The First Modern Jew

by Daniel B. Schwartz

  85. Ibid., 16.

  86. Auerbach, Spinoza, ein Denkersleben (Mannheim, 1854).

  87. See Rubin, Moreh, vol. 2, 15–17, 19–21, 30–36.

  88. Ibid., Moreh, vol. 2, 15–17. Rubin cites this excerpt at the very beginning of his Spinoza biography. Some thirty years later, he also placed it at the start of his introduction to his translation of the Ethics.

  89. Auerbach, Spinoza, ein Denkersleben, 284; Rubin, Moreh, vol. 2, 17.

  90. Jacob Katz, “Spinoza und die Utopie einer totalen Assimilation der Juden,” in Zur Assimilation und Emanzipation der Juden (Darmstadt, 1982), 199–209.

  91. Rubin, Moreh, vol. 1, 8.

  92. Feiner, Haskalah and History, 148.

  93. Rubin, Moreh, vol. 1, 21–22.

  94. Ibid. The expression “through light clouds” (be-arfilei tohar) recalls a phrase used by Spinoza in suggesting that his doctrine of the identity of thought and extension might have Jewish antecedents: “Some of the Hebrews seem to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God’s intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same.” Emphasis mine. See The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, 451.

  95. Rubin, Moreh, vol. 1, 21–22. Emphasis mine.

  96. Ibid. Not surprisingly, Rubin quotes the passage in Talmud Yebamot 15b that has traditionally served as a kind of locus classicus for Jewish panentheism. There, in an interpretation of the second half of the verse from Isaiah 6 that reads “His glory fills the entire earth,” it is explained that “He (i.e., God) is the place of the world, but the world is not His place.”

  97. Ibid., 23. The numeric identity of the Hebrew terms for God (Elohim) and Nature (ha-Teva), both of which add up to eighty-six. In Hebrew, each of the twenty-two letters possesses a numeric value. This gave rise to a particular form of mystical interpretation known in Aramaic as gematria, in which numeric equivalences of certain words (or combinations of words) are used to decode the “secrets of creation.” On the history of this gematria of Elohim and ha-Teva, which might be considered the other locus classicus in Jewish religious literature for panentheism, see Idel, “Deus Sive Natura—the Metamorphosis of a Dictum from Maimonides to Spinoza.”

  98. Ibid., 22. Rubin cites the Guide 1:61, where Maimonides, in discussing the divine Tetragrammaton, claims that “[i]t is possible that in the Hebrew language, of which we now have but slight knowledge, the Tetragrammaton, in the way it was pronounced, conveyed the meaning of ‘absolute existence.’”

  99. Ibid., 23. Rubin quotes an unidentified passage from the Zohar that conveys the mystical concepts of continuous creation and of God as the Weltseele, claiming that were God to remove his breath of life, all of nature would be “like a body without a soul.”

  100. Ibid., 24. Rubin refers to an analogy in the Sefer Yetsirah that compares the relationship of nature to God with that of a flame to its source of light, without indicating the exact location of this statement.

  101. The “poor man’s wisdom” is the title of Krochmal’s chapter on Ibn Ezra (chapter 17) in the Guide to the Perplexed of the Time.

  102. Ibid., 22.

  103. For Rubin’s use of this phrase “purified faith” (emunah tserufah) with reference to Spinoza’s idea of God, see Moreh, vol. 2, 4.

  104. Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (Frankfurt a. M., 1966), 125.

  105. Baruch Spinoza, Heker ’Elohah ‘im torat ha-’adam [An Investigation of God with the Science of Man], trans. S. Rubin (Vienna, 1885). The German (though not the Hebrew) title page indicates that the translation, which included a preface of some sixty pages, was self-published. In the eleventh and twelfth volumes of Peretz Smolenskin’s Ha-shahar [The Dawn], which previewed Heker Elohah with excerpts from the preface, we find several appeals by the editor not only for preorders of Heker Elohah (for the price of three Russian rubles, two German or Austrian florins, or two American dollars) but also for donations to help cover Rubin’s expenses. See Ha-shahar 11 (1883): 597; Ha-shahar 12 (1884): 70, 252, 326.

  106. See his Ma‘aseh bereshit [The Mystery of Creation] (Vienna, 1872), a study of the cosmogony and theogony of the Phoenicians, which contained a long preface on the relationship of ancient mythology to the creation accounts of the Bible and the Aggadah.

  107. In the words of the renowned Hebrew writer David Frischmann, on meeting Rubin “[i]t was clear at first glance: here was a “Spinozist” from head to toe. Do not laugh or cry; do not get angry or exuberant; do not become exercised or alarmed by the words and foolish deeds of mankind—only understand. . . . One could immediately see that this man did not merely read or translate Spinoza, but grasped and lived by him.” See Frischmann, “Dr. Shlomo Rubin” (January 18, 1910), http://www.benyehuda.org/frischmann/rubin.html.

