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Spinoza a Sephardi, not a Symbol • Adding It All Together, Or Not • Buddhist Reactions • Animals in Original Positions

Spinoza a Sephardi, not a Symbol

Dear Editor: As a Sephardi, I read the article on Spinoza in Issue 147 with interest. Readers of Philosophy Now are informed of his ‘excommunication’ (which we call a herem) from his local synagogue in Amsterdam. However, the article by Brad Rappaport glosses over the reality in favour of the mythology of Spinoza as a great hero of freethinking, standing up against the forces of religious obscurantism. As ever, discussion of Spinoza by non-Sephardim tends to miss out a great deal of the dynamics of the herem. But it is apparent to any student of our legal system, tradition, and culture, that Spinoza was happy to seriously misrepresent them to his audience in his Tractatus, whilst praising Christianity as ethically far superior to Judaism, in an apparent attempt to curry favour.

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