Spinoza’s Challenge to Jewish Thought: Writings on His Life, Philosophy, and Legacy

Description

Arguably, no historical thinker has had as varied and fractious a reception within modern Judaism as Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632–77), the seventeenth-century philosopher, pioneering biblical critic, and Jewish heretic from Amsterdam. Revered in many circles as the patron saint of secular Jewishness, he has also been branded as the worst traitor to the Jewish people in modern times. Jewish philosophy has cast Spinoza as marking a turning point between the old and the new, as a radicalizer of the medieval tradition and table setter for the modern. He has served as a perennial landmark and point of reference in the construction of modern Jewish identity. This volume brings together excerpts from central works in the Jewish response to Spinoza. True to the diversity of Spinoza’s Jewish reception, it features a mix of genres, from philosophical criticism to historical fiction, from tributes to diary entries, providing the reader with a sense of the overall historical development of Spinoza’s posthumous legacy. Contents Foreword Introduction I. Early Sephardic Responses 1. The Sephardic Community of Amsterdam, The Writ of Excommunication against Baruch Spinoza 2. Isaac Orobio de Castro, A Philosophical Disputation 3. Hakham Zevi Ashkenazi, Responsum No. 18 II. Breaking the Taboo 4. Moses Mendelssohn, Second Dialogue 5. Moses Mendelssohn, On the Curtailment of Jewish Juridical Autonomy 6. Moses Mendelssohn, Judaism as Revealed Legislation 7. Moses Mendelssohn, Morning Hours, Chaps. 13–14 8. Moses Mendelssohn, From To Lessing’s Friends 9. Solomon Maimon, Autobiography 10. Saul Ascher, Leviathan, Book 2, Chapter 6 11. Mordechai Gumpel Schnaber-Levison, The Thirteen Principles of Torah, 19a–b III. From Heretic to Hero 12. Heinrich Heine, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany 13. Berthold Auerbach, Spinoza: A Novel 14. Meir HaLevi Letteris, The Life of the Sage and Scholar Baruch de Spinoza, z"l 15. Salomon Rubin, The New Guide to the Perplexed 16. Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem 17. Micha Josef Berdichevsky, The Day’s Labors and Musings: Selection of Diaries 18. Melekh Ravitch, A Poetical Essay in Four Cycles: The Man, the Work, the Spider, Incense 19. David Ben-Gurion, Let Us Rectify the Injustice 20. Haim Slovès, Boruch of Amsterdam, Act 3, Scene 2 21. Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew 22. Rebecca N. Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity IV. Through the Lens of Wissenschaft 23. Manuel Joël, On the Genesis of Spinoza’s Philosophy 24. Jakob Freudenthal, The Life of Spinoza 25. Carl Gebhardt, Spinoza/Judaism and Baroque 26. Jakob Klatzkin, The Misunderstood One 27. Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning V. Contra Spinoza 28. Samuel David Luzzatto, Against Spinoza 29. Rav Avraham Isaac Ha-Kohen Kook, Notebook: “‘First in Jaffa’” 30. Hermann Cohen, Spinoza on State and Religion, Judaism and Christianity 31. Leo Strauss, Preface to the English Translation, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion 32. Emmanuel Levinas, The Spinoza Case 33. Yehoshua Manoah, A Bit of Introspection 34. Allan Nadler, Romancing Spinoza Acknowledgments Index