  108. Heker ’Elohah, VII. The “stone of Spinoza” (’even Shpinozah) is perhaps an allusion to the biblical phrase “the stone that the builders rejected has become a cornerstone” (Psalms 118:12), which, it may be recalled from earlier in the chapter, served as the background refrain to the opening of The New Guide to the Perplexed.

  109. Ibid.

  110. Ibid., L.

  111. Ibid., IX.

  112. Ibid., XLIV.

  113. Igrot David Ben-Gurion, vol. 1, ed. Yehuda Erez (Tel Aviv, 1971), 4–5.

  114. The term was coined by Hans Robert Jauss (1921–1997), a crucial figure in the development of the “Constance School” of reception theory in the 1960s and 1970s. See Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis, MN, 1982).

  115. Micah Josef bin Gorion [Berdichevksy], Amal yom ve-haguto: pirke yoman, ed. Emanuel bin Gorion, trans. [from German] Rachel bin Gorion (Tel Aviv, 1974), 109–111.

  116. On Hirszenberg, see Richard I. Cohen, “Samuel Hirszenberg’s Imagination: An Artist’s Interpretation of the Jewish Dilemma at the Fin-de-Siècle,” in Texts and Contexts. Essays in Modern Jewish Historiography in Honor of Ismar Schorsch, eds. Eli Lederhendler and Jack Wertheimer (New York, 2005), 219–55. I thank Prof. Cohen for allowing me to read in advance an article entitled “The Return of the Wandering Jew in Samuel Hirszenberg’s Art,” cowritten with Mirjam Rajner, that will appear in a forthcoming volume of Ars Judaica.

  117. On Sokolow’s early years as a Polish Jewish intellectual, before becoming a Zionist, see Ella Bauer, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought (Jerusalem, 2005).

  118. The review appeared in He-’asif 2/9 (1885–86), 39–41. Sokolow later included excerpts from this review in his Barukh Shpinoza u-zemano (Paris, 1928–29), 407–408. The quotations in the text are taken from this source.

  Chapter 5: From the Heights of Mount Scopus

  1. “Memorial for Spinoza at the Hebrew University” [Heb], Davar, February 22, 1927.

  2. “Memorial for Spinoza at the University” [Heb], Ha’aretz, February 22, 1927.

  3. Yosef Klausner, Yeshu ha-Notsri: Zemano, hayav, ve-torato (Jerusalem, 1922). The American Reform rabbi Stephen S. Wise gave a famous sermon in Carnegie Hall in December 1925, “A Jew’s View of Jesus,” which was essentially a favorable review of Klausner’s book, which had recently been translated into English as Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching, trans. Herbert Danby (New York, 1925). The sermon provoked a firestorm among American Jewry. On this, see Stephen Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York, 2003), 231–37.

  4. Klausner, “Shmuel David Luzzatto (le-mele’at me’ah shanah mi-yom holado),” Ha-Shiloah 7 (1901): 117–26, 213–25, 299–305; “Doktor Shlomo Rubin (le-mele’at lo shemonim shanah be-yom aharon shel Pesah 5663), Luah ’Ahi’asaf 11 (1903): 285–300. Both of these profiles would be included with slight revisions in several future compilations of Klausner’s essays.

  5. It was first published in 1928 as “Ha-’ofi ha-yehudi shel torat Shpinozah,” Knesset 1 (1928): 179–99. Later it was included in Klausner’s compilation of essays on Jewish Platonic or Neoplatonic th
inkers, Filosofim ve-hoge de‘ot, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1934), 210–42. A German translation appeared in 1933 in a Festschrift marking the three-hundredth anniversary of Spinoza’s birth: “Der jüdische Charakter der Lehre Spinozas,” Spinoza-Festschrift, ed. S. Hessing and trans. Z. Ellner (Heidelberg, 1933), 114–45.

  6. Klausner, Filosofim ve-hoge de‘ot, vol. 1, 242.

  7. See Scholem’s letter to Siegfried Hessing of August 8, 1977, in Hessing, “Epilogue—Ban Invalid after Death,” Speculum Spinozanum 1677–1977, ed. Hessing (London, 1977), 577.

  8. See Bergmann’s letter to Robert Weltsch of February 21, 1927, in Bergmann, Tagebücher und Briefe, ed. Miriam Sambursky, vol. 1 (Bonn, 1985), 215.

