==
Irvin D. Yalom
2012
Yalom, Irvin D., 1931- The Spinoza Problem: a novel.
==
CONTENTS
Prologue
1 AMSTERDAM—APRIL 1656
2 REVAL, ESTONIA—MAY 3, 1910
3 AMSTERDAM—1656
4 ESTONIA—MAY 10, 1910
5 AMSTERDAM—1656
6 ESTONIA—1910
7 AMSTERDAM—1656
8 REVAL, ESTONIA—1917–1918
9 AMSTERDAM—1656
10 REVAL, ESTONIA—NOVEMBER 1918
11 AMSTERDAM—1656
12 ESTONIA—1918
13 AMSTERDAM—1656
14 MUNICH—1918–1919
15 AMSTERDAM—JULY 1656
16 MUNICH—1919
17 AMSTERDAM—1656
18 MUNICH—1919
19 AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
20 MUNICH—MARCH 1922
21 AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
22 BERLIN—1922
23 AMSTERDAM—JULY 27, 1656
24 BERLIN—1922
25 AMSTERDAM—1658
26 BERLIN—MARCH 26, 1923
27 RIJNSBURG—1662
28 FRIEDRICH’S OFFICE, OLIVAER PLATZ 3,
BERLIN—1925
29 RIJNSBURG AND AMSTERDAM—1662
30 BERLIN—1936
31 VOORBURG—DECEMBER 1666
32 BERLIN, THE NETHERLANDS—1939–1945
33 VOORBURG—DECEMBER 1666
Epilogue
==
PROLOGUE
Spinoza has long intrigued me, and for years I’ve wanted to write about this valiant
seventeenth-century thinker, so alone in the world—without a family, without a community—who
authored books that truly changed the world. He anticipated secularization, the liberal democratic
political state, and the rise of natural science, and he paved the way for the Enlightenment. The fact
that he was excommunicated by the Jews at the age of twenty-four and censored for the rest of his life
by the Christians had always fascinated me, perhaps because of my own iconoclastic proclivities. And
this strange sense of kinship with Spinoza was strengthened by the knowledge that Einstein, one of
my first heroes, was a Spinozist. When Einstein spoke of God, he spoke of Spinoza’s God—a God
entirely equivalent to nature, a God that includes all substance, and a God “that doesn’t play dice with
the universe”—by which he means that everything that happens, without exception, follows the
orderly laws of nature.
I also believe that Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I
have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and
psychotherapy—for example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences,
that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding leads to transcendence—and I
wished to celebrate his contributions through a novel of ideas.
But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking
external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I
had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrative—no family dramas, no love affairs,
jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his
death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his
letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle
soul—some compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus.
So I resolved to write a novel about his inner life. That was where my personal expertise might help
in telling Spinoza’s story. After all, he was a human being and therefore must have struggled with the
same basic human conflicts that troubled me and the many patients I’ve worked with over the
decades. He must have had a strong emotional response to being excommunicated, at the age of
twenty-four, by the Jewish community in Amsterdam—an irreversible edict that ordered every Jew,
including his own family, to shun him forever. No Jew would ever again speak to him, have
commerce with him, read his words, or come within fifteen feet of his physical presence. And of
course no one lives without an inner life of fantasies, dreams, passions, and a yearning for love.
About a fourth of Spinoza’s major work, Ethics, is devoted to “overcoming the bondage of the
passions.” As a psychiatrist, I felt convinced that he could not have written this section unless he had
experienced a conscious struggle with his own passions.
Yet I was stumped for years because I could not find the story that a novel requires—until a visit to
Holland five years ago changed everything. I had come to lecture and, as part of my compensation,
requested and was granted a “Spinoza day.” The secretary of the Dutch Spinoza Association and a
leading Spinoza philosopher agreed to spend a day with me visiting all the important Spinoza
sites—his dwellings, his burial place, and, the main attraction, the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg. It
was there I had an epiphany.
