Jewishness Debate : Once Again, Spinoza Stirs a Furor

It was a philosophy seminar of the sort that usually attracts a few university eggheads and maybe a casual drop-in or two looking for a place to snooze.

The organizers planned to discuss the place of Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-Century Dutch philosopher, in contemporary Israeli life--a seemingly innocent and suitably boring subject for a provincial college evening.

But instead of the expected few dozen, about 300 people crowded into the lecture hall at Haifa University to dissect the thoughts of the philosopher of a distant time and place.

It was not an isolated phenomenon. A thick volume on Spinoza and his philosophy was the top-selling book in Israel in December. A Spinoza seminar in Tel Aviv, similar to the one at Haifa, also drew a standing-room-only crowd.

Wide Media Attention

Newspapers that usually show more interest in British soccer scores than Dutch liberal ideas devoted columns to the long-dead thinker. A soft-porn magazine coupled a portrait of Spinoza, who was known for leading a saintly life, with a cheesecake cover picture. He wore a frock, she a tattoo.

The outpouring of interest centers on the deep and continuing debate here over the nature of Judaism. True, the fuss about who has authority over Jewish religious conversions has waned. The formation last month of a broad government coalition that includes the secularly oriented Labor Party killed any chance that the government would soon enact laws to give Orthodox rabbis control over conversions to the exclusion of Conservative and Reform rabbis.

But while the question of “Who is a Jew?” has been retired from the political battlefield, it has only retreated to the trenches of the Israeli mind.

‘People Do Not Know’

“People here do not know what they have in common,” said Maurice Kriegel, a professor of Jewish history at Haifa University. “It is supposed to be their Jewishness, but what is Jewishness?”

Kriegel said the Zionist founders of Israel tried to base a new Jewish personality on a blend of socialism, nationalism and rejection of traditional religion. But these elements did not prove glue enough for a society that has become more and more complex.

“We are looking for the intellectual tools to redefine ourselves and have not yet come up with them,” he said.

Enter Spinoza, one of the most explosive figures in Jewish history. Secular Jews devoted to varied forms of Jewish identity are resurrecting him as their standard-bearer. But strict Orthodox leaders, who preach adherence to traditional religion as the base for the Jewish personality, maintain a 300-year-old view of Spinoza as a heretic, a Jew gone bad.

Some critics in one way or another find useful elements in Spinozan philosophy but think Spinoza is misused at a time and in circumstances greatly different from those of his day.

Philosopher David Hartman, an Orthodox rabbi, contends that secular Jews think Spinoza can give them ideology on which to build and maintain nationhood.

“It is not enough,” he said, “for secular Jews to say they are practical, functional. They want a system of values and think that Spinoza provides one.”

But Hartman considers this usage of Spinoza to be inadequate for resolving Israel’s dilemma of identity. Efforts to forge identity by typically modern means--nationalist preaching, service in the armed forces, the learning of Hebrew--failed to give the country cohesion, Hartman argued. Israel is embarked on a search for a new glue. To fall back on Spinoza would be to repeat modernist mistakes.

“Spinoza was not interested in perpetuating the Jewish community,” Hartman said. “He critiqued Judaism as a basis for a new philosophy. Our problem in Israel is to find a way to make Jews belong. Spinoza is not a blueprint for belonging.”

His Names Sparks Passion

Perhaps nowhere else in the Western world would discussion of Spinoza cause such a stir. In Israel, a country in many ways trying to find itself, mention of Spinoza sparks passion.

“My book even outsold the latest health manuals,” quipped Yirmiyahu Yovel, author of the best-seller “Spinoza and Other Heretics.”

Why is defining Jewishness important in a country that seems to face graver problems--for example, the Arab uprising in the occupied territories, Israel’s political preoccupation of the hour? Precisely because the issues are related, observers say.

