The graceful and spiritual Sarah Copia (born about 1600, died 1641) excited a certain amount of attention in her time. She was an original poetess and thinker, and her gifts, as well as her grace, brought her temptations and dangers. The only child of a wealthy father, Simon Copia (Coppio) in Venice, who loved her tenderly, she yielded to her inclination for instruction, and devoted herself to science and literature. To this inclination she remained true even after her marriage with Jacob Sullam. Sarah Copia Sullam surpassed her sex and even men of her age in knowledge. She delighted in beauty, and breathed out her inspirations in rhythmic, elegant verses. Young, attractive, with a noble heart and a penetrating understanding, striving after high ideals, and a favorite of the muses, Sarah Sullam fascinated the old as well as the young. Her musical, well-trained voice excited admiration. When an elderly Italian priest, Ansaldo Ceba, at Genoa, published an heroic poem in Italian strophes, of which the scriptural Esther was the heroine, Sarah was so delighted, that she addressed an enthusiastic anonymous letter full of praise to the author (1618). It pleased her to see a Jewish heroine, her ideal, celebrated in verses, and the attention of the cultivated public directed to Jewish antiquity. She hoped that thereby the prejudice against the Jews of the day would vanish. Sarah did not conceal from the poet that she always carried his poetical creations about with her, and at night put his book under her pillow. Instead of finding satisfaction in the sincere homage of a pure woman's soul, Ceba, in his zeal for conversion, thought only of bringing her over to Christianity. When he heard Sarah's beauty extolled by the servant whom he sent with presents and verses, love for her awoke in him. This was increased by her sending him her portrait, accompanied by enthusiastic verses in the exaggerated style of that time, in which she said: "I carry my idol in my heart, and I wish everyone to worship him." But the beautiful Venetian Jewess did not allow herself to be entrapped. She held firmly to her Jewish beliefs, and unfolded to her priestly friend the reasons that induced her to prefer Judaism. In vain did Ceba, by tenderness, reproofs, and sentimental languishing, with intimations of his speedy end, and his longing to be united with her in heaven, endeavor to make her waver in her conviction. When he begged permission to pray for her salvation, she granted his request on condition that she might pray for his conversion to Judaism.
Her exceptional position as poetess, and her connection with Christians of high rank, brought her renown, not unattended by annoyances. Slanderous fellow-believers spread the report, that she esteemed the principles of Judaism but lightly, and did not fully believe in their divinity. An unprincipled Christian priest, Balthasar Bonifaccio, who later occupied the position of bishop, published a work accusing the Jewess Sarah Sullam of denying the immortality of the soul. Such a charge might in Catholic Venice have had other effects than that against Uriel da Costa in free-thinking, Protestant Amsterdam. Not merely fine and imprisonment might have been inflicted, but the Inquisition might have sentenced her to the dungeon, to torture, and perhaps even the stake. Hardly recovered from illness, she wrote (1621) a manifesto on the immortality of the soul, full of ripe dialectics, noble courage, and crushing force, against her slanderous accuser. The dedication to her deceased father is touching, and still more touching is her fervent psalm-like prayer in melodious Italian verses. The consciousness that she, a woman and Jewess, could not rely on her own strength, but only on help from above, spreads a halo about her memory. The end of this affair is not known. Ceba's epic "Esther" probably induced Leo Modena to translate Solomon Usque's tragedy on the same subject from Spanish into Italian verse; he dedicated it to Sarah Copia, whose epitaph he composed in melodious Hebrew verses.
Leo Modena also had frequent intercourse with Christians. His peculiar nature, his communicative disposition, and great learning, as also his wit and his fondness for gaming, opened the doors of Christian circles to the volatile rabbi. Christian disciples sat at his feet. The French bishop Jacob Plantavicius, and the half-crazed Christian Kabbalist Jacob Gaffarelli, were his pupils. Nobles and learned men corresponded with him, and permitted him to inscribe his works to them with flattering dedications. Leo Modena held in Italy nearly the same position as Manasseh ben Israel in Holland. In the conversation of serious men and in the merry circle of gamesters, he often heard the ceremonies of Judaism ridiculed as childish nonsense (Lex Judæorum lex puerorum). At first he defended his religion, but gradually was forced to admit one thing and another in Judaism to be defective and ridiculous; he was ashamed to be so thoroughly a Jew as to justify all consequences. His necessities led him, on pressure from Christian friends, to render single portions, and at last the whole, of the Jewish code accessible to the Christian public in the Italian language. An English lord paid him for the work, with the intention of giving it to King James I, who made pretensions to extensive learning. Afterwards his Christian disciple Gaffarelli had this work, entitled "The Hebrew Rites," printed in Paris, and dedicated it to the French ambassador at Venice. In this work, eagerly read by Christians, Leo Modena, like Ham, uncovered his father's nakedness, exposed the inner sanctuary of the Jews to prying and mocking eyes. To the uninitiated, that which within the Jewish circle was a matter for reverence could not but appear petty, silly, and absurd. Leo Modena explained what ceremonies and statutes Jews employ in connection with their dwellings, clothing, household furniture, up-rising and lying down, physical functions, and in the synagogues and schools. Involuntarily the author associated himself with the despisers of Judaism, which he as rabbi had practiced and taught. He showed that he was conscious of this:
"While writing I in fact forgot that I am a Jew, and considered myself a simple, impartial narrator. However, I do not deny that I have taken pains to avoid ridicule on account of the numerous ceremonies, but I had no intention to defend and palliate, because I wished only to communicate, not convince."
However, it would be an error to infer from this that Leo Modena had at heart completely broken with Rabbinical Judaism. He was, as has been stated, not a man of firm and lasting convictions. Almost at the same time when he exposed the rites of Judaism to the Christian public, he composed a defense of them and oral teaching in general against attacks from the Jewish side. A Hamburg Jew of Marrano descent had raised eleven points to show the falsehood of Talmudic tradition. Of these arguments some are important, others frivolous. The Hamburg sceptic laid chief stress on the point that Talmudic and Rabbinic ordinances are additions to Pentateuchal Judaism, and the Pentateuch had expressly forbidden additions of this sort. At the wish of certain Portuguese Jews, Leo Modena confuted these objections, raised by a sciolist. His confutation was a feeble performance, and contains nothing new. With Leo Modena one never knew whether he was earnest in his belief or his unbelief. As in youth he had brought forward reasons for and against games of chance, had finally condemned them, and nevertheless freely engaged in them, so he behaved with regard to Talmudical Judaism. He attacked it, defended it, made it appear ridiculous, and yet practiced it with a certain degree of honesty.
Some years after his vindication of Talmudical Judaism against the Hamburg sceptic he composed the best work (1624) that issued from his active pen. On the one side it was a weighty attack on Rabbinical Judaism, such as had hardly been made even by Christians and Karaites, on the other side, an impressive defense of it. He did not venture to put his own name to the heavy charges against Judaism, but used a fictitious name. The part which contains the attacks he called "The Fool's Voice" (Kol Sachal), and the defense, "The Roaring of the Lion" (Shaagath Aryeh). Leo Modena allotted to two characters his own duplex nature, his varying convictions. He makes the opponent of Judaism express himself with a boldness such as Uriel da Costa might have envied. Not only did he undermine the Rabbinical Judaism of the Talmud, but also biblical Judaism, the Sinaitic revelation, and the Torah. But the blows which Leo Modena, under the name of Ibn-Raz of Alkala, in an attack of unbelief, inflicted on oral teaching, or Talmudical Judaism, were most telling.
