106. - Judaism

Summary

There is little question that Judaism played a key role in Spinoza’s life and philosophy. He was born into a family of Spanish Jews who had probably been forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition and then later fled the Iberian Peninsula to arrive ultimately in Amsterdam, where they could live openly as Jews again. He received a traditional Jewish education, mastered Hebrew, and acquired a wide-ranging knowledge of the Bible and Jewish philosophical works. He became notorious when in 1656 at the age of twenty-three he was banned from the Jewish community due to his “abominable heresies … and … monstrous deeds.” Although other converso thinkers, such as Uriel da Costa, who had dared to express heterodox views, had been threatened with ostracism, Spinoza was apparently unique in refusing to renounce his views and leaving the community. He never returned, living with various freethinking Christian sects, such as the Collegiants, though he also never embraced their faith either (Nadler 2018c).