“The search for identity is a problem no less serious than the issue of war and peace,” author Yovel contended. “The problems are related because in the answer to what kind of Jews we are lies the answer to war and peace. You ask Israelis what they are fighting for. They say, ‘To have a Jewish state.’ But what is a Jewish state? Is it religious? Is it secular? Can you be a good Jew without occupying the West Bank?”

Hartman said: “The struggle for pluralism in the Jewish community and pluralism vis-a-vis the Palestinians surfaces by turns. And beneath it all is the unresolved tension of how Jews live with each other and respect each other.”

Spinoza, the son of a Jew expelled from Portugal, is widely viewed as a pillar of modern Western thinking. He advocated the rule of reason, the separation of religion and state and the primacy of knowledge over faith--commonplace ideas now, but revolutionary in his time.

Among Jews, Spinoza is considered controversial even as his bequests to Western thought are admired. He was expelled from the Jewish community in Amsterdam because of his critiques of Judaism and such unorthodox notions that God is not a personage but exists everywhere, in everything.

The Council of Rabbis in Amsterdam wrote that he committed “monstrous acts” and practiced “abominable heresies.” No one in the Jewish community could have contact with him. He is said to have died a poor lens-grinder.

“Discussing Spinoza is always charged with emotion because of his challenge to established historical religion,” said Yovel, who runs a Jerusalem research institute dedicated to nurturing study of the philosopher. “Jews can find him terrible and fascinating at the same time.”

Streets Named After Him

Spinoza’s expulsion was not the end of his being rejected. Streets have been named for Spinoza in Tel Aviv and Rehovot, but Orthodox objections have blocked the same honor in Jerusalem, the holiest city of Judaism. In the 1950s, a call by Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, for rabbis to reverse the excommunication and “return” Spinoza to the Jewish people achieved nothing.

In Spinoza, secular Jews find a hero. He is viewed as a martyr, and his philosophy is seen as highly applicable in a country where religion and state have yet to settle on their respective--or fused--roles.

“He was the philosopher of tolerance par excellence, powerfully defending the right of religious and ideological plurality,” Yovel said.

Spinoza paved the way for Jews to be Jewish without strictly following singular definitions of Judaism, Yovel said. Thus, there are Jews who drive cars on the Sabbath, eat pork and do not believe that the boundaries of Israel are necessarily ordained by God, yet still consider themselves Jewish.

“You no longer have to believe in stories to feel Jewish,” Yovel said.

But according to Hartman, if the question is simply whether Jews can get along in tolerance, then Spinoza is hardly the only source of guidance.

“He is brought into the picture here because he is Jewish,” he said. “Why not bring in John Stuart Mill? There are plenty of philosophers who can be guides to democracy and tolerance.”

Words Have Special Meaning

Nonetheless, because Spinoza was Jewish, his words have special resonance here, and his detractors are wary of efforts to rehabilitate him in the eyes of Israelis.

“Look, he did harm to the Jewish community in Amsterdam,” said Shlomo Goren, a former chief rabbi of Israel. “Just because we don’t feel that harm does not give us the right to reinstate him.”

Goren says that Spinoza erred by demonstrating “anti-Jewish behavior.”

“Maybe now he wouldn’t be seen as a threat,” he said. “These days, there are a lot of places where Jews express more anti-Jewish behavior than Spinoza ever did. Look at Eilat (the Israeli resort where tourists swim topless). God has nothing to do with Eilat.”

He suggested that Spinoza is a tool being used to attack Orthodox rabbis at a time when religious political power is seen to be on the upswing.

“Spinoza preached a hatred of the management of his community,” he said. “He preached how to separate religious authority from everyday life.”

Goren rejected the idea that Jewish identity can in any way be divorced from traditional religion or that the inherent pluralism of Spinoza can be carried out fully in Israel.

“According to my opinion, the Jewish nation without faith is empty of content,” he said.

If Spinoza came to Israel, would he be considered a Jew?

“Well,” Goren said, “he could come. His parents were Jews. But I don’t know if he should have ‘Jewish’ written in his identity card.”