Spinoza, a Man for All Seasons

Image by Flickr/Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara

By Jenna Weissman Joselit February 22, 2012

Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree

Image by Flickr/Stifts- och landsbiblioteket i Skara

The modern Jewish experience is awash in fascinating personalities whose imprint extends far and wide. Were you to compile a list of such people, Benedictus (né Baruch) Spinoza would undoubtedly be on it.

Streets are named after him, conferences mark his birthday and both paintings and plays take him as their subject. I.B. Singer introduced readers of the Forward to his writings while the city of Haifa boasted a Bet Shpinozah all its very own.

Despite Spinoza’s enduring fame — some might even say his notoriety — little about the man — or more to the point, his legacy — remained fixed over time. As “The First Modern Jew,” the compelling and eye-opening new book by my colleague, Daniel Schwartz, makes clear, Spinoza had something to say to just about everyone: Zionists claimed him, as did Yiddishists. The German Jewish champions of Bildung took a real shine to Spinoza and so, too, did East European devotees of the Haskalah.

How so many different ideological and cultural communities kept Spinoza in their sights is the subject of Schwartz’s inquiry, which casts a keen and discerning eye on the complicated process by which a “heretic turned hero.”

At a time when Spinoza’s name was mud in some quarters, Moses Mendelssohn championed him, insisting that the philosopher did not deserve opprobrium but instead should be “decorated with flowers.”

May Schwartz’s book — his very first — be similarly laureled.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO