Brede consensus: Spinoza was de eerste moderne anti-semiet
David Patterson, Anti-Semitism
and Its Metaphysical Origins [Cambridge University Press, 2015 – books.google]
Heeft één passage over Spinoza, op p. 228 in hoofdstuk 8, getiteld: “Jewish Jew Hatred,“ die ik hier meteen meeneem (zonder de verwijzingen):
In modern times "the first of the great modern anti-Semites of the rationalist school," as Edward Flannery* puts it, "was himself a Jew, Baruch Spinoza [1632-1677]," who "discarded traditional Judaism as a gross superstition and believing Jews as worshipers of a God of hate." Indeed, Emmanuel Levinas observes that "Spinoza is the first messenger of the death of a God bearing the well-known resemblance to man spoken of in Genesis." Thus, with the onset of the Enlightenment heralded by the likes of Spinoza, there came a new form of the conversion phenomenon in the secularization of the Jew and in the liberalization of Judaism, both of which issued largely from the German Idealism of the Enlightenment. Fackenheim refers to this turnabout among the "enlightened" Jews as an "empty abstraction" that "mistakes Jews for members of the Kant-Gesellschaft.” He registers a complaint concerning this abandonment of traditional Judaism on the part of these Jews who bartered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for the God Idea of Idealism:
Jewish prayer, once between a "subjective" self and an "objective" God, is viewed as the self's disport with its own feelings, conducive to aesthetic or therapeutic benefit. Halakhah, once a way walked before God, is reduced to "custom and ceremony," performed for the sake of warm emotions within or wholesome relations without. Judaism, once a covenant involving a singling-out God and a singled-out Israel, is seen as a man-made civilization, created by Jewish genius in its human solitariness. And the human person, who once believed he actually mattered to God, is now engineered into the mere feeling that he matters, on the ground that such feelings banish anxiety and alienation." [citaat uit Emil L. Fackenheim, ]
Of course, the result is just the opposite: the more Jews have tried to "fit in" socially and culturally, the more alienated and anxiety-ridden they have become. For no one matters to the idea of God.
*) Ik voeg daar deze noot aan toe:
Edward H. Flannery was een RK
priester in de VS, bekend om zijn boek The
Anguish of the Jews: twenty-three Centuries of AntiSemitism [New York,
Macmillan, 1965 – books.google cf. wiki ]
Ook dat boek had één passage over Spinoza, waarnaar hierboven verwezen werd, n.l. deze [op p. 175-76]:
“The first of the great modern anti-Judaists of the rationalist school was himself a Jew, Baruch Spinoza. This seventeenth century metaphysical giant, working on purely rational premises, discarded traditional Judaism as a gross superstition and believing Jews as worshipers of a God of hate. In his "Theological-Political Treatise," he describes Jewish patriotism in these terms: "The love of the Hebrew for their country was not only patriotism, but also piety, and was cherished and nurtured by daily rites till, like the hatred of other nations, it must have passed into their nature. Their daily worship was not only different from that of other nations (as it might well be, considering that they were a peculiar people and entirely apart from the rest), it was absolutely contrary. Such daily reprobation naturally gave rise to a lasting hatred deeply implanted in the heart: for of all hatreds none is more deep and tenacious than that which springs from extreme devoutness or piety, and is itself cherished as pious."