  9. Haaretz, “Yesterday in Tel-Aviv—Impressions of the Moment—On Spinoza Street” [Heb], February 25, 1927. The name of the author is unclear. Spinoza Street in Tel Aviv—one of only two streets in Israel named after the philosopher (the other, the Spinoza Steps, is located in Haifa)—received its name in 1925. It is said that the impetus for naming a street after Spinoza came from the great physicist and Spinoza-admirer Albert Einstein. Visiting Tel Aviv in 1925, Einstein badgered the mayor of the city, Meir Dizengoff, about the fact there were no streets in the “first Hebrew city” named for Heinrich Heine and Spinoza. A Spinoza Street was created soon thereafter, although its present location, between Frischmann and Gordon Streets in the center of the city, dates only to the period after the 1948 war, when David Ben-Gurion (another avid Spinozist, as we will see) arranged to have a street named after Spinoza not far from his residence. Because of his apostasy, Heine had to wait much longer—until 1993, to be exact—for a street to be named after him in Tel Aviv. See Sraya Shapiro, “Twists and Turns in Street Naming,” Jerusalem Post, October 17, 1993.

  10. Bernard Heller, “Is Spinozism Compatible with Judaism,” in Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook 37 (1927): 325.

  11. “Ban Against Spinoza Revoked by Jews,” New York Times, March 20, 1927. A little over three decades later, the subheading to the Times’ obituary for Klausner read: “[Chaim] Weizmann’s Rival for Israeli Presidency Is Dead—Ended Jewish Ban on Spinoza.” See “Joseph Klausner, Hebrew Writer,” October 28, 1958.

  12. See Nahum Sokolow, Baruch Shpinozah u-zemano: Midrash be-filosofyah u-ve-korot ha-‘itim (Paris, 1928–29), 267; I. Efroykin, “Ha-ta‘un mishpat Shpinozah bedikah?,” Heshbon nefesh, trans. from Yiddish Avraham Kariv (Tel Aviv, 1950), 251–65; Yehoshua Manoah, Be-vikuah ‘im David Ben-Gurion, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1953–56); Hessing, “Epilogue—Ban Invalid after Death”; Ze’ev Levy, Baruch or Benedict: On Some Jewish Aspects of Spinoza’s Philosophy (New York, 1982), 201; Yirmiyahu Yovel, “Spinoza and His People: The First Secular Jew?,” in Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 1, 197–202; Eliezer Schweid, “‘In Amsterdam I Created the Idea of a Jewish State . . .’: Spinoza and National Jewish Identity” [Heb], Jewish Studies Political Review 13 (Spring 2001): 1–20.

  13. Klausner, review of Nahum Sokolow’s Shpinozah u-bene zemano [Spinoza and His Time] in Kirjath Sefer 8 (1931): 332–36, 335. Klausner was answering an indirect slap that Sokolow had taken at him by claiming that “we do not cancel historical facts, but learn from them.” See Sokolow, 367.

  14. The phrase comes from Michael Meyer’s apt characterization of Zionist identity in his Jewish Identity in the Modern World (Seattle, 1990).

  15. The noted Zionist historian Yitzhak F. Baer would famously describe Spinoza in 1936 as “the first Jew to separate himself from his religion and his people without a formal religious conversion.” See Baer, Galut, trans. R. Warshow (New York, 1947), 114.

  16. The Zionist reception of Spinoza remains mostly understudied. For cursory overviews or studies of specific thinkers, see Paul Mendes-Flohr and Stephen L. Weinstein, “The Heretic as Hero,” Jerusalem Quarterly 7 (1978): 57–63; Elhanan Yakira, “Spinoza et les sionistes,” Spinoza au XXème siècle (Paris, 1993); Schweid, “In Amsterdam I Created the Idea of a Jewish State”; Yovel, “Spinoza and His People: The First Secular Jew; Dov Schwartz, Faith at the Crossroads: A Theological Profile of Religious Zionism, trans. Batya Stein (Leiden, 2002), 90–130; Gideon Katz, “In the Eye of the Translator: Spinoza in the Mirror of the Ethics’ Hebrew Translations,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 15 (2007): 39–63; Jacob Adler, “The Zionists and Spinoza,” Israel Studies Forum 24 (Summer, 2005): 25–38.

  17. This was the focus of “Slavery within Freedom” (1891), Ahad Ha‘am’s landmark critique of Western Jewish assimilation. For an English translation of this essay, see Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays, ed. and trans. Leon Simon (Cleveland, 1946), 171–94.

  18. The most analytically rigorous attempt to elucidate the concept of “forerunners” remains the pathbreaking essay of Jacob Katz, “The Forerunners of Zionism,” Jerusalem Quarterly 7 (Spring, 1978): 10–21. For a review of other historiographic approaches to the “precursor phenomenon,” see Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover, NH, 1995), 65–71. Studies of the formation of Zionist prototypes as part of the search for a “usable past” include Ezra Mendelssohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (Oxford, 1993) and Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago, 1995).

