Spinoza on State and Religion–A Jewish Analysis [1956]

Jewish tercentenaries seem to be rather fashionable at the moment. Due notice was, therefore, taken—and perhaps more than due notice—of the three-hundredth anniversary of the excommunication of Benedict de Spinoza by the Amsterdam Jewish community in July 1656. Articles and editorials appeared in the popular and semi-popular Jewish press throughout the world hailing Spinoza, paradoxically, as a great son of the Jewish people, a saintly thinker, a founder of modern science, and a powerful advocate of democratic, social freedom. A group of Israelis established a foundation and shipped a beautiful, new monument, with Hebrew inscription, to his gravesite. Possibly most attention was aroused by the public demand voiced by the prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, that his excommunication be posthumously rescinded, a demand that was rejected by the Dutch rabbinate not so much on substantial grounds concerning Spinoza himself as on technical grounds connected with the legalities of the Jewish ban.