Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us ModernityPart of the Jewish Encounter series In 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty-three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza's progeny. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition' s persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza's philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe' s first experiment with racial anti-Semitism. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero--a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. |
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Page 27
... divine revelation but rather written by man — written in fact by several men who came much later than Moshe Rabbenu , Moses Our Teacher . And the second was that God was identical with nature . Mrs. Schoenfeld used the English word ...
... divine revelation but rather written by man — written in fact by several men who came much later than Moshe Rabbenu , Moses Our Teacher . And the second was that God was identical with nature . Mrs. Schoenfeld used the English word ...
Page 80
... Divine Presence . The Law is the way God is seen as interacting with His people , and to study it is to approach Him in the most direct way that we can . What might seem from the outside to be dry anachronistic hairsplitting is , from ...
... Divine Presence . The Law is the way God is seen as interacting with His people , and to study it is to approach Him in the most direct way that we can . What might seem from the outside to be dry anachronistic hairsplitting is , from ...
Page 111
... divine light entered into the ten vessels that were waiting to receive it , and some were shattered , the shards falling into the abyss from which the world arose , carrying sparks of the light that were trapped within . From the moment ...
... divine light entered into the ten vessels that were waiting to receive it , and some were shattered , the shards falling into the abyss from which the world arose , carrying sparks of the light that were trapped within . From the moment ...
Contents
Baruch Bento Benedictus | 3 |
In Search of Baruch | 17 |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Copyright | |
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Aboab argue Baruch Spinoza believe with perfect Benedictus Benedictus Spinoza born Catholic century chief rabbi Christian Church claim conceived continued conversos course death Descartes Deus sive natura divine Dutch Ein Sof emotions essence eternal Ethics excommunication existence experience explanations fact father final causes finite friends girls Ha-Shem halakha Hebrew heretic holy Ibid ideas infinite system Inquisition Israel Jan de Witt Jewish Jewish community Jewish identity Jews of Amsterdam Judaism kabbalah kabbalistic kherem knowledge laws Leibniz lived Lurianic Maimonides Marranos means Messiah metaphysics mind Moses Moslem mystical Nachmanides nature noza one's oneself perfect faith philosopher pleasure Portugal Portuguese proofs publish question Rabbi Morteira rational reality reason religion religious Rijnsburg Sabbatai Sabbatai Zevi salvation Schoenfeld scholar sense Sephardic soul Spain Spanish suffering synagogue Talmud teacher thing thinker thought tion Torah Tractatus Theologico-Politicus true truth understand Uriel da Costa Voorburg words write yeshiva young