Spinoza weer eens gezien als de onmisbare voorloper van het zionisme
Hier weer even een boek gesignaleerd:
Ruth Shamir Popkin, Jewish Identity: The Challenge of Peoplehood Today. Gefen Publishing House (May 29, 2015) - books.google - cf. review door dr. Fred Reiss
Opmerkelijk dat dr. Ruth Shamir Popkin, schijnt te weten waarom Spinoza in de ban werd gedaan. Ook opmerkelijk dat ze eigenlijk alleen Spinoza´s zgn. voorafschaduwing van het zionisme in het tweede hoofdstuk, over het opkomend zionisme, benoemt, maar zijn betekenis voor het seculiere jodendom slechts kort op die plaats vermeldt. Dat moderne ongodsdienstige jodendom komt naar mijn indruk nauwelijks aan bod. Een boek als van Daniel B. Schwartz: The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (2012) wordt bijvoorbeeld helemaal niet vermeld.
Hier haar paragraaf over Spinoza:
THE INDISPENSABLE PRECURSOR
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was the first philosopher to define Judaism as a modern secular nation rather than a religion. Basing himself on a profound knowledge of Jewish religion and culture, Spinoza was highly the critical of "rabbinical theocracy." His views clearly echoed those of the twelfth-century Jewish sage Moses Maimonides, who taught that the Mosaic biblical laws were essentially state laws. According to Spinoza, Moses transformed his people into a nation ruled by law by providing them with a constitution that most resembled a model of democratic rule by its rejection of hereditary governance. Within Mosaic law, Spinoza also discovered the first example of a separation of powers that distinguished between judicial, educational and military spheres of leadership. Spinoza, in fact, regarded Moses as a secular leader who didn't see himself as a messenger of God and refused to name a successor who would rule the people as God's direct emissary. According to Spinoza it was Moses' belief that the original laws written for the people of Israel were laws intended to organize communal life with the ultimate aim of providing a basis for conducting national life.
This philosophy resulted in the rabbinic establishment, which Spinoza had dismissively labelled "dictatorial," branding him a heretic and excommunicating him from the Jewish community. But Spinoza went on to become one of the most influential secular philosophers in the Western world, inspiring such great thinkers as Kant, Hegel and Marx. He was destined to also have an impact on later generations of secular Jews who embraced the concept of a Jewish nation. His conclusion was that Jewish emancipation required the implementation of one of two possible options: the total assimilation of the Jews within the non-Jewish society in which they were living or, alternatively, the removal of Jews to another country, if not to their own land. Indeed, in his Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza daringly prophesied that the Jewish nation would establish a secular state.
[Ze verwijst daar niet naar Spinoza's TTP zelf, maar naar een Hebreeuws boek van ene Eliezer Schweid uit 1981]
