Portuguese Jews Research Articles

Spinoza, Portrait of a Spiritual Hero by Rudolph Kayser

382 BOOK REVIEWS Spinoza, Portrait of a Spiritual Hero. By RUDOLPH KAYSER. With an introduction by ALBERT EINSTEIN. Translated by AMY ALLEN and MAXIM NEWMARK. New York: Philosophical Library, 1946. Pp. xix +326. $3.75. To the available biographies of Spinoza this work is added. In the preface it is stated: "Industrious scholars have collected and sorted the material for us. But if we wish to hear a man's heart beating behind this material, we must be able to listen long and carefully to the inner music of his soul. And that is the intention of this book " (pp. xviii, xix) . To fulfill his intention the author devotes fifty-three pages to the ofttold tales of the Marranos in Spain and Portugal and of the beginnings of the Jewish colony in Holland. The reader meets some strange assertions. Of the Jesuits it is said, that they " were secular priests who knew and understood the habits of the upper classes of sodety. Hence, young Gabriel [Uriel da Costa] was bound to have a fine and easy existence" (p. SO}. For the Spanish Jews the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment is described as " an age in which the great witches' sabbath of the Counter-Reformation was celebrated" (p. 11}. The Dominicans "became the real ' domini canes,' the bloodhounds of God. . . . A mass frenzy surged through the world and lusted for death, a lust that could only be sated with the blood of its victims, and could only be appeased when the hands that had heaped thousands onto the execution pyres became tired of their own gruesome performance" (p. 14). In the midst of twentiethcentury facts, Bjelinsky, a Russian writer, is quoted with approval as naming " the Spanish Inquisition as the most horrible sacrifice that chance and superstition had ever exacted" (p. ~5). Rembrandt, Jan de Witt, and Spinoza are all described as enacting in their lives " great tragedies . . . in which the creative individual went along his way to Calv;ary.... All three men were not understood by their contemporaries; they were rendered powerless, or were put to death. Their lives were filled to the brim with a loneliness which they themselves created and of which they themselves were the martyrs" (p. xv). These quotations will give an idea of the author's style, modes of thought, and approach to his subject. It is unfortunate that Spinoza's life is again presented in this mode and strain. After three centuries it would be well if his story were told in a more objective way. It is more than time for writers to forget the myths and legends of the" poor persecuted Jew" and " the God-intoxicated man'." Spinoza needs to be read and written about in a spirit akin to that in which other thinkers are approached. In his introduction Prof. Einstein writes that " the spiritual situation with which Spinoza had to cope peculiarly resembles our own" (p. xi). Just how our ~ge, the age of world wars and world revolutions, of collapsing BOOK REVIEWS 888 civilizations and cultures, of dictators and dialectical materialism, and of mass rape and mass murder, peculiarly resembles the grand siecle is not apparent. Prof. Einstein also writes that "Spinoza had no doubt that our notion of possessing a free will (i.e. independent of causality) was an illusion resulting from our ignorance of the causes operative within us. In the study of the causal relationship he saw a remedy for fear, hate, and bitterness, the 'only remedy to which a genuinely spiritual man can have recourse " (p. xi) . One may speculate upon how much philosophy Prof. Einstein has studied and what manner of scholarly research he has devoted to the doctrine of free will so as to understand that doctrine and the problem with which it deals. Aside from such speculation, it is difficult to see how a scientist can write with such dogmatism and such lack of reflection . Does the deterministic doctrine really answer the great moral problems? If it does, we must cease to condemn the Nazis for their plan and practice of genocide, the keepers of Dachau for their murders and human vivisection, and Stalin and his associates for their program...

Dramatic Literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries (suite)

Dramatic Literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries (suite)

Dramatic Literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries (suite)

Dramatic Literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries (suite)

Dramatic Literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries (III-IV)

Dramatic Literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries (III-IV)

Dramatic literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries

Dramatic literature of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries

The Sculpture in front of the Lateran as described by Benjamin of Tudela and Magister Gregorius

The English Magister Gregorius, and the Spanish Jew, Benjamin ben Jonah of Tudela, lived towards the end of the twelfth century Our knowledge of the former's description of Rome is due to G. McN. Rushforth, who attempts to date his visit to Rome more precisely but has to admit that this is not possible. He can only say that it took place in the latter part of the twelfth or the earlier part of the thirteenth century. The visit of Rabbi Benjamin can be fixed more exactly. He mentions Alexander III as Pope : he made his entry into Rome on the 23rd of November, 1165, and was driven out again in 1167 but returned in 1177. On passing through Bari he mentions that the city had been destroyed by King William of Sicily (1156) It was rebuilt by William the Good in 1169, so that his visit to Rome must have been before this. When he travels to Lesser Armenia, he names as its ruler Thoros, who died in December 1167 or February 1168. As by this time he had travelled through Greece and Constantinople, and along the coast of Asia Minor to Lesser Armenia we may reasonably date his visit to Rome in the year 1166.