He premises that no form of religion maintains itself in its original state and purity according to the views of its founder. Judaism, also, although the lawgiver expressly warned his followers against adding anything, had many additions thrust upon it. Interpretation and comment had altered many things in it. Ibn-Raz (or Leo Modena in his unbelieving mood) examines with a critical eye Jacob Asheri's code, and at each point marks the additions made by the rabbis to the original code, and where they had weakened and distorted it. He goes so far as to make proposals how to clear Judaism of excrescences, in order to restore genuine, ancient, biblical, spiritual Judaism. This was the first attempt at reform: a simplification of the prayers and synagogue service, abolition of rites, omission of the second day of the festivals, relaxation of Sabbath, festival, Passover, and even Day of Atonement laws. Every one was to fast only according to his bodily and spiritual powers. He wished to see the ritual for slaughtering animals and the laws as to food set aside, or simplified. The prohibition to drink wine with those of other creeds made Jews ridiculous, as also did the strictness against alleged idolatry. All this, observed Ibn-Raz, or Leo Modena, at the close, does not exhaust the subject; it is only a specimen of the evil of Rabbinical Judaism. He knew well that he would be pronounced a heretic, and persecuted on account of his frank criticism, but if he could open the eyes of a single reader, he would consider himself amply rewarded.
Had Leo Modena been in earnest with this bold view, which would have revolutionized the Judaism of his day, had he uttered it to the world with deep conviction, he would no doubt have produced great commotion in Judaism. But criticism of the Talmud was only mental amusement for him; he did not intend to engage in an actual conflict. He composed a reply with as little sincerity, and let both attack and defense slumber among his papers.
Leo Modena was more in earnest with the attack on the Kabbala, which had become burdensome and repulsive to him. He felt impelled to discharge destructive arrows against it, and this he did with masterly skill. He called the anti-Kabbalistic work, which he dedicated to his disciple Joseph Chamiz, a Luryan enthusiast, "The Roaring Lion" (Ari Noham). From many sides he threw light on the deceptions, the absurdity, and the falsehood of the Kabbala and its fundamental source, the Zohar. Neither this work nor his attacks on Talmudical Judaism were published by him: the author was not anxious to labor in either direction. To a late age he continued his irregular life, without striving after real improvement. Leo Modena died, weary of the conflict, not with gods (i. e., ideas) and men, but with himself, and of the troubles which he had brought upon himself.
Apparently similar, yet differing fundamentally from him, was the third burrower of this period: Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (born 1591, died 1655). Scion of an old and noble family, in whose midst science and the Talmud were cultivated, and great-grandson on the female side of the clear thinker Elias del Medigo, he but slightly resembled the other members of his house. His father, a rabbi in Candia, had not only initiated him into Talmudic literature, but also made him learn Greek. Later Delmedigo acquired the literary languages of the time, Italian and Spanish in addition to Latin. The knowledge of languages, however, was only a means to an end. At the University of Padua he obtained his scientific education; he showed decided inclination for mathematics and astronomy, and could boast of having as his tutor the great Galileo, the discoverer of the laws of the heavens, the martyr to natural science. By him he was made acquainted with the Copernican system of the sun and the planets. Neither Delmedigo nor any believing Jew labored under the delusion that the stability of the sun and the motion of the earth were in contradiction to the Bible, and therefore heretical. Delmedigo also studied medicine, but only as a profession; his favorite subject continued to be mathematics. He enriched his mind with all the treasures of knowledge, more varied even than that of Leo Modena, to whom during his residence in Italy he clung as a disciple to his master. In the circle of Jewish-Italian semi-freethinkers he lost the simple faith which he had brought from home, and doubts as to the truth of tradition stole upon him, but he was not sufficiently animated by a desire for truth either to overcome these doubts and become settled in the early belief to which he had been brought up, or unsparingly to expose the false elements in Jewish tradition. Joseph Delmedigo was as little formed to be a martyr to his convictions as Leo Modena, the latter by reason of fickleness, the former, of insincerity.
With doubt in his heart he returned to his home in Candia, and gave offense by his free mode of thought, especially by his preference for secular knowledge. He made enemies, who are said to have persecuted him, and was obliged to leave his native land. Then began a migratory life, which drove him from city to city, like his model Ibn-Ezra. Like him, he made friends with the Karaites wherever he met them, and they thronged to his presence. At Cairo Delmedigo celebrated a complete triumph with his mathematical knowledge, when an old Mahometan teacher of mathematics, Ali Ibn-Rahmadan, challenged him, a youth, to a public combat, in which Ali was beaten. The victorious combatant was magnanimous enough to show honor to Ali before the world. Instead of betaking himself to Palestine as he had intended, Delmedigo traveled to Constantinople; here also he attached himself to the circle of the Karaites, and at last passed through Wallachia and Moldavia to Poland. There, mathematics procuring him no bread, he practiced medicine, of which, however, he had learnt more from books than by the bedside of patients. In Poland he passed for a great physician, and was taken into the service of Prince Radziwill, in Wilna (about 1619–1620). Here, through the excessive attention given to the Talmud, general culture was forsaken, but youths and men eager for learning, especially Karaites, thronged to Delmedigo to slake their thirst for knowledge. A half-crazed Karaite, Serach ben Nathan of Trok, who had an inclination to Rabbinical Judaism, in order to show his extensive knowledge, with mock humility laid before him a number of important questions, which Delmedigo was to answer offhand, and sent him a sable fur for the Polish winter.
Delmedigo found it to his advantage, in order to give himself the appearance of a distinguished character in Poland, to shroud himself in silence and seclusion. He at first answered Serach's questions not personally, but through one of his companions, an assistant and follower, Moses Metz. This man described his teacher as a choice intellect, a demi-god, who carried in his brain all human and divine knowledge. He sketched his appearance and character, his occupation and behavior, regulated, as he said, by higher wisdom, gave information about his descent from a learned and distinguished family on his father's and his mother's side, and, as his teacher's mouth-piece, imposed upon the credulous Karaite by saying that he had composed works on all branches of knowledge, at which the world would be astonished, if they came to light. Metz also communicated to Serach some of his teacher's theories in mathematics, religion, and philosophy, and thus still more confused Serach's mind. In his communications on Judaism, which Delmedigo either made himself or through Moses Metz, he was very cautious; here and there, it is true, he allowed a suggestion of unbelief to glimmer through, but quickly covered it over with a haze of orthodoxy. Only where he could do so without danger Delmedigo expressed his real opinion.
When he at last sent the Karaite an answer to a letter with his own hand (about 1621), he did not conceal his true views, but declared his preference for Karaism and its ancient teachers, loaded them undeservedly with praise, exalted science, and ridiculed the delusions of the Kabbala and its adherents. In the same letter to Serach, Delmedigo indulged in scoffs against the Talmud, and thought the Karaites fortunate that they were able to dispense with it. He had nothing to fear when he unburdened his heart before his Karaite admirer.
