The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time by Michael Shapiro

the Inquisition for the safety and freedom of Holland. These Portuguese Jews had concealed their religion in their homeland through conversion, but had still practiced Judaism secretly. Spinoza was able to witness firsthand the conflict between these newly arrived “Conversos” (or converts) and the Ashkenazic or Talmudic Jews who had resided in Amsterdam for centuries. Added to the turmoil was the availability in this free society of a secular education. Young Baruch not only learned the classics of literature and philosophy, but also was able to study Latin and, horror of horrors, the New Testament taught to him by an ex-Jesuit priest.
    While a young student he became a member of a group of radical thinkers and at the same time learned the craft of grinding optical lenses. By temperament he was slightly melancholic but remarkably even, never quick to respond in anger. He managed to subsist on a barely nutritious diet consisting mainly of buttered porridge and gruel flavored with raisins.
    It is not entirely clear how the dispute with the Jewish community arose. However, he was accused of denying the existence of angels, the orientation of the Bible by God, and the immortality of the soul. The official excommunication document may still be read today; its virulence was obviously intended to leave him in unending torment. Spinoza was thrown out of his community and even threatened with assassination. Ironically, the Portuguese and Spanish refugees of Amsterdam, safe in their bourgeois existence, had conducted their own Inquisition.
    Baruch (“blessed” in Hebrew) changed his name to the Latin equivalent, Benedictus, and after some wandering, finally settled in The Hague. Other than a small state pension and an annuity from an admiring friend, he supported himself through his lens craft. All other offers for help were quietly rejected, even a professorship at the prestigious university in Heidelberg. He preferred a scholar’s life, austere, ascetic, the monk’s habit of the poor workman. He died at age forty-four, alone, of a lung disease caused by his repeated breathing in of toxic dust from grinding glass.
    Despite this life of virtual obscurity and sobriety, Spinoza is recognized as one of the central figures in the history of philosophy. Despite his excommunication, many philosophers correctly call him a “God-intoxicated man.” Despite his denial of divinity as the original source of the Bible, Spinoza is commonly regarded as the first modern biblical critic. And despite his reverence for reason, his work has elicited a baneful irrationality from many important philosophers and writers who followed him.
    Spinoza’s philosophy was expressed in a theological and political study, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (the only book of his published while he lived) and the Ethics. He was surely influenced by the rational teachings of Maimonides, but was also marked by the anti-rationalism of the Jewish mystics or cabalists. This combination of reason and “unreason” carried his philosophical investigations out of Jewish tradition to a point of no return.
    While Spinoza believed in resolving disputes through reason, he did not believe, as did Maimonides, that the Messiah would come through strict obedience to God’s law. Rather, Spinoza urged that religious writings be cast aside as worthless and artificial. Only through pure intellect could man’s passions be tamed. Spinoza then sought a prescription for what he perceived as the disease of the emotions. Sin was not due to evil but was caused by ignorance. Suffering was not an isolated event but was instead a part of an infinitely larger and uncaring whole. If man only accepted that he was part of an unchanging order of nature, of God (they were the same to Spinoza), then hatred and sorrow, worry and upset, anger and deceit, would vanish.
    God is not only everything (pantheism), God is in every mode of life. Nothing is left to chance. There is no free will. If we