Should the Cherem imposed upon Spinoza, now, be Revoked?

Who, whether dead or alive, or whether claiming to have direct contact with God or claiming to be inspired, knows anything about God? Did our forefathers: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then Moses – as well as all the prophets who followed – know? Did the dead – and do the living – leaders of Rabbinic Judaism know?

Spinoza claimed definitively that the Torah was not the Word of God; further, that anthropormisation of God was invalid.

Yet, with great authority and most conclusively, he also asserted that God exists and that the form of His existence took a certain shape.

The author of this piece would like to ask, How did Spinoza know these “facts”?

Is the author on firmer ground than those she accuses of not knowing what they were or are talking about? how is it that she can claim to know better than anyone, anything about God? Does the author, by saying that nothing may be said, or, alternatively, that everything may be said about God, make it possible for her to say anything when it comes to God?)

There are commentators who would say that it was divine justice – God’s retribution – that Spinoza died at the very young age of 44.

Here, a disparaging observer rears his head and and asks, Where was God and His retribution – retribution being a human attribute – when Spinoza’s Ethics became widely respected as one of philosophy’s more important tracts and Spinoza, posthumously, was himself considered one of the most important philosophers to have emerged in the field of Western thought?

To re-state the foregoing and past assertions, the author of this article allows a position such as Spinoza’s because, it is her position that everything and anything may be said about God (though the opposite may also apply).

If this is understood and accepted as correct analysis now, it may well be that the bet din that issued Spinoza’s Cherem in 1656 might also have accepted the author’s arguments and might therefore not have acted.

Some who sat on the bet din, however, were probably Orthodox Jews who, perhaps, would have been deaf and blind to the arguments posited by the author. Very importantly, it should be pointed out that the bet din which issued the Cherem against Spinoza, had issued Cherems on a very regular basis and so had got into a kind of habit which might have been hard to break

Why, it may be asked, was Maimonides, the controversies surrounding whom amounted to arguments which could have been used to so proceed, not the subject of a Cherem?

After all, Maimonides had said, in his Guide of the Perplexed, that, when it came to God, it was best not to say anything (though in subsequent works, he proceeded to say a great deal about God).

Spinoza had, though, also followed the beliefs of Rabbinical Judaism, Rabbinical Judaism being the main obstacle to reinstatement, when he said that God existed and that God was eternal.

If you use a “human” term such as “exist”, you automatically unleash many other “human” terms and empower those who follow the precepts of Rabbinical Judaism. That is to say, it is simply not right to maintain that God exists, or that He is eternal and say that any other attributes are inadmissable because they are anthropormorphic.

For these reasons, in the opinion of the author, the time has come to revoke the Cherem pronounced against Spinoza.