Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (review)

Abstract

Steven Nadler's Spinoza's Heresy opens with the following declaration: "It is a splendid mystery" (1). The mystery, of course, is how a gifted son of the Jewish community of Amsterdam, a young man whom one might have expected to grow naturally into the role of a respected rabbi, came to be expelled from that community. What Nadler finds so mysterious is not the simple fact of Spinoza's expulsion—itself a common form of discipline among the Jews of Amsterdam—but the vehemence and finality with which he was expelled. The writ of expulsion accuses Spinoza of "abominable heresies" and "monstrous deeds" and goes on to heap layer after layer of curse upon him. It is, in Nadler's judgment, the harshest writ ever to be pronounced against a member of that community. What, then, were the views so abominable and the deeds so monstrous that account for this? What had Spinoza said and done to raise such ire among his fellow Jews? That is the mystery Nadler's book attempts to solve.