I entered the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg, about a forty-five-minute drive from Amsterdam, with
keen anticipation, looking for—what? Perhaps an encounter with the spirit of Spinoza. Perhaps a
story. But entering the museum, I was immediately disappointed. I doubted that this small, sparse
museum could bring me closer to Spinoza. The only remotely personal items were the 151 volumes of
Spinoza’s own library, and I turned immediately to them. My hosts permitted me free access, and I
picked up one seventeenth-century book after another, smelling and holding them, thrilled to touch
objects that had once been touched by Spinoza’s hands.
But my reverie was soon interrupted by my host: “Of course, Dr. Yalom, his possessions—bed,
clothes, shoes, pens and books—were auctioned off after his death to pay funeral expenses. The
books were sold and scattered far and wide, but fortunately, the notary made a complete list of those
books prior to the auction, and over two hundred years later a Jewish philanthropist reassembled
most of the same titles, the same editions from the same years and cities of publication. So we call it
Spinoza’s library, but it’s really a replica. His fingers never touched these books.”
I turned away from the library and gazed at the portrait of Spinoza hanging on the wall and soon
felt myself melting into those huge, sad, oval, heavy-lidded eyes, almost a mystical experience—a rare
thing for me. But then my host said, “You may not know this, but that’s not really Spinoza’s likeness.
It’s merely an image from some artist’s imagination, derived from a few lines of written description. If
there were drawings of Spinoza made during his lifetime, none have survived.”
Maybe a story about sheer elusiveness, I wondered.
While I was examining the lens-grinding apparatus in the second room—also not his own
equipment, the museum placard stated, but equipment similar to it—I heard one of my hosts in the
library room mention the Nazis.
I stepped back into the library. “What? The Nazis were here? In this museum?”
“Yes—several months after the blitzkrieg of Holland, the ERR troops drove up in their big
limousines and stole everything—the books, a bust, and a portrait of Spinoza—everything. They
carted it all away, then sealed and expropriated the museum.”
“ERR? What do the letters stand for?”
“Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. The taskforce of Reich leader Rosenberg—that’s Alfred
Rosenberg, the major Nazi anti-Semitic ideologue. He was in charge of looting for the Third Reich,
and under Rosenberg’s orders, the ERR plundered all of Europe—first, just the Jewish things and
then, later in the war, anything of value.”
“So then these books are twice removed from Spinoza?” I asked. “You mean that books had to be
purchased again and the library reassembled a second time?”
“No—miraculously these books survived and were returned here after the war with just a few
missing copies.”
“Amazing!” There’s a story here, I thought. “But why did Rosenberg even bother with these books in
the first place? I know they have some modest value—being seventeenth-century and older—but why
didn’t they just march into the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and pluck a single Rembrandt worth fifty
times this whole collection?”
“No, that’s not the point. The money had nothing to do with it. The ERR had some mysterious
interest in Spinoza. In his official report, Rosenberg’s officer, the Nazi who did the hands-on looting
of the library, added a significant sentence: ‘They contain valuable early works of great importance for
the exploration of the Spinoza problem.’ You can see the report on the web, if you like—it’s in the
official Nuremberg documents.”
I felt stunned. “‘Exploration of the Nazis’ Spinoza problem’? I don’t understand. What did he
mean? What was the Nazi Spinoza problem?”
Like a mime duo, my hosts hunched their shoulders and turned up their palms.
I pressed on. “You’re saying that because of this Spinoza problem, they protected these books
rather than burn them, as they burned so much of Europe?”
They nodded.
“And where was the library kept during the war?”
“No one knows. The books just vanished for five years and turned up again in 1946 in a German
salt mine.”
“A salt mine? Amazing!” I picked up one of the books—a sixteenth-century copy of the Iliad—and
said, as I caressed it, “So this old storybook has its own story to tell.”
