From Christianity to Judaism: The Story of Isaac Orobio de Castro (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 301 Yosef Kaplan. From Christianity toJudaism: The Story of Isaac Orobiode Castro.Translated by Raphael Loewe. Oxford: Littman Library, Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. xvi + 53 I. Cloth, $45.oo. Orobio de Castro, 1617-1687, was the most philosophically acute member of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. He had been trained in medicine and Catholic theology in Spain, taught at the medical faculty at the University of Toulouse, and then joined the Jewish community in Amsterdam in 166o, became an eminent physician in The Netherlands, and a defender of Judaism against Catholics and Protestants, and against the rebel, Spinoza. Orobio made a spiritual journey from Christianity to Judaism , fully aware of the intellectual difficulties and issues involved. He used the tools of his Spanish scholastic heritage, his knowledge of current scientific, philosophical, and theological thought, to buttress his final faith. Unlike Spinoza, who was born a Jew in the fairly tolerant world of Amsterdam, Orobio was born a Catholic, and remained one for about forty years, until persecuted by the Inquisition, and then found his way to his version of the faith of his ancestors. Some of his work was influential for a century or more, until he slipped into oblivion. Yosef Kaplan, Professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University, has devoted many years of excellent scholarship, mainly in The Netherlands, in the archives of the Jewish community, to unearthing what can be known about Orobio's career and his intellectual biography. The results of his researches first appeared in Hebrew in 198~, and have now been made accessible to the general scholarly world by this English translation. (The work will appear soon in French translation as well.) The first four chapters give a superb picture of the intellectual and spiritual life of a Marrano, a member of a group of people of Jewish ancestry in Iberia, forced to live as Christians, and constandy hounded by the Inquisition. Kaplan has found much to indicate what this kind of life was like, and how it was carried on. Orobio, originally from a Portuguese New Christian family that moved into southern Spain, became a successful medical doctor, and leader of a small crypto-Jewish group. Kaplan is able to piece together the really minimal Jewish practice that he and his friends and relatives carried on, the support system they developed to protect each other, and the way this finally fell apart when several of them were arrested and tortured by the Inquisition. Orobio found kindred souls, including his classmate, Dr. Juan de Prado, who later became involved with the, young Spinoza. The Inquisition's inventory of Orobio's property provides an interesting window into what the Marranos' life was like. Marranos like Orobio and Prado, consciously committed to a truncated Judaism that was mainly an internal spiritual religion rather than a set of outward practices, stayed in Spain as long as possible, with occasional rest and recreation trips to Marrano communities in southern France or Italy. They only left Spain when the situation was impossible, when it became evident they would be killed if they stayed. Prado moved to Hamburg and Amsterdam in 1654-55 and joined the Jewish communities there. Orobio went first to southern France, and became a professor of pharmacy at the University of Toulouse. Kaplan makes the interesting suggestion that 302 ,JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30:2 APRIL 1992 he was influenced there by the fideism of the New Christian sceptic, Francisco Sanches, Montaigne's cousin. Orobio tired of living as an ostensible Christian, and so moved to Amsterdam where he could join the Jewish community. He circumcised himself, changed his first name from "Bathazaar" to "Isaac," and quickly became a major intellectual figure in the Jewish world there. We mainly know of the Jewish community of the time through Spinoza's very bad relations with them, and his negative statements about them. Kaplan allows us to see a quite different vision of the group through the eyes of the two doctors, Prado and Orobio. Prado arrived in 1655 with many doubts about Judaism, and about religion in general. He was not shy about raising these, and became a cause c~l~bre. He...