  19. Spinoza, The Complete Works, trans. Shirley, ed. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN, 2002), 418.

  20. Ibid., 425.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Spain never offered its converso population “full civic rights”; on the contrary, its “blood purity laws” discriminating against “New Christians” remained on the books into the eighteenth century. The reasons Spanish Marranism largely petered out in the century following the Spanish Expulsion while Portuguese crypto-Judaism flourished thus lie elsewhere. On this, see Yosef H. Yerushalmi, “Divre Shpinozah ‘al kiyum ha-‘am ha-yehudi,” in Divre ha-Akademyah ha-le’umit ha-yisre’elit le-mada‘im 6 (1982): 171–213.

  23. Morris Raphael Cohen, an early twentieth-century Jewish American philosopher at City College who was a committed liberal integrationist on questions of the Jewish future, wrote in 1919, in an article sharply critical of Zionism, that “[t]he policy of assimilation was clearly expressed by Spinoza, who pointed out that Jews like other groups are held together by a bond of common suffering; and that, as the nations become enlightened and removed their restrictions against the Jews, the latter would adopt the habits of Western civilization and the problem would be thus eliminated.” See Cohen, “Zionism: Tribalism or Liberalism,” The New Republic 18 (March 8, 1919): 182. Reprinted in Cohen, The Faith of a Liberal (New Brunswick, NJ, 1993), 329.

  24. The Complete Works, 425. The Latin original for “were it not that the fundamental principles of their religion discourage manliness” reads “nisi fundamenta suae religionis eorum animos effoeminarent.” A more apt translation might be “did not the principles of their religion make them effeminate.” See Benedictus de Spinoza, The Political Works, ed. and trans. A. G. Wernham (Oxford, 1958), 63.

  25. Jay Geller, “Spinoza’s Election of the Jews: The Problem of Jewish Persistence,” in Jewish Social Studies 12 (Fall 2005): 41.

  26. There is a prolific literature on the subject of Zionism and masculinity. George Mosse, Michael Berkowitz, Daniel Boyarin, David Biale, Jay Geller, Sander Gilman, and Michael Stanislawski are only some of the main contributors to this area of inquiry. For a concise overview of the topic, see Tamar Mayer, “From Zero to Hero: Masculinity in Jewish Nationalism,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, ed. Tamar Mayer (London, 2000), 282–307.

  27. On “feminizing” motifs in Jew-hatred dating to the Middle Ages—including the belief in male menstruation among Jews—see Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (Philadlphia, 1983 [1943]), 50. For the modern period, see George Mosse, The Idea of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford, 1996), 56–76. For a self-described “polemical essay” (indeed, more of a shooting spree) against Zionism and the “New Jewish Man” t
hat asserts the immanence within rabbinic culture of a “feminized” ideal of the Jewish male (the “sissy”) worthy of admiration and reclamation, see Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley, 1997).

  28. On Nordau and the Muskeljudentum ideal, see Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin-de-Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley, 2001), 74–97. As Stanislawski notes, in his eulogy for Theodor Herzl at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, Nordau would laud Spinoza along with Judah the Maccabee, Bar Kokhba, Yehuda Ha-Levi, and Heine as Jewish historical heroes whom Herzl revered and who belonged in the Zionist pantheon. However, he does not appear ever to have invoked the passage from the Treatise where Spinoza criticizes Jewish effeminacy.

  29. Nordau’s essay “Muskeljudentum,” which originally appeared in the journal Jüdische Turnzeitung, is translated in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, The Jew in the Modern World, 3rd ed., 616–17. Interestingly, Nordau criticizes the Jewish athletes and “circus fighters” in the ancient Hellenistic sports arenas for attempting “to conceal the sign of the Covenant [i.e., their circumcision] by means of a surgical operation,” in contrast to “[o]ur new muscle-Jews,” who “loudly and proudly affirm their national loyalty.” Thus, circumcision—which in medieval Christian polemics was frequently associated with the castration and thus emasculation of the Jewish male—here functions as a sign of “manly” national pride and fidelity. Spinoza likewise appears to distinguish between the ritual of circumcision that has preserved the Jewish nation, and the effeminate foundations of Jewish religion. On the link between circumcision and effeminacy in medieval Christian texts, see Shaye Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley, 2005), 153.

  30. See Rina Peled, “Ha-’adam he-hadash” shel ha-mahapekhah ha-tsiyonit: Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa‘ir ve-shorashav ha-’eropiyim (Jerusalem, 2002); Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew, trans. Haim Watzman (Berkeley, 2000).