My hosts took me to look at the rest of the house. I had come at a fortunate time—few visitors had
ever seen the other half of the building, for it had been occupied for centuries by a working-class
family. But the last family member had recently died, and the Spinoza Society had promptly
purchased the property and was just now beginning reconstruction to incorporate it into the
museum. I wandered amid the construction debris through the modest kitchen and living room and
then climbed the narrow, steep stairway to the small, unremarkable bedroom. I scanned the simple
room quickly and began to descend, when my eye caught sight of a thin, two-by-two-foot crease in a
corner of the ceiling.
“What’s that?”
The old caretaker climbed up a few stairs to look and told me it was a trap door that led to a tiny
attic space where two Jews, an elderly mother and her daughter, were hidden from the Nazis for the
entire duration of the war. “We fed them and took good care of them.”
A firestorm outside! Four out of five Dutch Jews murdered by the Nazis! Yet upstairs in the
Spinoza house, hidden in the attic, two Jewish women were tenderly cared for throughout the war.
And downstairs, the tiny Spinoza Museum was looted, sealed, and expropriated by an officer of the
Rosenberg task force, who believed that its library could help the Nazis solve their “Spinoza
problem.” And what was their Spinoza problem? I wondered if this Nazi, Alfred Rosenberg, had also,
in his own way, for his own reasons, been looking for Spinoza. I had entered the museum with one
mystery and now left it with two.
Shortly thereafter, I began writing.
==
CHAPTER ONE
AMSTERDAM—APRIL 1656
As the final rays of light glance off the water of the Zwanenburgwal, Amsterdam closes down. The
dyers gather up their magenta and crimson fabrics drying on the stone banks of the canal. Merchants
roll up their awnings and shutter their outdoor market stalls. A few workers plodding home stop for a
snack with Dutch gin at the herring stands on the canal and then continue on their way. Amsterdam
moves slowly: the city mourns, still recovering from the plague that, only a few months earlier, killed
one person in nine.
A few meters from the canal, at Breestraat No. 4, the bankrupt and slightly tipsy Rembrandt van
Rijn applies a last brushstroke to his painting Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph, signs his name in the
lower right corner, tosses his palette to the floor, and turns to descend his narrow winding staircase.
The house, destined three centuries later to become his museum and memorial, is on this day
witness to his shame. It swarms with bidders anticipating the auction of all of the artist’s
possessions. Gruffly pushing aside the gawkers on the staircase, he steps outside the front door,
inhales the salty air, and stumbles toward the corner tavern.
In Delft, seventy kilometers south, another artist begins his ascent. The twenty-five-year-old
Johannes Vermeer takes a final look at his new painting, The Procuress. He scans from right to left.
First, the prostitute in a gloriously yellow jacket. Good. Good. The yellow gleams like polished
sunlight. And the group of men surrounding her. Excellent—each could easily stroll off the canvas
and begin a conversation. He bends closer to catch the tiny but piercing gaze of the leering young
man with the foppish hat. Vermeer nods to his miniature self. Greatly pleased, he signs his name with
a flourish in the lower right corner.
Back in Amsterdam at Breestraat No. 57, only two blocks from the auction preparations at
Rembrandt’s home, a twenty-three-year-old merchant (born only a few days earlier than Vermeer,
whom he would admire but never meet) prepares to close his import-export shop. He appears too
delicate and beautiful to be a shopkeeper. His features are perfect, his olive skin unblemished, his
dark eyes large, and soulful.
He takes a last look around: many shelves are as empty as his pockets. Pirates intercepted his last
shipment from Bahia, and there is no coffee, sugar, or cocoa. For a generation, the Spinoza family
operated a prosperous import-export wholesale business, but now the brothers Spinoza—Gabriel
and Bento—are reduced to running a small retail shop. Inhaling the dusty air, Bento Spinoza
identifies, with resignation, the fetid rat droppings accompanying the odor of dried figs, raisins,
candied ginger, almonds, and chickpeas and the fumes of acrid Spanish wine. He walks outside and
commences his daily duel with the rusted padlock on the shop door. An unfamiliar voice speaking in
stilted Portuguese startles him.
