L ' heresy of Spinoza. Immortality and the spirit Jewish Steven Nadler. Turin: Einaudi, c2005
Incipit:
It 'a beautiful mystery. In 1656, Bento de Spinoza was twenty-three. He was a scion of a family having enough but not too rich, the Sephardic community of Amsterdam ... He had great intellectual gifts that were certainly not gone unnoticed in the eyes of the rabbis. Perhaps Baruch (the name means, in both Hebrew and Portuguese, "blessed") was actually destined for a career as a rabbi. At seventeen, however, was forced to interrupt their studies. His older brother, Isaac, was in fact died in the meantime, which forced the young Bento to deal with family affairs, engaged in commercial activities. Within a few years, at the end of 1654, when the father died, Spinoza found himself at the helm of family business ... Then July 27, 1656 ... The following proclamation was read in Hebrew, before the ark of the Torah, the synagogue nell'affollatissima dell'Houtgracht:
I Senhores but the 'amad a long time the opinions and the evil deeds of Baruch de Spinoza, have tried in various ways and with different promises to get him back on track. But having failed to correct it in any way and vice versa continues to receive daily information based on the abominable heresies which he has done and taught, as well as its monstrous acts, and having many credible witnesses ... have decided ... that the said Espinoza is excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel. Decree on the order of angels and saints, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza ... he is damn damn day and night, cursed and damned if you lie down when he gets up, cursed and cursed when it comes out when he returns. The Lord will not spare the contrary, the anger of the Lord and his jealousy to beat upon this man, and all the curses written in this book [the Torah] will hang on him, and the Lord will erase his name from under heaven. The Lord depart with all the evil from the tribes of Israel, in obedience to all the curses written in this book of the law "
The book tries to answer the question of why Spinoza was proclaimed to a Cherem (contract) so hard, the hardest ever issued by the rabbis of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. It discusses the philosophical positions of Spinoza, in relation to works written by the rabbis of religious Amsterdam, the production of Maimonides and Gersonides, the most influential Jewish philosophers. The key point that emerges and explains that, in light of the arguments of the author, the hardness of Cherem , is the question of the immortality of the soul and its survival after death, definitely denied by Spinoza. This denial, although in a different context could be tolerated, as it is not part of the dogmas of the Jewish religion, in particular political situation of Dutch Jews who fled persecution in Spain, many of them former conversos ( ex forcibly converted to Catholicism) and, therefore, timorosi di scontentare le autorità olandesi, apparve scandalosa e intollerabile. Spinoza diventa un caso emblematico, per cui la sua negazione dell'immortalità dell'anima deve essere punita in modo esemplare. Ma lasciamo parlare l'Autore che, nella parte finale, sintetizza con chiarezza i motivi di un bando così duro:
"Solo, il bando di Spinoza ... è particolare: è il più violento e collerico mai pronunciato dai chachamin di Amsterdam. E ciò per una ragione precis, come ho cercato di mostrare, ossia perché una certa tesi di Spinoza era davvero intollerabile. Oltre a negare la paternità mosaica del Pentateuco, oltre a sostenere che Dio esiste only in a philosophical sense, Spinoza denied the immortality of the soul. And the Jews of the seventeenth century Amsterdam was not the place to do it. "
Interesting also pp. 178-185 on the use of hope and fear on the part of religious institutions (as well as political ones) to control and keep at bay the faithful and subjects.
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