WHY WAS BARUCH DE SPINOZA EXCOMMUNICATED?*

ASA KASHER and SHLOMO BIDERMAN

I On the sixth of the month ofAv, 5416, 27 July 1656, the excommunica• tion of Baruch de Spinoza was proclaimed from the Ark in the synagogue of Talmud Torah, the united congregation of the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam. The complete version of the proclamation, written in Portu• guese, is found in the Book of Ordinances of the congregation (Livro dos Acordos de Naçao e Ascamot)1 and it includes some highly interesting de• tails: ' 'The Lords of the Ma 'amad", i.e., the governing body of six parnassim and the gabbai, announce that having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, they have endeavored by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways. But having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and, on the contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his mon• strous deeds, and having for this numerous trustworthy witnesses who have deposed and born witness to this effect in the presence of the said Espinoza, they became convinced of the truth of this matter; and after all of this has been investigated in the presence of the honorable hakhamim, they have de• cided, with their consent, that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel . . .2.

* Previous, quite different versions of this paper were used on various occasions since 1977, the tricentennial anniversary of Spinoza's death. During those years the authors benefited from comments made by colleagues and friends. Yosef Kaplan has been par• ticularly helpful. Richard Popkin has constantly inspired our work, by showing us why philosophers should and how they could do historical work. The present (version of this) paper is dedicated to him, though we do not take it for granted that he is going to accept our conclusions. As usual, we look forward to hearing from him about his new discov• eries, on the grounds of which we may well find ourselves writing yet another version of this paper. 1 The official version of the excommunication appears on page 408 of the Book of Ordinances {Livro dos Acordos de Naçao e Ascamot), henceforth: Ascamot (both volume A, which we leave unmarked, and volume B). The book is in the Municipal Archives of Am• sterdam, and is numbered PA 334/19. 2 The English translation of this part of the proclamation, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971) entry on Spinoza (xv. 275-282), is different from ours, twice quite significantly so (p. 276), but we will not presently go into the details. WHY WAS SPINOZA EXCOMMUNICATED? 99

The "hakamim", namely the official rabbis of the community, with whose consent the resolution was made to excommunicate the "said Espinoza", were familiar with the traditional wording of the proclama• tions of excommunication and excerpts of these conventional formula• tions were incorporated in the announcement of Spinoza's excommuni• cation:

By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommu• nicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy congregation, and in front of these holy scrolls with the 613 precepts which are written therein; cursing him with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho and with the curse which Elisha cursed the boys and with all the castigations which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are writ• ten in this book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day3.

The proclamation of the excommunication concludes with the follow• ing famous lines of the actual warning: That no one should communicate with him, neither in writing, nor accord him any favor nor stay with him under the same roof nor within four cubits in his vicinity; nor shall he read any treatise composed or written by him.

II What were the views, the "abominable hérésies", that Baruch de Spino• za maintained in those days, just a few months before he reached the age of 24? How did the governing council try to "reform him from his evil

5 Translations of Spinoza's excommunication proclamation abound, but they are often quite inaccurate. Consider, for example, the phrase from the words "the Lord will not" to the words "in this book of the law". Those are two verses from the book of Deu• teronomy (29:19-20) and they appear in traditional wordings of the excommunication, e.g., in the book Kol Bo, the famous late-thirteenth-century or early fourteenth-century collection of laws. Although the latter book was available to Jacob Klatzkin, when he was writing his book, Baruch Spinoza (in 1923), he translated the proclamation of Spinoza's excommunication by using an inaccurate paraphrase. Apparently he did not notice that this is the exact wording of these verses. To this very day, such unsuccessful paraphrases keep cropping out, from time to time, in the accounts of the excommunication of Spino• za.