“Are you Bento Spinoza?”
Spinoza turns to face two strangers, young weary men who seem to have traveled far. One is tall,
with a massive, burly head that hangs forward as though it were too heavy to be held erect. His
clothes are of good quality but soiled and wrinkled. The other, dressed in tattered peasant’s clothes,
stands behind his companion. He has long, matted hair, dark eyes, a strong chin and forceful nose.
He holds himself stiffly. Only his eyes move, darting like frightened tadpoles.
Spinoza offers a wary nod.
“I am Jacob Mendoza,” says the taller of the two. “We must see you. We must talk to you. This is
my cousin, Franco Benitez, whom I’ve just brought from Portugal. My cousin,” Jacob clasps Franco’s
shoulder, “is in crisis.”
“Yes,” Spinoza answers. “And?”
“In severe crisis.”
“Yes. And why seek me?”
“We’ve been told that you’re the one to render help. Perhaps the only one.”
“Help?”
“Franco has lost his faith. He doubts everything. All religious ritual. Prayer. Even the presence of
God. He is frightened all the time. He doesn’t sleep. He talks of killing himself.”
“And who has misled you by sending you here? I am only a merchant who operates a small
business. And not very profitably, as you see.” Spinoza points at the dusty window through which the
half-empty shelves are visible. “Rabbi Mortera is our spiritual leader. You must go to him.”
“We arrived yesterday, and this morning we set out to do exactly that. But our landlord, a distant
cousin, advised against it. ‘Franco needs a helper, not a judge,’ he said. He told us that Rabbi
Mortera is severe with doubters, that he believes all Jews in Portugal who converted to Christianity
face eternal damnation, even if they were forced to choose between conversion and death. ‘Rabbi
Mortera,’ he said, ‘will only make Franco feel worse. Go see Bento Spinoza. He is wise in such
matters.’”
“What talk is this? I am but a merchant—”
“He claims that if you had not been forced into business because of the death of your older
brother and your father, you would have been the next great rabbi of Amsterdam.”
“I must go. I have a meeting I must attend.”
“You’re going to the Sabbath service at the synagogue? Yes? We too. I am taking Franco, for he
must return to his faith. Can we walk with you?”
“No, I go to another kind of meeting.”
“What other kind?” says Jacob, but then immediately reverses himself. “Sorry. It’s not my affair.
Can we meet tomorrow? Would you be willing to help us on the Sabbath? It is permitted, since it is a
mitzvah. We need you. My cousin is in danger.”
“Strange.” Spinoza shakes his head. “Never have I heard such a request. I’m sorry, but you are
mistaken. I can offer nothing.”
Franco, who had been staring at the ground as Jacob spoke, now lifts his eyes and utters his first
words: “I ask for little, for only a few words with you. Do you refuse a fellow Jew? It is your duty to a
traveler. I had to flee Portugal just as your father and your family had to flee, to escape the
Inquisition.”
“But what can I—”
“My father was burned at the stake just a year ago. His crime? They found pages of the Torah
buried in the soil behind our home. My father’s brother, Jacob’s father, was murdered soon after. I
have a question. Consider this world where a son smells the odor of his father’s burning flesh. Where
is the God that created this kind of world? Why does He permit such things? Do you blame me for
asking that?” Franco looks deeply into Spinoza’s eyes for several moments and then continues.
“Surely a man named ‘blessed’—Bento in Portuguese and Baruch in Hebrew—will not refuse to
speak to me?”
Spinoza nods solemnly. “I will speak to you, Franco. Tomorrow midday?”
“At the synagogue?” Franco asks.
“No, here. Meet me here at the shop. It will be open.”
“The shop? Open?” Jacob interjects. “But the Sabbath?”
