Spinoza: Hero, Infidel, Celebrity
Was Baruch Spinoza the first modern Jew? Despite many critics’ opinions that Baruch Spinoza is only relevant to modern Jewish history because he was born Jewish, his true significance is the fact that he is the father of modernity in Judaism. Spinoza was a 17th-century Jewish philosopher, who disaffiliated himself from Judaism, but did not convert. “Since the start of Jewish Enlightenment and the Emancipation in the late 18th century, when a Jewish identity outside Jewish law emerged as a possibility, Jews have increasingly claimed Spinoza as one of their own…and specifically as a precursor for an array of rival movements, ranging from Reform Judaism to secular Yiddishism to Labor Zionism” (Forward.com). After being excommunicated from Amsterdam, Spinoza did not in any way attempt to reconcile his differences with the Jews, or even consider himself Jewish; but at the same time, he did not convert to Christianity. Interestingly, many Jewish philosophers who originally did not admire Spinoza learned to respect him only after discovering a close connection between the two of them. Not until realizing this correlation did they notice that similarly to Spinoza, they too were at a point in their scholarly thought process that needed an outlet for a new identity. The Sephardic community in which he was brought up in had a meaningful history of beginning as Jewish conversos to openly practicing Judaism in one of the most successful communities at that time. Instead of embracing his past, Spinoza separated from it, which proves he is a Jewish philosopher because he used a Jewish experience to impact his view of Judaism. Spinoza is seen as the father of Jewish modernity because he was the first to break away from Judaism for philosophical reasons, and as a result of his actions many other Jewish movements