The Excommunication of Spinoza
A 1977 stamp issued by the Netherlands (Scott 567) commemorates one of the most prominent thinkers ever excommunicated by a Jewish congregation. The stamp depicts famed Dutch philospher Benedict (born Baruch) de Spinoza.
Although Netherlands issued the stamp on February 21, 1977, exactly 300 years after Spinoza's death, it's worth noting that for much of his life, the country did not recognize Spinoza as a citizen. Why? Because he was born a Jew. Yet, in the 1850s, Spinoza was excommunicated from his faith -- making him for a time a man with neither a country or religion.
Spinoza was born in Amsterdam on November 24, 1632, and was named Baruch by his parents who were descendants of Jews who had fled
the Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions. He adopted the Latin equivalent, Benedictus, when he was excommunicated by the Jewish congregation on July 27, 1656. Although many of his ideas were formulated before he was excommunicated, his formal publications occurred later, some only after his death.
The act of excommunication -- or exclusion from the community -- has Biblical roots (Ezra 10:8), but its greatest use dates from Talmudic times reaching a peak during the Middle Ages. (It has also been invoked frequently -- perhaps too frequently -- in modern Israel.) Its use was intended to ensure adherence to the rules established for the community. The Talmud lists 24 offenses for which excommunication is possible. These include insulting a teacher or learned man even if he were dead, and owning a savage dog or a broken ladder that might cause injury.
Excommunication was especially important during the Middle Ages when the Jewish community had a great measure of self-government over its own internal affairs, and when the community was subjected to arbitrary and exorbitant taxes. It took on added importance as a means of control when the Jews were subjected to extraordinary pressures to convert to Christianity.
Given the important function of community control, the excommunication proceedings permitted less than rigorous judicial standards (e.g., hearsay and circumstantial evidence were admissible ), and the final rite was a community affair. The excommunication ceremony began with the lighting of the synagogue candles as if someone had died. Then the candles were blown out, symbolizing the extinguishing of the person being excommunicated. The rabbi entered dressed in white as on Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement) accompanied by the sounding of the shofar. The rite included cursing the victim:
"...with the anethma wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, with the curse which Elisha laid upon the children, and with all the curses which are written in the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night. Cursed be he in sleeping and cursed be he in waking. Cursed be he in going out and cursed be in coming in ... The Lord shall not pardon him... The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun ... and shall damn him with all the curses of the firmament, written in the Law..."
The success of excommunication as a control mechanism may have rested in part upon the superstitious belief in curses or upon the psychological pain of being isolated. But perhaps more important was the fact that the Jew who was denied membership in his own community still was excluded from the host society. Jews were not allowed Dutch citizenship until 1657, one year after Spinoza was excommunicated.
Excommunication prohibited any communication with the subject -- and in fact an expelled Jew could was not allowed any closer than four cubits (six feet) within a congregation member. The victim, therefore, had problems of physically sustaining himself in the community, as well as suffering social and psychological isolation.
Excommunication declined with the Enlightenment when Jews became integrated into the larger society. Some also attribute its decline to its frequent use and abuse (e.g. whole communities would be excommunicated). Maimonides warned that rabbis and teachers should not invoke it so easily -- perhaps because at one time all who studied Maimonides' writings were excommunicated.
There were three forms of excommunication. A one-day penalty (nezifah), during which the person was to abstain from business or pleasure and was to show his regrets for his behavior. The second was a 30-day ban (niddui), during which time the victim was to enter a state of mourning and no one was to associate with him. If there were no sign of repentance, the ban could be extended, or a third form of excommunication (herem -- meaning "great ban") could be invoked.
Spinoza did not repent at the imposition of the temporary ban and so was subjected to total excommunication. But what was the offense worthy of this extreme sanction? The answer is not at all clear. It can be argued that simple deviation from Orthodoxy and its rituals would not have been enough to invoke the punishment. Similarly mere doubting of official dogma is unlikely to have angered them so. But some suggest the community leaders feared that his
heretical views could become public knowledge.
These beliefs included a denial of the concept of the Jews as Chosen People. This concept, however, had special meaning for members of the Amsterdam Jewish community, who believed they had survived the Spanish and Portugese Inquisitions because God had chosen them to maintain Judaism. Spinoza's egalitarian belief that the Jews were no better than any other nation did not sit well with the descendants of the Spanish and Portugese holocausts. He also questioned the authority of the Bible by attacking the idea that it was a product of God's revelation to Moses and the prophets. This latter idea challenged the truth of the Holy Scriptures at a time when Dutch university faculties were required to teach in conformity to the Holy Scriptures (the law requiring this took effect only two days before Spinoza's final excommunication was pronounced). In other words, Spinoza's views challenged the dogma of both the Jewish community and the host society.
Some suggest, however, that his sins were not theological, but rather stemmed from his association with certain Gentiles. Mere contact with Gentiles was not the issue, as the wealthy Jewish merchants who headed the Amsterdam Jewish community had daily contact with them. But Spinoza's associates were political and economic radicals. For example, they questioned the influence of the Calvinist Church in political affairs, and they urged the dissolution of large trading companies such as the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. But the Amsterdam Jewish community, having been the victims of the Inquisition shared the Calvinists' hatred of Spain and Portugal, and preferred a stable society free from crises in which the Jew often became a scapegoat. And they owned an estimated 25 percent of the Dutch East India Company, and enough of the Dutch West India Company to stave off Peter Stuyvesant's attempt to exile the first Jews to land in America.
Spinoza's sin, therefore, may have been the challenge of his political and economic ideas to both the Jewish community and the Dutch host society, rather than his theological challenge to them.
Although his permanent exile from the Jewish community can be considered a tragedy, Spinoza himself did not view it as such. His comment upon hearing of his sentence was, "All the better; they do not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord if I did not dread scandal..." His excommunication led to the development of his philosophy, which influenced subsequent generations of thinkers and scholars. Despite the action of the Amsterdam Jewish community of 1656, modern Jewry can be proud of Baruch de Spinoza. He deserves an honored place in Philatelic Judaica.
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