Delmedigo does not seem, on the whole, to have been at ease in Poland. He could not carouse with the nobles whom he attended professionally for fear of the Jews, and it was not possible to earn money in so poor a country. So he betook himself by way of Dantzic to Hamburg, where a Portuguese community had been lately permitted to settle. His knowledge of medicine seems to have met with little esteem in the city on the Elbe. What was his skill in comparison with that of the De Castros, father and son? He was compelled, in order to subsist, to undertake a certain amount of rabbinical duty, if only as preacher. For the sake of bread he had to play the hypocrite, and speak in favor of Rabbinical Judaism. Nay, in order to dissipate the rumor from Poland, which represented him as a heretic, he was not ashamed to praise the Kabbala, which he had shortly before condemned, as the highest wisdom, before which philosophy and all sciences must be dumb. For this purpose he prepared his defense of the secret doctrine, in refutation of the crushing arguments against it by one of his ancestors, Elias Del Medigo. His work was of the kind to throw dust in the eyes of the ignorant multitude; it displayed a smattering of learning on all sorts of subjects, but no trace of logic. He was too clever to maintain the sheepish style of dull, stupid credulity, and could not refrain from satire. He defended the genuineness of the Zohar as an ancient work by Simon bar Yochaï, or at least by his school. He argued that one must not be shocked by its many incongruities and absurdities; the Talmud also contains not a few, and is yet a sacred book. To save his reputation with the more intelligent, Delmedigo intimated that he had defended the Kabbala only from necessity. We must not, he says, superficially judge the character of an author by his words. He, for instance, was writing this defense of the Kabbala at the desire of a patron of high position, who was enamored of it. Should this friend come to be of another mind, and require an attack upon the Kabbala, he would not refuse him. In conclusion, he observes that philosophical students would no doubt ridicule him for having turned his back on wisdom, and betaken himself to folly; but he would rather be called a fool all his life than for a single hour transgress against piety.
This work, commenced in Hamburg, Delmedigo could not finish there. A pestilence broke out, and drove him, physician though he was, to Glückstadt. In this small community, where, as he said, there was neither town (Stadt) nor luck (Glück), he could find no means of subsistence, and he traveled on to Amsterdam about 1629. He could not attempt to practice medicine in a city where physicians lived of even higher eminence than at Hamburg, and so was obliged a second time to apply himself to the functions of rabbi. To show his importance, he printed his scientific replies to the questions of his Polish admirers, with the fulsome eulogies, clouds of incense, and foolish homage which the young Karaite Serach had offered him. It is a work of truly Polish disorder, in which mathematical theorems and scientific problems are discussed by the side of philosophical and theological questions, in a confused way. Delmedigo took care not to print his attacks upon the Kabbala and the Talmud, and his preference for the Karaites—in short, all that he had written to please the rich Serach. Instead of publishing an encyclopædic work which he boastfully said he had composed in his earliest youth, and which embraced all sciences and solved all questions, he produced a mere medley.
The Amsterdam community was then full of suspicion against philosophy and culture owing to the reckless behavior of Da Costa, and therefore Delmedigo thought it advisable to ward off every suspicion of unbelief, and get a reputation for strictest orthodoxy. This transparent hypocrisy did not answer well. He was, it is true, appointed preacher, and partially rabbi, in or near Amsterdam, but he could remain in Holland only a few years. Poor and unstable as he was, he went with his wife to Frankfort-on-the-Main about 1630 to seek means of subsistence. But here, in a German community, where Rabbinical learning was diffused, he could not obtain a rabbinical office; but he could turn his medical knowledge, scanty as it was, to account. As he felt no vocation for the office of rabbi, nor for medical practice, it was a matter of indifference if he changed the preacher's gown for the doctor's mantle. He was engaged, under irksome conditions, as communal doctor (February 14, 1631). How long he remained at Frankfort is not known; his position cannot have been favorable, for he removed to Prague (about 1648–1650), and in this most neglected community he settled. Later (1652) he was at Worms, probably only temporarily, and ended his life, which had promised so much, and realized so little, at Prague. Nor did he publish any part of his great work, which he had announced with so much pomposity.
In a measure Simone (Simcha) Luzzatto (born about 1590, died 1663) may be reckoned among the sceptics of this time. He was, at the same time as Leo Modena, rabbi in Venice. Luzzatto was not an eminent personage; but he had more solidity than his colleague Modena, or than Delmedigo. By the latter, who knew him personally, he was praised as a distinguished mathematician. He was also well read in ancient and modern literature. His uprightness and love of truth, which he never belied, distinguished him more than his knowledge and learning. A parable which Luzzatto wrote in Italian in his youth shows his views, as also his maturity of thought, and that he had reflected early on the relation of faith to science. He puts his thoughts into the mouth of Socrates, the father of Greek wisdom. At Delphi an academy had been formed to rectify the errors of human knowledge. Reason immediately presented a petition from the dungeon, where she had been so long kept by orthodox authority, to be set at liberty. Although the chief representatives of knowledge, Pythagoras and Aristotle, spoke against this request, and uttered a warning against her liberation, because, when free, she would produce and spread abroad most frightful errors, yet the academy set her at liberty; for by that means alone could knowledge be promoted. But the newly liberated minds caused great mischief; and the academicians were at a loss what to do. Then Socrates rose, and in a long speech explained that reason and authority, if allowed to reign alone, would produce only errors and mischief; but if mutually limited, reason by revelation, and revelation by reason, they mingle in the right proportion, and produce beautiful harmony, whereby man may attain his goal here below and hereafter. This thought, that reason and faith must regulate and keep watch over each other, which, in Maimuni's time had passed into a commonplace, was at this period, under the rule of Lurya's Kabbala, considered in Jewish circles a bold innovation.
Simone Luzzatto did not suffer himself to be ensnared by Kabbalistic delusions; he did not cast reason behind him; he was a believer, but withal sober-minded. He did not share the delusion of Manasseh ben Israel and others that the lost tribes of Israel were existing in some part of the world enjoying independence as a military power. With sober Jewish inquirers of former times, he assumed that Daniel's revelation does not point to a future Messiah, but only reflects historical events. He composed a work on the manners and beliefs of the Jews, which he proposed to exhibit "faithfully to truth, without zeal and passion." It was probably designed to form a counterpart to Leo Modena's representation, which cast a shadow on Judaism.
Luzzatto's defense of Judaism and the Jews, under the title "A Treatise on the Position of the Hebrews," is masterly. It speaks eloquently for his practical, sober sense, for his love of truth, his attachment to Judaism, and his solid knowledge. He did not wish to dedicate it to any individual patron out of flattery, but to the friends of truth in general. He conjured these friends not to esteem the remnant of the ancient Hebrew nation, even if disfigured by sufferings, and saddened by long oppression, more lightly than a mutilated work of art by Phidias or Lysippus, since all men were agreed that this nation was once animated and led by the greatest of Masters. It is astonishing what thorough knowledge the rabbi had of the commerce of that time, and the influence upon it of the political position of European and neighboring Asiatic states. The object of his defense was primarily to disarm the ill-will of certain Venetian patricians against the Jews in that strictly governed state. The common people had little antipathy to the Jews; they lived to some extent on them. But among those who had a share in the government there were fanatical religious zealots and envious opponents, who advocated further restrictions, or even banishment. It did not suit them that the Venetian Jews, who, shut up in the Ghetto, possessed neither land nor the right to carry on a handicraft, competed with them in finance and trade. The commercial city of Venice, far surpassed by the new naval powers, Holland and England, which had gradually obtained control of the trade with the Levant, saw many of its great houses of business in splendid misery, while new Jewish capitalists stepped into their place, and seized the Levantine business. With artful turns and delicate hints, Luzzatto gave the politicians of Venice to understand that exhaustion was hastening the downfall of the republic. The prosperous cared only to keep what they had acquired and for enjoyment, and former Venetian commerce seemed to be falling into the hands of foreigners. Hence the Jews had become a blessing to the state. It was more advisable to leave its extensive trade, especially that of the East, to native Jews, and to protect them, than to see it diverted to neighboring towns, or to strangers, who formed a state within the state, were not always obedient to the laws, and gradually carried the ready money out of the country. Luzzatto calculated from statistics that the Jews contributed more than 250,000 ducats to the republic every year, that they gave bread to 4,000 workpeople, supplied home manufactures at a cheap rate, and obtained goods from distant countries. It was reserved for a rabbi to bring this political-economical consideration, of vital importance for the island republic, to the notice of wise councilors. Luzzatto also called attention to the important advantage which the capital of the Jews had recently been, when, during the pestilence and the dissolution of political government, the Jews had spontaneously offered money to the state to prevent embarrassment.
