Customer Reviews

Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For most Jewish teens and school-aged children, the late Amsterdamer Baruch Spinoza isn't exactly the first order of academic business on the run-of-the-mill eigth grade Jewish high school syllabus.

I suppose that partly explains why -- prior to reading this book, fourth in the amazing "Jewish Encounters" series -- I hardly knew much about Spinoza.

That which I *did* know was none too good; according to most Jewish theologians and scholars, the collected writings and musings of the former Dutchman of former converso (or New Christian, converted during the Spanish Inquisition) parents is feared with a virulence seldom seen in Jewish academic circles.

My central question in picking up this book was WHY?

What was so controversial about Spinoza's words, and what did Jewish clergy and laymen have to fear from the utterances of this brilliant man?

What was so threatening about a Jew who questioned the notion of God, and, moreover, how much of a threat could this man have been when latter-day evidence suggests that Spinoza had always wished to remain a part and parcel of the kehila (Amsterdam's Jewish Community) despite the worst of the kherems, or excommunications?

Why had the Dutch rabbinate of the time tarred Spinoza so indelibly?

Goldstein tackles many of these issues in her work, positing that perhaps had Spinoza grown up in a different time under different circumstances, a "Spinoza" mightn't have been such a threat to a fragile Jewish community on the comeback trail.

During Spinoza's era, Jews were a rather new phenomenon to the newly-amalgamated Dutch Provinces. Only recently had Jewish residents of the city of Amsterdam been granted their civil rights by the various Dutch burghers. Therefore, Goldstein describes (as have others, I'm sure) how Spinoza's constant challenging of the existence of a deity or higher power was total anathema to a community who was seeking to crystallize their indentity after nearly a century of living underground as unsuspecting Christians or "secret" Jews.

Amsterdam Jews had continued to look fondly to the more established Jewish community in Venice, for example, for its solace and religious sustenance, upon whose recommendation -- as you'll read in this book -- came the "suggestion" to ban Spinoza from having an influence on the tender young minds of the nascent Dutch Jewish community.

You're going to love how Goldstein uses the leitmotif of her former Jewish girls yeshiva (Jewish seminary) teacher Mrs. Schoenfeld of Manhattan's Lower East Side, a matronly type who used to consel her students -- girls like Rebecca Goldstein -- on the corrosive harm of Spinoza's words and deeds. She weaves references to this woman throughout the narrative, and it's a cute little break in the action -- but its significance to the modern impression Jews have vis-a-vis Spinoza is an importance which shouldn't be dimished by its apparent cuteness.

It was this seminal event in the writer's life which began her lifelong quest to unearth the truth about the so-called renegade heretic, culminating ostensibly in this book.

Some of my favourite chapters outlined an historical overview of the immediate aftermath of the Expulsion period from Spain, and at how the pernicious legacy of the Spanish Inquisition germinated latent self-doubt within the hearts and minds of Amsterdam's Jewish collective.

It was the as-yet unformed thoughts of this tiny collective which became the barren soil of Spinoza's rejected notions; it was a community who had virtually ensured Baruch Spinoza's untimely death due to the viciousness with which it had dogged him.

I didn't know much about Spinoza before settling into this read. Therefore I approached the subject matter with a very open mind.

Following this, I made a list of alternative sources which I'll be getting into before making a definitive decision on whether I would like to buy into the Spinozist worldview. Having said that, what a majesty of the post-modernist era that I'm even able to make such a frank admission (!!!) -- for had I dwelled during the mid-17th century, I mightn't have had such a distinct luxury: to be able to decide or not to decide whether a god exists.

My rating of only four stars comes about because I felt Goldstein's narrative to be somewhat truncated in certain sections. I'd have liked to have seen a work at least double the size of this current page length, because many ideas, I felt, needed "take-off" room to launch themselves into my mind. I wonder what the editors at Schocken Books had in mind with making all of the Jewish Encounters books in their series so short. I guess they're victims of the age, too. Short attention spans and the instant availability of titles on the internet prevent people from making time for anything other than a couple of hundred pages. Pity.

Admittedly, and this is no umbrage of Ms. Goldstein's excellent research and highly educational work, I'm personally not too clever when it comes to the actual philosophy described herein. Within the pages of BETRAYING SPINOZA, there existed a strong presumption on the author's part that the various Latin idioms and philophical Descartes-ian and Leibniz-ian concepts were understood by all and sundry.

I'd have liked to have been given a little bit of a primer on these before having settled down into the nitty-gritties of the read, which wasn't the case. I found myself at certain spots getting a little lost in the highbrow verbiage, and that's what affected various parts of my enjoyment, if the truth is to be told. I don't know if that was intentional; I merely say this because in my readings of two prior titles from this series (see my reviews for Century's BARNEY ROSS, for example) there wasn't such a presumption made.

But for an uncommonly sympathetic read on Spinoza from a talented beyond her years Jewish author and professor, BETRAYING SPINOZA is as good as it gets.

Treat yourself to the honour of reading about one of the finer Jewish minds of the past half-millennium to have ever lived.

-- ADM in Prague

This book is an exciting read both because of the subject and the approach of the author. The author has a writing style which I found generally engaging. Her knowledge of her subject matter is impressive. She brings forward a picture of the Jewish experience during the time of Spinoza and some aspects of the Jewish experience of Spinoza. The discussion of the impact of Spinoza's definition of God helps to clarify why his ideas would be considered heretical. She discusses of the impact of Spinoza's writings on Western society and how he brought us modernity. She describes the historical background in which Spinoza lived explaining how liberating the Dutch acceptance of the Jews must have been in contrast to the intolerance and persecution experienced in Spain. She references her text and that is very helpful.