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December 1st, 2021 
Awake Goy This is an unbelievable story. This recent Hanukkah eve (on Sunday), Rabbi Joseph Sefarti of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jewish community has declared world-renowned Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza scholar Yitzhak Melamed of Johns Hopkins University a “persona non grata” in the Portugeuse synagogue complex.
The reason: Melamed was requesting to film part of a documentary on Spinoza inside the synagogue library’s archive – a library which Spinoza himself may have been studying.
Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jewish community in 1656 at the age of 23, for his thoughts which were considered heretic – although at that point, he had not yet published any philosophical treatise. He was cursed with vitriol that is saved for the worst. The rabbis of the time proclaimed:
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 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 written in this book of the law,
Rabbi Sefarti of our very times curses Spinoza again in his letter, calling him an “Epicouros” (sic). The epithet, which in the middle-ages became synonymous with heresy and mischief, applies the name of the ingenious Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC), who laid the ground for great thinking that influenced many philosophers in later millennia. Epicurus even theorized the idea of the universe being constructed of atoms. The epithet only betrays the anti-intellectual, anti-enlightenment atavism of Rabbi Sefarti and his ilk, who seem to be living back in 1656. The irony becomes only greater, when a professor who merely researches the life and work of Spinoza, is being excommunicated from the Jewish community for his supposed guilt by association.
Rabbi Sepharti writes in his letter of rejection that the ban on Spinoza “remains in force for all time and cannot be rescinded”.
It’s interesting, because Rabbi Nathan Lopez Cardozo, who was himself born into the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community in 1946, argued in 2015 for the lifting of that ban. In 1927 at the Hebrew University in Palestine, Professor Yosef Klausner made a speech concerning Spinoza, and ‘rescinded’, as it were, the ban on Spinoza:
To Spinoza the Jew, it is declared from Mount Scopus, from our ‘Temple in miniature’ – the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: … The ban is nullified! The sin of Judaism against you is removed and your offense against her atoned for! Our brother are you, our brother are you, our brother are you!,
He was using the rabbinical phrase ‘our brother are you’, traditionally applied to rescind a ban. But Klausner was no rabbi.
And Rabbi Sefarti doesn’t want to go that way, he would rather stick to the curses of 1656.
Sefarti ends his letter of rejection with the words:
I wish you a meaningful Chanuka.
But what is that meaning? That no light can penetrate the darkness of obstinate centuries-old dogma? That curses from 1656 need to be echoed upon the living for seeking enlightenment?
This is the saddest interpretation of Hanukkah I can imagine. It’s dark, it’s old, it’s rotten. If there is a useful meaning to Hanukkah, it must be something about enlightenment. It’s not about finding old lamps in old temples. It has to mean something concerning the human wish to worship freely. Otherwise, we’re just talking about idol-worship of marble, stones, old books and old curses. That’s not very happy.
The Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam should really lighten up.
H/t Pabi Shreshta Arihant
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