Luzzatto also defended the Jews against attacks on the religious side, but on this point his exposition is not original. If he brought out the bright traits of his Jewish contemporaries, he by no means passed over their dark ones in silence, and that redounds to his credit. Luzzatto depicted them in the following manner. However different may be the manner of Venetian Jews from their brethren in Constantinople, Damascus, Germany, or Poland, they all have something in common:—
"It is a nation of timid and unmanly disposition, at present incapable of political government, occupied only with its separate interests, and caring little about the public welfare. The economy of the Jews borders on avarice; they are admirers of antiquity, and have no eye for the present course of things. Many are uneducated, without taste for learning or the knowledge of languages, and, in following the laws of their religion, they exaggerate to the most painful degree. But they have also noteworthy peculiarities—firmness and endurance in their religion, uniformity of doctrinal teaching in the long course of more than fifteen centuries since the dispersion; wonderful steadfastness, which leads them, if not to go into dangers, yet to endure the severest suffering. They possess knowledge of Holy Scripture and its exposition, gentleness and hospitality to the members of their race—the Persian Jew in some degree suffers the wrongs of the Italian—strict abstinence from carnal offenses, extraordinary carefulness to keep the family unspotted, and skill in managing difficult matters. They are submissive and yielding to everyone, only not to their brethren in religion. The failings of the Jews have rather the character of cowardice and meanness than of cruelty and atrocity."
What Luzzatto's position was with regard to the Talmud he did not distinctly state, but only explained generally that there are three or four classes of Jews: Talmudists or Rabbanites, who hold the oral law of equal authority with the Bible; secondly, a philosophical and cultured class; and, lastly, Kabbalists, and Karaites. Yet he intimated that he held the Talmudical tradition to be true; whilst he considered the Kabbala as not of Jewish, but of Platonic, Pythagorean, and Gnostic origin. One of his disciples relates of him that he ridiculed the Kabbalists, and thought their theory had no claim to the title of tradition; it was wanting in the Holy Spirit.
These four thinkers, more or less dissatisfied with the Judaism of the day, who were furnished with so much intellect, knowledge, and eloquence, yet exerted very little influence over their Jewish contemporaries, and thus did not break through the prevailing obscurity in the smallest degree. Luzzatto wrote for only a limited class of readers, and did not inflict, or wish to inflict, heavy blows on Judaism. Uriel da Costa missed his mark on account of his violent, impatient disposition; Leo Modena was himself too wavering, driven hither and thither by the wind of conflicting opinions, to acquire serious convictions and do battle for them. His attacks on the weak side of Judaism, as has been stated, were made in private. Joseph Delmedigo did more harm than good through his insincerity and hypocrisy. Lacking character, he sank so low as to speak in favor of the confused doctrines of the Kabbala, and by the weight of his knowledge confirmed and increased the delusion of the multitude. But from two other quarters, by two quite opposite characters, weighty blows against Judaism were delivered, threatening completely to shatter it. Reason incorporated, as it were, in one Jew, and unreason incarnate in another, joined hands to treat Judaism as abolished and dissolved, and, so to speak, to dethrone the God of Israel.
Spinoza's Youth and Education—His Intellectual Breach with Judaism—Fresh Martyrs of the Inquisition—The Rabbis and Spinoza—Excommunication—Spinoza's "Tractate" and "Ethics"—Spinoza's Writings Concerning Judaism—Spinoza's Contemporaries in Amsterdam—De Paz and Penso—The Mystical Character of the Years 1648 and 1666—Sabbataï Zevi's early Career—The Jerusalem Community—Sabbataï's Travels—Nathan Ghazati—Sabbataï announced in Smyrna as the Messiah—Spread of Enthusiastic Belief in the pseudo-Messiah—Manoel Texeira—Ritual Changes introduced by the Sabbatians—Sabbataï proceeds to Constantinople—Nehemiah Cohen—Sabbataï Zevi's Apostasy to Islam and its Consequences—Continuation of the Sabbatian Movement—Death of Sabbataï and Spinoza—Results of the Sabbatian Imposture.
1656–1677 C. E.
Whilst Manasseh ben Israel was zealously laboring to complete the fabric of Judaism by hastening on the Messianic era, one of his disciples was applying an intellectual lever to destroy this edifice to its foundation and convert it into a shapeless dust heap. He was earnest about what was only amusement for Leo Modena. The Jewish race once more brought a deep thinker into the world, one who was radically to heal the human mind of its rooted perversities and errors, and to prescribe a new direction for it, that it might better comprehend the connection between heaven and earth, between mind and matter. Like his ancestor Abraham, this Jewish thinker desired to break to pieces all idols and vain images, before which men had hitherto bowed down through fear, custom, and indolence, and to reveal to them a new God, not enthroned in heaven's height beyond their reach, but living and moving within them, whose temple they themselves should be. His influence was like that of the storm, deafening and crushing down, but also purifying and refreshing.
The lightning flashes of this great philosophical genius did greatest injury to Judaism which was nearest to him. In the degradation of the religion of his day and its professors, even his searching gaze could not recognize the fair form concealed beneath a loathsome exterior.
This great thinker, the most famous philosopher of his time, who brought about a new redemption, was Baruch Spinoza (really Espinosa, born in Spain 1632, died 1677). He belonged to a family eminent for neither intellect nor wealth. No sign at his birth portended that he would reign for more than two centuries a king in the realm of thought. With many other boys, he attended the Jewish school, consisting of seven classes, recently established in Amsterdam, whither his parents had migrated. With his extraordinary talents he surely kept pace with the requirements of the school, if he did not exceed them. In his thirteenth or fourteenth year he was probably introduced by Manasseh ben Israel to the study of the Talmud, and initiated into Hebrew grammar, rhetoric, and poetry. He received final instruction in Rabbinical lore from Saul Morteira, the greatest Talmudist of his time in Amsterdam. Together with Spinoza Morteira taught others who later had more or less influence on Jewish history, but were of quite another stamp.
Moses Zacut (1630–1697), a descendant of the famous family of that name, was held to be Morteira's first disciple. From his youth upwards, with his predilection for mysticism and poetry, he formed a direct contrast to Spinoza. He loved what was inexact and obscure, Spinoza the clear and definite. Two incidents may serve to portray Moses Zacut. He was asked when young what he thought of the fabulous narratives of Rabba Bar-Bar-Chana in the Talmud, which are like those of Münchhausen, and he replied that he regarded them as historical. When young he learned Latin like most Portuguese youths in Amsterdam. Later, he so regretted having learned that language, that he fasted forty days in order to forget it, because, as he thought, this tongue of the devil was not compatible with Kabbalistic truth. Another fellow-disciple of Spinoza was Isaac Naar (Nahar), likewise a mystic, and of a spiteful and not over-scrupulous nature.
