings “amid lumberyards, artists’ studios, and Repudiating the biblical God, the philosopher
    thinker, remains a towering figure in the his- synagogues discreetly tucked away in private propounded a rarefied form of pantheism by
    tory of philosophy. Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, houses.” equating God with nature. “Whatever is, is in
    Einstein, Marx, Freud, Ben-Gurion — they all To be sure, Buruma notes, Jewish immi- God, and nothing can exist or be conceived
    admired Spinoza if not for the same reasons. grants from Iberia were expected to behave in without God,” he wrote. Albeit strictly mecha-

    44 The Jerusalem Report June 10, 2024


    nistic, the universe is infused with an immanent ditions, Jews made themselves perennial tar- opher Steven Nadler. Yet brevity can also be
    divine essence, which lacks transcendence and gets for persecution. “Spinoza’s argument for misleading.
    agency. By necessity, then – and herein lay his assimilation is naïve, and if it had been made “In Marx’s [classless] utopia,” Buruma
    true subversion – the world is an amoral place by a gentile, it could easily be construed as a writes in passing, “there would no longer be
    where good and evil are human inventions, form of antisemitism,” Buruma points out. Yet a ‘Jewish problem.’” Well, yes, but that would
    with our moral judgments predicated on our even as Spinoza panned Judaism, he waffled hardly have profited Jews, since Marx’s solu-
    protean values and self-interest. Knowingly or on Christianity by extolling Jesus as a pur- tion entailed getting rid of them. “What is the
    not, Spinoza reached the same conclusion, we veyor of love and wisdom who, albeit fully worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering.
    should note, as had Protagoras, a pre-Socratic human, intuited sublime moral laws. Was this What is his worldly God? Money,” Marx,
    philosopher from the 5th century BCE who stark dichotomy, Buruma ponders, because a baptized son of Jewish parents, huffed in
    averred that moral principles weren’t absolute, Spinoza felt it safer to stick it to powerless his essay “On the Jewish Question” in 1844.
    deriving as they did from individual preferenc- Jews than to powerful Christians? Or because “Very well then! Emancipation from huckster-
    es and cultural norms. he saw Jesus as an ideal spiritual leader who ing and money, consequently from practical,
    In the 17th century, denying the divine ori- freed himself from stultifying rabbinical rules real Judaism, would be the self-emancipa-
    gins of morality challenged the very premise and rites to distill his teachings into a simple tion of our time,” he opined in a passage that
    of the Judeo-Christian ethos. Yet to Spinoza, moral code? Or else because he was less famil- wouldn’t look out of place in Mein Kampf.
    the absence of an interventionist deity who iar with the New Testament than he was with And lest anyone miss his point, this patron
    commanded us to follow his tenets didn’t the Old? saint of communism elucidated: “An orga-
    mean we could act nihilistically as we pleased. Perhaps all three, but Spinoza’s intimate fa- nization of society which would abolish the
    Far from it. A gentle and courteous soul, Spi- miliarity with Christian scriptures is certainly preconditions for huckstering, and therefore
    noza behaved impeccably, lived frugally, and in doubt, since they are no less vulnerable to the possibility of huckstering, would make
    aired his views cautiously for fear of causing criticism than the Hebrew Bible. For instance, the Jew impossible…In the final analysis, the
    public uproar. In his Ethics, written in Latin Jesus often says one thing in one canonical emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation
    and published anonymously to avoid drawing Gospel, only to say the opposite in another. “I of mankind from Judaism.”
    too much attention to it, Spinoza counseled tell you, if you are angry with a brother, you Spinoza championed both religious and in-
    temperance and virtuous conduct guided not will be judged,” he announces in Matthew dividual freedom, so it‘s doubtful he would
    by divine revelation but by intuitive human 5:22. In Luke 14:26, though, he has this to say: have shared Marx’s conclusion. Just the same,
    reasoning. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his the herem against him remains in place, which
    Understanding human nature and cultivat- own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, is a shame, for Spinoza showed nonreligious
    ing contemplative self-knowledge, he posited, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot Jews, in Buruma’s words, “a way to reconcile
    could help identify the causes of unhelpful be my disciple.” So which is it? Either way, the their Jewish background with modern rational-
    passions to liberate us from them. Like Stoics morality on display here is questionable at best. ism.” He deserved not sanction but credit for
    and Buddhists, Spinoza believed that happi- “Because the Christian rule to do unto oth- that. ■
    ness, or at least peace of mind, lay in a mastery ers as you would have them do unto you is
    of emotions. He practiced what he preached, supposed to be universal, and the Christian
    leading a celibate life of almost ascetic rigor. faith, ideally, makes no tribal or national dis-
    He prized his independence and privacy, the tinctions, it comes closer to Spinoza’s idea of
    better to devote himself freely to reading and a practical civic religion that promotes charity
    ruminating before his death at age 44 from ei- and justice,” Buruma writes. If so, this ideal-
    ther tuberculosis or silicosis. Not even his im- ized view of Christianity overlooks its entire
    pending demise seemed to bother him. “The history with incessant schisms, doctrinal dis-
    free man thinks least of all of death, and his putes, and sectarianism, not to mention unre-
    wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death,” lenting intra-religious wars and persecution
    he wrote. of “heretics,” “witches” and Jews. Some uni-
    Beyond his contributions to philosophy, versalism. Besides, that “Christian rule” is in
    Spinoza helped pioneer secular scholarship of fact the Golden Rule, which was already well
    the Bible by stressing its human authorship. If known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians,
    scripture was man-made, then parsing it for es- Chinese and Jews.
    oteric insights to divine God’s ways was folly, Buruma’s biography of Spinoza has been
    he surmised. And if there was no biblical God, published in the “Jewish Lives” series by Yale
    Jews couldn’t have been His chosen people; University Press, and the format requires the Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah
    therefore, abiding by Mosaic laws like keep- Dutch author to be succinct. He does a fine job (Jewish Lives)
    ing kosher was a waste of time. In fact, it was of condensing into 200 readable pages the gist Ian Buruma
    positively harmful because with their diehard, of excellent scholarship on Spinoza by British Yale University Press, 2024
    cliquish adherence to archaic customs and tra- historian Jonathan Israel and American philos- 216 pages; $23.20

    The Jerusalem Report June 10, 2024 45

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