Origin from 1656
A writ of excommunication, composed in Portuguese and entered in the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish congregation's minute book in 1656, against the twenty three year old Baruch Spinoza. It is the harshest herem recorded in the congregation's own records and, unusually, never states the offence for which it was issued. No act of the congregation lifting the ban is catalogued here; proposals to lift it have been raised publicly in modern times and the atlas has not verified any decision either way. It remains, so far as is documented, in force against Spinoza's name alone.
Facts
Open Questions
Repeal StatusNo act of the congregation lifting the ban has been catalogued here. Proposals to lift it have been raised publicly in modern times and the atlas has not verified any decision either way. 1 Proposals to lift the ban have been raised publicly more than once. The atlas has not been able to verify that any decision was taken, either way, by the body competent to take it, and it will not infer one from the fact that the question was asked. Origins
Language of CompositionPortuguese, entered in the congregation's minute book 1 Origin Period Place of Origin Learn More
The Writ and Its Silence
The document was read in the synagogue on 27 July 1656 and entered in the congregation's minute book, where it survives. Its formulae are conventional and its intensity is not. It invokes the anger of the Lord against the man, blots out his name from under heaven, and separates him for evil from all the tribes of Israel. It then sets out the practical terms: no one is to communicate with him orally or in writing, to show him any favour, to stay under the same roof with him, to come within four cubits of him, or to read anything he has written.
What the writ does not do is state the charge. It says that the elders had long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Espinoza, that they had endeavoured by promises and by threats to turn him from his evil ways, and that daily they received more information about the abominable heresies which he practised and taught. No heresy is named.
The silence has kept the question open for three and a half centuries. Spinoza had published nothing in 1656. The Theological-Political Treatise appeared in 1670 and the Ethics after his death in 1677, so the congregation was acting on what he was saying rather than on what he had written. Contemporary reports of his views attribute to him doubts about the immortality of the soul, about angels, and about the divine authorship of the Torah in the form it had come down.
Why a Small Congregation Acted So Hard
The severity is easier to understand from the position of the community than from the offence.
The Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam were mostly descendants of forced converts who had lived outwardly as Catholics in Iberia and had returned to Jewish practice within living memory. They were tolerated in the Dutch Republic on terms that were generous by the standards of the age and were not guaranteed. The Reformed church watched them, and the city magistrates had made clear that the community was expected to keep its own order and to give no scandal to Christians. A member publicly denying the immortality of the soul was a danger to everyone.
The congregation also had recent experience of the problem. Uriel da Costa, who had denied the immortality of the soul and the authority of the oral law, was excommunicated twice, submitted to a humiliating public penance in 1640 and shot himself shortly afterwards. Juan de Prado was censured in the same period as Spinoza. Bans were a routine instrument of governance and dozens were issued, most of them short and revocable on submission.
This one was neither. Spinoza did not submit and did not seek readmission. He left Amsterdam, ground lenses, wrote, declined a chair at Heidelberg, and died in 1677. Proposals to lift the ban have been raised publicly in modern times; the atlas has not catalogued any act of the congregation lifting it, and records that as an open question rather than as a fact either way.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Belongs to Tradition
Critiqued Here
Humanistic Judaism honours Spinoza as a founding figure of a Judaism without supernatural belief and does not regard the ban as carrying authority over anyone.
Element Of
The ban was pronounced by the Portuguese congregation of Amsterdam in 1656 and has never been lifted; requests to lift it have been considered and declined.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Has the ban of 1656 ever been formally lifted by the congregation that issued it?
The writ was entered in the minute book of the Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam and no act rescinding it has been catalogued here. The ban was of a kind that could be lifted on submission, and Spinoza never submitted. Proposals to lift it have been raised publicly in modern times, and the atlas has not verified a decision in either direction, nor identified who would have the standing to make one now.
What would resolve this The minute books of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish congregation for any later entry on the case, or a statement from the congregation or its rabbinate. A finding that no such act exists is equally useful and would close the question.
Early modern Jewish history; Dutch archival research; halakhic scholarship on the law of the banSteven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life
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