Thirst for knowledge stimulated Spinoza to venture beyond the limited circle of studies pursued in Morteira's lecture-room. He plunged into the writings of older Jewish thinkers, three of whom alike attracted and repelled him: Ibn-Ezra with his free-thinking and his reticence, Moses Maimuni with his artificial system, aiming at the reconciliation of faith and science, of Judaism and philosophy, and Chasdaï Crescas with his hostility to traditional philosophy. Spinoza was also at home in the Kabbala, the main doctrines of which had been rendered accessible through Abraham de Herrera and Isaac Aboab. These various elements heaved and fermented in his mind, which strove for insight, and excited in his breast tormenting doubts, to which Ibn-Ezra's covert unbelief mainly contributed. A youth of fifteen, Spinoza is said to have expressed his doubts in the form of questions to his master Morteira, which may have not a little perplexed a rabbi accustomed to beaten tracks. To these elements of scepticism, conveyed to him from Jewish literature, others were added from without. Spinoza learned Latin, in itself nothing remarkable, since, as has been remarked, nearly all the Jewish youths of Amsterdam, as well as Christians of the educated classes of Holland, regarded that language as a means of culture. But he was not contented with superficial knowledge; he desired to drink deep of classical literature. He sought the instruction of an eminent philologist of his time, Dr. Franz van den Enden, who lectured in Amsterdam to noble youths, native and foreign. Here he learned, in contact with educated Christian youths, to adopt a different point of view from that which obtained in Morteira's lecture-room and in Jewish circles. Van den Enden also strongly influenced his mind. Though not an atheist, he was a man of sceptical and satirical vein, who turned religious customs and prejudices to ridicule, and exposed their weaknesses. But what with him was the object of humor and wit, excited Spinoza's susceptible and analytical mind to deep reflection and meditation. The natural sciences, mathematics, and physics, which he pursued with devotion, and the new-born, imposing philosophy of Descartes (Cartesius), for which his mind had special affinity, extended his circle of vision and enlightened his judgment. The more he imbibed ideas from various sources, assimilating them with those innate in him, and the more his logical understanding developed, the more did he become alienated from Judaism, in its Rabbinical and Kabbalistic trappings, and love of Van den Enden's learned daughter was not needed to make him a pervert from Jewish belief.
Independent, judicial reason, which disregards what is traditional or hallowed by time, and follows its own laws, was his mistress. To her he dedicated pure, undivided worship, and she led him to break with inherited views. All that cannot be justified before the inexorable tribunal of clear human vision, passed with him for superstition and clouded thought, if not actual frenzy. His ardent desire for truth, pure truth and certainty, led him to a complete breach with the religion endeared to him from childhood; he not only rejected Talmudical Judaism, but also regarded the Bible as the work of man. The apparent contradictions in the books of Holy Scripture appear to have first raised his doubts as to their inspiration. It must have cost him a hard struggle to give up the customs and opinions endeared to him through manifold ties, and to become, to a certain extent, a new man. For Spinoza was quite as much a moral character as a deep thinker. To hold anything as false in theory, and yet from fear, custom, or advantage to adopt it in practice was impossible for him. He was differently constituted to his revered master Descartes, who kept away from the church the torch of truth which he had kindled, made a gap between theory and practice to avoid offending that church, and, for example, vowed a pilgrimage to our Lady of Loretto for the success of his system and its destructive tendency. According to Spinoza's idea every action ought to be a true reflection of reason. When he could no longer find truth in Judaism, he could not bring himself to follow its ritual precepts. He ceased to attend the synagogue, cared no longer for the Sabbath and the festivals, and broke the laws concerning diet. He did not confine himself to the renunciation of Judaism, but imparted his convictions to young men who sought his instruction.
The representatives of the community of Amsterdam were the more concerned at the daily increasing report of Spinoza's estrangement from, and hostility to Judaism, as they had in a measure looked upon the gifted youth as their exponent, and as a firm support to the jeopardized religion of their fathers. Now it was to be feared that he would abandon it, go over to Christianity, and devote his intellectual gifts to doing battle against his mother-faith. Could the representatives of that faith, the college of rabbis and the secular heads of the community, behold with indifference this systematic neglect of Judaism in their midst? Fugitives were ever coming from Spain and Portugal, who forfeited their high position, and staked life and property, to remain true to Judaism. Others with unbending attachment to the faith of their fathers, let themselves be dragged to the dark prisons of the Inquisition, or with cheerful courage mounted the funeral pile. A contemporary writer, an eye-witness, reports:
"In Spain and Portugal there are monasteries and convents full of Jews. Not a few conceal Judaism in their heart and feign Christianity on account of worldly goods. Some of these feel the stings of conscience and escape, if they are able. In this city (Amsterdam) and in several other places, we have monks, Augustinians, Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, who have rejected idolatry. There are bishops in Spain and grave monks, whose parents, brothers, or sisters, dwell here (in Amsterdam) and in other cities in order to be able to profess Judaism."
At the very time when Spinoza became estranged from Judaism, the smoke and flames of the funeral piles of Jewish martyrs rose in several cities of Spain and Portugal, in Cuenca, Granada, Santiago de Compostela, Cordova, and Lisbon.
In the last-named city a distinguished Marrano, Manuel Fernando de Villa-Real, statesman, political writer, and poet, who conducted the consular affairs of the Portuguese court at Paris, returned to Lisbon on business, was seized by the Inquisition, gagged, and led to execution (December 1, 1652). In Cuenca on one day (June 29, 1654) fifty-seven Christian proselytes to Judaism were dragged to the auto-da-fé. Most of them only received corporal chastisement with loss of property, but ten were burned to death. Amongst them was a distinguished man, the court-saddler Balthasar Lopez, from Valladolid, who had amassed a fortune of 100,000 ducats. He had migrated to Bayonne, where a small community of former Marranos was tolerated, and had returned to Spain only to persuade a nephew to come back to Judaism. He was seized by the Inquisition, tortured, and condemned to death by the halter and the stake. On his way to the scaffold, Balthasar Lopez ridiculed the Inquisition and Christianity. He exclaimed to the executioner about to bind him, "I do not believe in your Christ, even if you bind me," and threw the cross which had been forced upon him to the ground. Five months later twelve Marranos were burnt in Granada. Again, some months later (March, 1655), a promising youth of twenty, Marcos da Almeyda Bernal, whose Jewish name was Isaac, died at the stake; and two months afterwards (May 3d) Abraham Nuñes Bernal was burnt at Cordova.
Whoever in the community of Amsterdam could compose verses in Spanish, Portuguese, or Latin, sang or bewailed the martyrdom of the two Bernals. Was Spinoza's view correct that all these martyrs, and the thousands of Jewish victims still hounded by the Inquisition, pursued a delusion? Could the representatives of Judaism allow unreproved, in their immediate neighborhood, the promulgation of the idea that Judaism is merely an antiquated error?
