Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

I was first introduced to Spinoza in my college years, ages ago. His texts were daunting. This book is a miracle. I'd forgotten how modern his thoughts were and I really had not been aware how closely connected his thoughts are to the US Constitution! Amazing and disturbing, realizing what the country is going through now. I recommend this book to all who wish to have their eyes opened.

The era known as The Enlightenment is characterised by many breaks with tradition. Protestant Christianity had consolidated its gains against the monolithic Roman Church, raising national consciousness in the process. The printing press expanded the reach of knowledge and imperialism added new discoveries of nature. Although the religious wars that had racked Europe had subsided, an expanded view of the world had raised new challenges. If the world was so vast and varied, where was humanity's true place in it? One man brought many of the questions together and formulated a new version of faith. Baruch Spinoza, an Amsterdam Jew, instilled a religion based on reason. In this captivating account of the roots of Spinoza's thinking, Goldstein has done more than simply delineate his life. She firmly establishes that excommunicated as he was, Spinoza remained fundamentally Jewish. More so, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries or predecessors. Goldstein's own introduction to Spinoza opens the narrative and is brought back many times to make various points. Her yeshiva teacher, in the best Orthodox tradition, berated the memory of Spinoza as a radical and atheist. Burning with questions she dared not utter, Goldstein went through university and to a teaching position of her own. Assigned a course on 17th Century thinkers, she was forced to delve into Spinoza's life and writings. Between her own reading and student questions, Goldstein was driven to better understand her subject. She found a man leading an isolated life, banished by his community, who still carried the heritage of his ancestors as part of his mental baggage. The dichotomy led Spinoza to consider that Europe's religions were under the thrall of a variety of man-made ideologies, dogmas and practices. The god, he declared, was all-pervasive and one with Nature. All intermediaries between humanity and the deity must be cast aside. No human can know or assess another. Hence, Goldstein concedes she's "betraying Spinoza" by trying to determine the roots of his thinking. In explaining the origins of Spinoza's concepts, Goldstein takes us on a complex journey. She recounts the history of the Jews on the Iberian peninsula and their ouster at the restoration of the Catholic Monarchs. Jews had long been under pressure to convert in the Christian realm, perhaps nowhere more so than in Spain and Portugal. These "New Christians" developed tricks to retain their Jewishness while living in Catholic communities. Those who were driven out found a haven of sorts in The Netherlands. Amsterdam was a city of uneasy tolerance toward the Jewish community. Only because the Calvinists feared and despised the Roman Catholics more than the Jews were the latter allowed to practice their religion. Disturbances, such as contention over religious issues might shatter that fragile arrangement. Spinoza, although neither the first nor the only, threatened the stability of Jews in Amsterdam.

This wonderful book is neither an introduction to nor truly a biography of Spinoza. It does not put forth his system of thought in any comprehensive way. It makes little comparison between Spinoza and his contemporaries. It virtually ignores his place in philosophy from an historical viewpoint. Yet it engages the reader from its first pages and it left me wishing the book had been twice as long. The book is largely presented as a parallel memoir. Baruch Spinoza, a 17th Century son of the Jewish exile community of Amsterdam goes from child-prodigy to excommunicate-heretic by the time he is 23 years old. Our author learns the cautionary tale of Spinoza the "epicure" as a young girl getting a conservative Jewish education in 20th Century New Amsterdam, (i.e., NYC) only to come to be a professor of philosophy whose favorite subject is none other than Benedict the Apostate himself. The author delves deep into the backroom politics of the ex-Marrano congregations of his era. We get excursions upon kabbalah, upon the Sephardic/Ashkenazic division, upon the Messianic cult of Shabbetai Zevi. Yet more contemporary and familiar thinkers like Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are mentioned - only to be dismissed. We learn that Spinoza disagreed with Descartes - but exactly over what? Nevertheless one must sympathize with the author, any work must have its limits. I absolutely loved and adored this book. But before reading it I had already read Spinoza in an upper level philosophy course. I had studied Latin and Greek, logic and calculus, Aristotle, Aquinas and Maimonides. I fear that anyone who approaches this title as light reading, or who doesn't already know the meaning of `axiom', `kherem', or `sub specie aeternitatis' may be somewhat lost. Likewise, the initiated may be expecting something more esoteric or synthetic than they will get here. Spinoza is not an easy subject, and if there were an easy introduction to him, he would not be what he is. My best advice would be that if you are familiar with most of the terms or people I've mentioned above, and read voraciously, then buy this book without hesitation.

The "problem" of Spinoza's philosophy is its complete rejection of the personal (I say this with that caveat that it wasn't a problem for Spinoza himself). All personal differences, all individual qualities all purely personal joys and pains are to be subsumed in philosophy by a vision sub speci aeterni (from nowhere). This does not mean that he rejects emotion, but rather, he sees through them, giving us a subtle theory that explains to the mind why it should consider them imposteurs. This naturally means that Spinoza is hidden in his work (it would not do to say anything personal about himself in a work advocating impersonality). This is the point of Betraying Spinoza. Goldstein, as a Jew, helps Christian and perhaps even Jewish readers to penetrate the wall of geometry Spinoza sets between himself and his reader enabling them to see him in context. What issue did Spinoza, a Sephardic Jew born in exile in the Netherlands due to his family's flight from the Spanish Inquisition and excommunicated permanently from the Jewish community there at an early age, fight for with such passionate intensity? What ideas were current in his childhood that put him on a collision course with the religion elders of his community at age 23? How did he sustain himself as an individual without a religious community in a time that community and idenity were one and the same? This is the guy, after all, who invented the concept "separation of Church and State." How did he get there? Goldstein tells a fascinating tale equating Spinoza's education in 1600's with her own in 1960's New York, telling us what she was taught about Spinoza as a child and what she learned to teach of him as an adult. This degree of personalization violates Spinoza. He would be spinning in his grave, if he were actually in his grave.

"Betraying Spinoza" -- the first book I've dogeared and filled with margin notes in years -- is fascinating and fulfilling in many areas: Philosophy -- I spun over Spinoza in a survey course decades ago, and am now surprised to discover that his oh-so systematic approach makes great sense once I see through his Euclidean screen. Goldstein barely hints that Spinoza's system resonates perfectly with today's brain science, though suffering the same shortfall when it comes to an explanation for consciousness. In any case, wholly unique and miles ahead of Descartes because free of the limits Christianity imposed at this dawn of the Age of Reason. History -- Before reading this I was ignorant of the "Golden Age" of Jewish culture in Iberia under the Moslem occupation, of the lasting impact of the Spanish/Portugese Inquisition on those who faced the "convert or die" ultimatum and chose to convert. I also knew very little about the history of Jewish thought during this time, the connection of the Inquisition to the rise of Cabbalism, etc. (Those more familiar with Judaica will have an easier time with some terminology.) Theology -- Putting full trust in reason and God rather than the Bible, Spinoza is as relevant today as when he stood alone in a world that was trying to fine harmony between Christianity and science, and contorting both in the process. As Goldstein doesn't need to dwell on a statement of faith from Albert Einstein to demonstrate Spinoza's relevance today. A "Great Read" -- This book also demonstrates that Goldstein is both a daring scholar and a damn fine writer. She lets you know before veering into speculation, not too often and each time a worthwhile expedition. Highly recommended!