Research Items

BLOOD CHARACTERISTICS AND RACE.—The first number (Jan.-Feb.) of vol. 36 of Natural History, the publication of the American Museum of Natural History, is devoted to the study of the present races of man, and contains, in addition to descriptive articles of primitive peoples, several papers dealing with anthropological questions of more general bearing. Among these is a review by Mr. R. Otten-burg of the present position of the study of the characteristics of the blood as a test of race relationship. The suggestion put forward by Dr. Hirschfeld and his wife in 1918 that the constituents known as A and B originated in Europe and Asia respectively, no longer holds good in the light of further and more extended observation. It is found that there are races in Africa, Asia, Australia, and America which show as high a proportion of A to B as do the North Europeans, the supposed exceptionally high proportion of A in the last named being the basis of Hirschfeld's conclusion. Six fundamental types are to be recognised according to the proportion of the three more common blood-groups. The European type is characterised by a relatively high proportion of Blood-group II., while two of the Asiatic types, the Indo-Manchurian and the Afro - South Asiatic on the fringes of the Indian Ocean, have more of Blood-group III. The Pacific American type, consisting almost entirely of Australian and American Indians, shows an enormous preponderance of Blood-group I. The Hunan type is remarkable in that it shows an unusual proportion of Group IV., which in every other type is the lowest. The figures seem to indicate the existence of transition races formed by the mingling of two adjacent races. The Jews apparently do not form a homogeneous group, but tend to assimilate to a local group, e.g. Berlin Jews to German, Spanish Jews to Arab, Rumanian Jews to Hungarian, and so on. The gypsies, however, correspond to the Indo-Manchurian type, which seems significant in view of their tradition of non-intermarriage and Central Indian origin.

The Vision Delectable of Alfonso de la Torre and Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed

The Visión Delectable was composed by Alfonso de la Torre, probably between the years 1430 and 1440, at the request of don Juan de Beamonte, for the instruction of the young Prince Carlos of Viana. This work, which gained its author the epithet of el gran filósofo among his contemporaries, was published about the year 1480 and subsequently appeared in several Castilian editions. It was translated into Catalan in 1484, and into Italian by Domenico Delphini in 1556, without mention of the original author. This Italian version was re-translated into Spanish by a Spanish Jew, Francisco de Cáceres, and published at Frankfort in 1623.

Notes on the Spanish Palatals

Previous articleNext article FreeNotes on the Spanish PalatalsE. H. TuttleE. H. Tuttle Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 8, Number 4Apr., 1911 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/386851 Views: 44 PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Lea on the Inquisition of Spain and Herein of Spanish and Portuguese Jews and Marranos

Lea on the Inquisition of Spain and Herein of Spanish and Portuguese Jews and Marranos

Songs of the Spanish Jews in the Balkan Peninsula. II

Previous articleNext article FreeSongs of the Spanish Jews in the Balkan Peninsula. IILeo WienerLeo Wiener Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 1, Number 2Oct., 1903 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/386596 Views: 17 Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Edwin Seroussi Bargman, Susana Weich Shahak Avatares de la tradición oral en la era de la reproducción mecánica: la Morenica judeo-española hoy, Cuadernos de investigación musical , no.1414 (Jan 2022): 5–27.https://doi.org/10.18239/invesmusic.2022.14.01

Songs of the Spanish Jews in the Balkan Peninsula. I

Previous article FreeSongs of the Spanish Jews in the Balkan Peninsula. ILeo WienerLeo Wiener Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 1, Number 1Jun., 1903 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/386592 Views: 39 Copyright 1904 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Lessing's Treatment of the Story of the Ring, and its Teaching

In Westermann's Monatshefte for January, 1891, and later in his ‘Life of Lessing,‘ Professor Erich Schmidt has outlined the chief features of the history and transformations of the story of the three rings in Europe. On examination it will be found that all the versions of the story belong to one or the other of two types, which are represented by the two earliest forms of the story preserved to us. The oldest version, that of the Spanish Jew Salomo ben Verga, tells of two rings or jewels only, which were in outward appearance exactly alike, and there is no question of one being genuine and the other false, but only of the relative value of the two. In the absence of the father it is found impossible to decide the question, and thus the decision between Christianity and Judaism is simply avoided. In Li Dis dou vrai aniel, a French poem of the end of the twelfth century, three rings appear, and to the original or genuine ring is attributed a marvelous healing power by which it may be recognized, and following which a decision is arrived at among the three religions, in this case in favor of Christianity, although ther were not wanting later narrators so bold as to hint that the true ring was possessed by Judaism. The version of Etienne de Bourbon, the versions of the Cento Novelle, the three versions of the Gesta Romanorum, all belong to one or the other of two types. We may refer to these two types as the Spanish type and the French type. Those of the first type, to which belongs also the version of Boccaccio, the one from which Lessing took his point of departure, avoid a decision, implying that all religions are equally authoritative, but without inherent or inner evidence of their quality. Those of the second type, to which in many of its features Lessing's final version of the story is allied, lead to a decision, making religion of divine origin indeed, but supplying a test, that of good works, whereby the true religion may be recognized.

Spanish jews and the death of christ

Journal Article Spanish jews and the death of christ Get access A. Hali A. Hali Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-XII, Issue 303, 17 October 1891, Page 315, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-XII.303.315f Published: 17 October 1891

Spanish jews and the death of christ

Journal Article Spanish jews and the death of christ Get access E. L. Garbett E. L. Garbett Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume s7-XII, Issue 303, 17 October 1891, Page 315, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/s7-XII.303.315g Published: 17 October 1891

Spanish jews and the death of christ

Spanish jews and the death of christ

Proverbs and Sayings among the Spanish Jews

Proverbs and Sayings among the Spanish Jews