The college of rabbis, in which sat the two chief Chachams, Saul Morteira and Isaac Aboab—Manasseh ben Israel was then living in London—had ascertained the fact of Spinoza's change of opinion, and had collected evidence. It was not easy to accuse him of apostasy, as he did not proclaim his thoughts aloud in the market-place, as Uriel da Costa had announced his breach with Judaism. Besides, he led a quiet, self-contained life, and associated little with men. His avoidance of the synagogue, the first thing probably to attract notice, could not form the subject of a Rabbinical accusation. It is possible that, as is related, two of his fellow-students (one, perhaps, the sly Isaac Naar) thrust themselves upon him, drew him out, and accused him of unbelief, and contempt for Judaism. Spinoza was summoned, tried, and admonished to return to his former course of life. The court of rabbis did not at first proceed with severity against him, for he was a favorite of his teacher, and beloved in the community on account of his modest bearing and moral behavior. By virtue of the firmness of his character Spinoza probably made no sort of concession, but insisted upon freedom of thought and conduct. Without doubt he was, in consequence, laid under the lesser excommunication, that is, close intercourse with him was forbidden for thirty days. This probably caused less pain to Spinoza, who, self-centred, found sufficient resource in his rich world of thought, than to the superficial Da Costa. Also, he was not without Christian friends, and he, therefore, made no alteration in his manner of life. This firmness was naturally construed as obstinacy and defiance. But the rabbinate, as well as the secular authorities of the community did not wish to exert the rigor of the Rabbinical law against him, in order not to drive him to an extreme measure, i. e., into the arms of the Church. What harm might not the conversion to Christianity of so remarkable a youth entail in a newly-founded community, consisting of Jews with Christian reminiscences! What impression would it make on the Marranos in Spain and Portugal? Perhaps the scandal caused by Da Costa's excommunication, still fresh in men's memories, may have rendered a repetition impracticable. The rabbis, therefore, privately offered Spinoza, through his friends, a yearly pension of a thousand gulden on condition that he take no hostile step against Judaism, and show himself from time to time in the synagogue. But Spinoza, though young, was of so determined a character, that money could not entice him to abandon his convictions or to act the hypocrite. He insisted that he would not give up freedom of inquiry and thought. He continued to impart to Jewish youths doctrines undermining Judaism. So the tension between him and the representatives of Judaism became daily greater; both sides were right, or imagined they were. A fanatic in Amsterdam thought that he could put an end to this breach by a dagger-stroke aimed at the dangerous apostate. He waylaid Spinoza at the exit from the theatre, and struck at the philosopher with his murderous weapon. But the latter observed the hostile movement in time, and avoided the blow, so that only his coat was damaged. Spinoza left Amsterdam to avoid the danger of assassination, and betook himself to the house of a friend, likewise persecuted by the dominant Calvinistic Church, an adherent of the sect of the Rhynsburgians, or Collectants, who dwelt in a village between Amsterdam and Ouderkerk. Reconciliation between Spinoza and the synagogue was no longer to be thought of. The rabbis and the secular authorities of the community pronounced the greater excommunication upon him, proclaiming it in the Portuguese language on a Thursday, Ab 6th (July 24th), 1656, shortly before the fast in memory of the destruction of Jerusalem. The sentence was pronounced solemnly in the synagogue from the pulpit before the open Ark. The sentence was as follows:
"The council has long had notice of the evil opinions and actions of Baruch d'Espinosa, and these are daily increasing in spite of efforts to reclaim him. In particular, he teaches and proclaims dreadful heresy, of which credible witnesses are present, who have made their depositions in presence of the accused."
All this, they continued, had been proved in the presence of the elders, and the council had resolved to place him under the ban, and excommunicate him.
The usual curses were pronounced upon him in presence of scrolls of the Law, and finally the council forbade any one to have intercourse with him, verbally or by writing, to do him any service, to abide under the same roof with him, or to come within the space of four cubits' distance from him, or to read his writings. Contrary to wont, the ban against Spinoza was stringently enforced, to keep young people from his heresies.
Spinoza was away from Amsterdam, when the ban was hurled against him. He is said to have received the news with indifference, and to have remarked that he was now compelled to do what he would otherwise have done without compulsion. His philosophic nature, which loved solitude, could easily dispense with intercourse with relatives and former friends. Yet the matter did not end for him there. The representative body of the Portuguese community appealed to the municipal authorities to effect his perpetual banishment from Amsterdam. The magistrates referred the question, really a theological one, to the clergy, and the latter are said to have proposed his withdrawal from Amsterdam for some months. Most probably this procedure prompted him to elaborate a justificatory pamphlet to show the civil authorities that he was no violator or transgressor of the laws of the state, but that he had exercised his just rights, when he reflected on the religion of his forefathers and religion generally, and thought out new views. The chain of reasoning suggested to Spinoza in the preparation of his defense caused him doubtless to give wider extension and bearing to this question. It gave him the opportunity to treat of freedom of thought and inquiry generally, and so to lay the foundation of the first of his suggestive writings, which have conferred upon him literary immortality. In the village to which he had withdrawn, 1656–60, and later in Rhynsburg, where he also spent several years, 1660–64, Spinoza occupied himself (while polishing lenses, which handicraft he had learned to secure his moderate subsistence) with the Cartesian philosophy and the elaboration of the work entitled "The Theologico-Political Treatise." His prime object was to spread the conviction that freedom of thought can be permitted without prejudice to religion and the peace of the state; furthermore, that it must be permitted, for if it were forbidden, religion and peace could not exist in the state.
The apology for freedom of thought had been rendered harder rather than easier for Spinoza, by the subsidiary ideas with which he crossed the main lines of his system. He could not philosophically find the source of law, and transferred its origin to might. Neither God, nor man's conscience, according to Spinoza, is the fountain of the eternal law which rules and civilizes mankind; it springs from the whole lower natural world. He made men to a certain extent "like the fishes of the sea, like creeping things, which have no master." Large fish have the right, not only to drink water, but also to devour smaller fish, because they have the power to do so; the sphere of right of the individual man extends as far as his sphere of might. This natural right does not recognize the difference between good and evil, virtue and vice, submission and force. But because such unlimited assertion on the part of each must lead to a perpetual state of war of all against all, men have tacitly, from fear, or hope, or reason, given up their unlimited privileges to a collective body, the state. Out of two evils—on the one hand, the full possession of their sphere of right and might, tending to mutual destruction, and its alienation, on the other—men have chosen the latter as the lesser evil. The state, whether represented by a supreme authority elected for the purpose, such as the Dutch States General, or by a despot, is the full possessor of the rights of all, because of the power of all. Every one is bound by his own interest to unconditional obedience, even if he should be commanded to deprive others of life; resistance is not only punishable, but contrary to reason. This supreme power is not controlled by any law. Whether exercised by an individual, as in a monarchy, or by several, as in a republic, it is justified in doing everything, and can do no wrong. But the state has supreme right not merely over actions of a civil nature, but also over spiritual and religious views; it could not exist, if everyone were at liberty to attack it under the pretext of religion. The government alone has the right to control religious affairs, and to define belief, unbelief, orthodoxy, and heresy. What a tyrannical conclusion! As this theory of Spinoza fails to recognize moral law, so it ignores steadfast fidelity. As soon as the government grows weak, it no longer has claim to obedience; everyone may renounce and resist it, to submit himself to the incoming power. According to this theory of civil and religious despotism, no one may have an opinion about the laws of the state, otherwise he is a rebel. Spinoza's theory almost does away with freedom, even of thought and opinion. Whoever speaks against a state ordinance in a fault-finding spirit, or to throw odium upon the government, or seeks to repeal a law against its express wish, should be regarded as a disturber of the public peace. Only through a sophistical quibble was Spinoza able to save freedom of thought and free expression of opinion. Every man has this right by nature, the only one which he has not transferred to the state, because it is essentially inalienable. It must be conceded to everyone to think and judge in opposition to the opinion of the government, even to speak and teach, provided this be done with reason and reflection, without fraud, anger, or malice, and without the intention of causing a revolution.
On this weak basis, supported by a few other secondary considerations, Spinoza justified his conflict with Judaism and his philosophical attacks upon the sacred writings recognized by the Dutch States. He thought that he had succeeded in justifying himself before the magistrates sufficiently by his defense of freedom of thought. In the formulation of this apology it was apparent that he was not indifferent to the treatment which he had experienced from the college of rabbis. Spinoza was so filled with displeasure, if not with hatred, of Jews and Judaism, that his otherwise clear judgment was biased. He, like Da Costa, called the rabbis nothing but Pharisees, and imputed to them ambitious and degraded motives, while they wished only to secure their treasured beliefs against attacks. Prouder even than his contemporaries, the French and English philosophers, of freedom of thought, for centuries repressed by the church, and now soaring aloft the more powerfully, Spinoza summoned theology, in particular, ancient Judaism before the throne of reason, examined its dogmas and archives, and pronounced sentence of condemnation upon his mother-faith. He had erected a tower of thought in his brain from which, as it were, he wished to storm heaven. Spinoza's philosophy is like a fine net, laid before our eyes, mesh by mesh, by which the human understanding is unexpectedly ensnared, so that half voluntarily, half compulsorily, it surrenders. Spinoza recognized, as no thinker before, those universal laws, immutable as iron, which are apparent in the development of the most insignificant grain of seed no less than in the revolution of the heavenly bodies, in the precision of mathematical thought as in the apparent irregularity of human passions. Whilst these laws work with constant uniformity, and produce the same causes and the same phenomena in endless succession, the instruments of law are perishable things, creatures of a day, which rise, and vanish to give place to others: here eternity, there temporality; on the one side necessity, on the other chance; here reality, there delusive appearances. These and other enigmas Spinoza sought to solve with the penetration that betrays the son of the Talmud, and with logical consecutiveness and masterly arrangement, for which Aristotle might have envied him.
The whole universe, all individual things, and their active powers are, according to Spinoza, not merely from God, but of God; they constitute the infinite succession of forms in which God reveals Himself, through which He eternally works according to His eternal nature—the soul, as it were, of thinking bodies, the body of the soul extended in space. God is the indwelling, not the external efficient cause of all things; all is in God and moves in God. God as creator and generator of all things is generative or self-producing nature. The whole of nature is animate, and ideas, as bodies, move in eternity on lines running parallel to or intersecting one another. Though the fullness of things which have proceeded from God and which exist in Him are not of an eternal, but of a perishable nature, yet they are not limited or defined by chance, but by the necessity of the divine nature, each in its own way existing or acting within its smaller or larger sphere. The eternal and constant nature of God works in them through the eternal laws communicated to them. Things could, therefore, not be constituted otherwise than they are; for they are the manifestations, entering into existence in an eternal stream, of God in the intimate connection of thought and extension.
What is man's place in this logical system? How is he to act and work? Even he, with all his greatness and littleness, his strength and weakness, his heaven-aspiring mind, and his body subject to the need of sustenance, is nothing more than a form of existence (Modus) of God. Man after man, generation after generation, springs up and perishes, flows away like a drop in a perpetual stream, but his nature, the laws by which he moves bodily and mentally in the peculiar connection of mind and matter, reflect the Divine Being. Especially the human mind, or rather the various modes of thought, the feelings and conceptions of all men, form the eternal reason of God. But man is as little free as things, as the stone which rolls down from the mountain; he has to obey the causes which influence him from within and without. Each of his actions is the product of an infinite series of causes and effects, which he can scarcely discern, much less control and alter at will. The good man and the bad, the martyr who sacrifices himself for a noble object, as well as the execrable villain and the murderer, are all like clay in the hands of God; they act, the one well, the other ill, compelled by their inner nature. They all act from rigid necessity. No man can reproach God for having given him a weak nature or a clouded intellect, as it would be irrational if a circle should complain that God has not given it the nature and properties of the sphere. It is not the lot of every man to be strong-minded, and it lies as little in his power to have a sound mind as a sound body.
On one side man is, to a certain extent, free, or rather some men of special mental endowments can free themselves a little from the pressure exercised upon them. Man is a slave chiefly through his passions. Love, hate, anger, thirst for glory, avarice, make him the slave of the external world. These passions spring from the perplexity of the soul, which thinks it can control things, but wears itself out, so to speak, against their obstinate resistance, and suffers pain thereby. The better the soul succeeds in comprehending the succession of causes and effects and the necessity of phenomena in the plan of the universe, the better able is it to change pain into a sense of comfort. Through higher insight, man, if he allows himself to be led by reason, can acquire strength of soul, and feel increased love to God, that is, to the eternal whole. On the one hand, this secures nobility of mind to aid men and to win them by mildness and benevolence; and creates, on the other, satisfaction, joy, and happiness. He who is gifted with highest knowledge lives in God, and God in him. Knowledge is virtue, as ignorance is, to a certain extent, vice. Whilst the wise man, or strictly speaking, the philosopher, thanks to his higher insight and his love of God, enjoys tranquillity of soul, the man of clouded intellect, who abandons himself to the madness of his passions, must dispense with this joyousness, and often perishes in consequence. The highest virtue, according to Spinoza's system, is self-renunciation through knowledge, keeping in a state of passiveness, coming as little as possible in contact with the crushing machinery of forces—avoiding them if they come near, or submitting to them if their wild career overthrows the individual. But as he who is beset by desires deserves no blame, so no praise is due the wise man who practices self-renunciation; both follow the law of their nature. Higher knowledge and wisdom cannot be attained if the conditions are wanting, namely, a mind susceptible of knowledge and truth, which one can neither give himself, nor throw off. Man has thus no final aim, any more than the eternal substance.
Spinoza's moral doctrines—ethics in the narrower sense—are just as unfruitful as his political theories. In either case, he recognizes submission as the only rational course.
With this conception of God and moral action, it cannot surprise us that Judaism found no favor in Spinoza's eyes. Judaism lays down directly opposite principles—beckons man to a high, self-reliant task, and proclaims aloud the progress of mankind in simple service of God, holiness, and victory over violence, the sword, and degrading war. This progress has been furthered in many ways by Judaism in the course of ages. Wanting, as Spinoza was, in apprehension of historical events, more wonderful than the phenomena of nature, and unable as he therefore was to accord to Judaism special importance, he misconceived it still further through his bitterness against the Amsterdam college of rabbis, who pardonably enough, had excommunicated him. Spinoza transferred his bitterness against the community to the whole Jewish race and to Judaism. As has been already said, he called the rabbis Pharisees in his "Theologico-Political Treatise" and in letters to his friends, and gave the most invidious meaning to this word. To Christianity, on the contrary, Spinoza conceded great excellencies; he regarded Judaism with displeasure, therefore, detected deficiencies and absurdities everywhere, while he cast a benevolent eye upon Christianity, and overlooked its weaknesses. Spinoza, therefore, with all the instinct for truth which characterized him, formed a conception of Judaism which, in some degree just, was, in many points, perverse and defective. Clear as his mind was in metaphysical inquiries, it was dark and confused on historical ground. To depreciate Judaism, Spinoza declared that the books of Holy Scripture contain scribes' errors, interpolations, and disfigurements, and are not, as a rule, the work of the authors to whom they are ascribed—not even the Pentateuch, the original source of Judaism. Ezra, perhaps, first collected and arranged it after the Babylonian exile. The genuine writings of Moses are no longer extant, not even the Ten Commandments being in their original form. Nevertheless, Spinoza accepted every word in the Bible as a kind of revelation, and designated all persons who figure in it as prophets. He conceded, on the ground of Scripture, that the revelation of the prophets was authenticated by visible signs. Nevertheless, he very much underrated this revelation. Moses, the prophets, and all the higher personages of the Bible had only a confused notion of God, nature, and living beings; they were not philosophers, they did not avail themselves of the natural light of reason. Jesus stood higher; he taught not only a nation, but the whole of mankind on rational grounds. The Apostles, too, were to be set higher than the prophets, since they introduced a natural method of instruction, and worked not merely through signs, but also through rational conviction. As though the main effort of the Apostles, to which their whole zeal was devoted, viz., to reach belief in the miraculous resurrection of Jesus, were consistent with reason! It was only Spinoza's bitterness against Jews which caused him to depreciate their spiritual property and overrate Christianity. His sober intellect, penetrating to the eternal connection of things and events, could not accept miracles, but those of the New Testament he judged mildly.
In spite of his condemnatory verdict on Judaism, he was struck by two phenomena, which he did not fully understand, and which, therefore, he judged only superficially according to his system. These were the moral greatness of the prophets, and the superiority of the Israelite state, which in a measure depend on each other. Without understanding the political organization, in which natural and moral laws, necessity and freedom work together, Spinoza explains the origin of the Jewish state, that is, of Judaism, in the following manner: When the Israelites, after deliverance from slavery in Egypt, were free from all political bondage, and restored to their natural rights, they willingly chose God as their Lord, and transferred their rights to Him alone by formal contract and alliance. That there be no appearance of fraud on the divine side, God permitted them to recognize His marvelous power, by virtue of which He had hitherto preserved, and promised in future to preserve them, that is, He revealed Himself to them in His glory on Sinai; thus God became the King of Israel and the state a theocracy. Religious opinions and truths, therefore, had a legal character in this state, religion and civic right coincided. Whoever revolted from religion forfeited his rights as a citizen, and whoever died for religion was a patriot. Pure democratic equality, the right of all to entreat God and interpret the laws, prevailed among the Israelites. But when, in the overpowering bewilderment of the revelation from Sinai, they voluntarily asked Moses to receive the laws from God and to interpret them, they renounced their equality, and transferred their rights to Moses. Moses from that time became God's representative. Hence, he promulgated laws suited to the condition of the people at that time, and introduced ceremonies to remind them always of the Law and keep them from willfulness, so that in accordance with a definite precept they should plough, sow, eat, clothe themselves, in a word, do everything according to the precepts of the Law. Above all, he provided that they might not act from childish or slavish fear, but from reverence for God. He bound them by benefits, and promised them earthly prosperity—all through the power and by the command of God. Moses was vested with spiritual and civil power, and authorized to transmit both. He preferred to transfer the civil power to his disciple Joshua in full, but not as a heritage, and the spiritual power to his brother Aaron as a heritage, but limited by the civil ruler, and not accompanied by a grant of territory. After the death of Moses the Jewish state was neither a monarchy, nor an aristocracy, nor a democracy; it remained a theocracy. The family of the high-priest was God's interpreter, and the civil power, after Joshua's death, fell to single tribes or their chiefs.
This constitution offered many advantages. The civil rulers could not turn the law to their own advantage, nor oppress the people, for the Law was the province of the sacerdotal order—the sons of Aaron and the Levites. Besides, the people were made acquainted with the Law through the prescribed reading at the close of the Sabbatical year, and would not have passed over with indifference any willful transgression of the law of the state. The army was composed of native militia, while foreigners, that is, mercenaries, were excluded. Thus the rulers were prevented from oppressing the people or waging war arbitrarily. The tribes were united by religion, and the oppression of one tribe by its ruler would have been punished by the rest. The princes were not placed at the head through rank or privilege of blood, but through capacity and merit. Finally, the institution of prophets proved very wholesome. Since the constitution was theocratical, every one of blameless life was able through certain signs to represent himself as a prophet like Moses, draw the oppressed people to him in the name of God, and oppose the tyranny of the rulers. This peculiar constitution produced in the heart of the Israelites an especial patriotism, which was at the same time a religion, so that no one would betray it, leave God's kingdom, or swear allegiance to a foreigner. This love, coupled with hatred against other nations, and fostered by daily worship of God, became second nature to the Israelites. It strengthened them to endure everything for their country with steadfastness and courage. This constitution offered a further advantage, because the land was equally divided, and no one could be permanently deprived of his portion through poverty, as restitution had to be made in the year of jubilee.
Hence, there was little poverty, or such only as was endurable, for the love of one's neighbor had to be exercised with the greatest conscientiousness to keep the favor of God, the King. Finally, a large space was accorded to gladness. Thrice a year and on other occasions the people were to assemble at festivals, not to revel in sensual enjoyments, but to accustom themselves to follow God gladly; for there is no more effectual means of guiding the hearts of men than the joy which arises from love and admiration.
After Spinoza had depicted Israel's theocracy quite as a pattern for all states, he was apparently startled at having imparted so much light to the picture, and he looked around for shade. Instead of answering in a purely historical manner the questions, whence it came that the Hebrews were so often subdued, and why their state was entirely destroyed; instead of indicating that these wholesome laws remained a never realized ideal, Spinoza suggests a sophistic solution. Because God did not wish to make Israel's dominion lasting, he gave bad laws and statutes. Spinoza supports this view by a verse which he misunderstood. These bad laws, rebellion against the sacerdotal state, coupled with bad morals, produced discontent, revolt, and insurrection. At last matters went so far, that instead of the Divine King, the Israelites chose a human one, and instead of the temple, a court. Monarchy, however, only increased the disorder; it could not endure the state within the state, the high-priesthood, and lowered the dignity of the latter by the introduction of strange worship. The prophets could avail nothing, because they only declaimed against the tyrants, but could not remove the cause of the evils. All things combined brought on the destruction of the divine state. With its destruction by the Babylonian king, the natural rights of the Israelites were transferred to the conqueror, and they were bound to obey him and his successors, as they had obeyed God. All the laws of Judaism, nay, the whole of Judaism, was thereby abolished, and no longer had any significance. This was the result of Spinoza's inquiry in his "Theologico-Political Treatise." Judaism had a brilliant past, God concluded an alliance with the people, showed to them His exalted power, and gave them excellent laws; but He did not intend Israel's preëminence to be permanent, therefore He also gave bad laws. Consequently, Judaism reached its end more than two thousand years ago, and yet it continued its existence! Wonderful! Spinoza found the history of Israel and the constitution of the state excellent during the barbarism of the period of the Judges, while the brilliant epochs of David and Solomon and of King Uzziah remained inexplicable to him. And, above all, the era of the second Temple, the Maccabean epoch, when the Jewish nation rose from shameful degradation to a brilliant height, and brought the heathen world itself to worship the one God and adopt a moral life, remained to Spinoza an insoluble riddle. This shows that his whole demonstration and his analysis (schematism) cannot stand the test of criticism, but rests on false assumptions.
Spinoza might have brought Judaism into extreme peril; for he not only furnished its opponents with the weapons of reason to combat Judaism more effectually, but also conceded to every state and magistrate the right to suppress it and use force against its followers, to which they ought meekly to submit. The funeral piles of the Inquisition for Marranos were, according to Spinoza's system, doubly justified; citizens have no right on rational grounds to resist the recognized religion of the state, and it is folly to profess Judaism and to sacrifice oneself for it. But a peculiar trait of Spinoza's character stood Judaism in good stead. He loved peace and quiet too well to become a propagandist for his critical principles. "To be peaceable and peaceful" was his ideal; avoidance of conflict and opposition was at once his strength and his weakness. To his life's end he led an ideally-philosophical life; for food, clothing, and shelter, he needed only so much as he could earn with his handicraft of polishing lenses, which his friends disposed of. He struggled against accepting a pension, customarily bestowed on learned men at that time, even from his sincere and rich admirers, Simon de Vries and the grand pensionary De Witt, that he might not fall into dependence, constraint, and disquiet. By reason of this invincible desire for philosophic calm and freedom from care, he would not decide in favor of either of the political parties, then setting the States General in feverish agitation. Not even the exciting murder of his friend John de Witt was able to hurry him into partisanship. Spinoza bewailed his high and noble friend, but did not defend his honor, to clear it of suspicion. When the most highly cultivated German prince of his time, Count-Palatine Karl Ludwig, who cherished a certain affection for Jews, offered him, "the Protestant Jew," as he was still called, the chair of philosophy in the University of Heidelberg under very favorable conditions, Spinoza declined the offer. He did not conceal his reason: he would not surrender his quietude. From this predominant tendency, or, rather, from fear of disturbance and inconveniences and from apprehension of calling enemies down upon him, or of coming into collision with the state, he refused to publish his speculations for a long time. When at last he resolved, on the pressure of friends, to send "The Theologico-Political Treatise" to press, he did not put his name to the work, which made an epoch in literature, and even caused a false place of publication, viz., Hamburg, to be printed on the title-page, in order to obliterate every trace of its real authorship. He almost denied his offspring, to avoid being disturbed.