“My younger brother, Gabriel, represents the Spinoza family at the synagogue.”
“But the holy Torah,” Jacob insists, ignoring Franco’s tugging at his sleeve, “states God’s wish that
we not work on the Sabbath, that we must spend that holy day offering prayers to Him and
performing mitzvahs.”
Spinoza turns and speaks gently, as a teacher to a young student, “Tell me, Jacob, do you believe
that God is all powerful?”
Jacob nods.
“That God is perfect? Complete unto Himself.”
Again Jacob agrees.
“Then surely you would agree that, by definition, a perfect and complete being has no needs, no
insufficiencies, no wants, no wishes. Is that not so?”
Jacob thinks, hesitates, and then nods warily. Spinoza notes the beginnings of a smile on Franco’s
lips.
“Then,” Spinoza continues, “I submit that God has no wishes about how, or even if, we glorify
Him. Allow me, then, Jacob, to love God in my own fashion.”
Franco’s eyes widen. He turns toward Jacob as though to say, “You see, you see? This is the man I
seek.”==
CHAPTER TWO
REVAL, ESTONIA—MAY 3, 1910
Time: 4 PM
Place: A bench in the main corridor outside Headmaster Epstein’s office in the Petri-Realschule
Upon the bench fidgets the sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg, who is uncertain why he has been
summoned to the headmaster’s office. Alfred’s torso is wiry, his eyes grey-blue, his Teutonic face
well-proportioned; a lock of chestnut hair hangs in just the desired angle over his forehead. No dark
circles surround his eyes—they will come later. He holds his chin high. Perhaps he is defiant, but his
fists, clenching and relaxing, signal apprehension.
He looks like everyone and no one. He is a near-man with a whole life ahead of him. In eight years
he will travel from Reval to Munich and become a prolific anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic journalist.
In nine years he will hear a stirring speech at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party by a new
prospect, a veteran of World War I named Adolf Hitler, and Alfred will join the party shortly after
Hitler. In twenty years he will lay down his pen and grin triumphantly as he finishes the last page of
his book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Destined to become a million-copy best seller, it will
provide much of the ideological foundation of the Nazi party and offer a justification for the
destruction of European Jews. In thirty years his troops will storm into a small Dutch museum in
Rijnsburg and confiscate Spinoza’s personal library of one hundred and fifty-one volumes. And in
thirty-six years his dark-circled eyes will appear bewildered and he will shake his head no when asked
by the American hangman at Nuremberg, “Do you have any last words?”
Young Alfred hears the echoing sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor, and spotting Herr
Schäfer, his advisor and German teacher, he bolts to his feet to greet him. Herr Schäfer merely frowns
and shakes his head slowly as he passes and opens the headmaster’s door. But just before entering,
he hesitates, turns back to Alfred, and in a not unkind voice whispers, “Rosenberg, you disappointed
me, all of us, with your poor judgment in your speech last night. This poor judgment is not erased by
having being elected class representative. Even so, I continue to believe you are not without promise.
You graduate in only a few weeks. Don’t be a fool now.”
Last night’s election speech! Oh, so that’s it. Alfred hits the side of his head with his palm. Of
course—that is why I am ordered here. Though almost all forty members of his senior class had been
there—mostly Baltic Germans with a sprinkling of Russians, Estonians, Poles, and Jews—Alfred had
pointedly directed his campaign comments entirely to the German majority and stirred their spirits by
speaking of their mission as keepers of the noble German culture. “Keep our race pure,” he had told
them. “Do not weaken it by forgetting our noble traditions, by accepting inferior ideas, by mixing with
inferior races.” Perhaps he should have stopped there. But he got carried away. Perhaps he had gone
too far.
His reverie is interrupted by the opening of the massive ten-foot-high door and Headmaster
Epstein’s booming voice, “Herr Rosenberg, bitte, herein.”
Alfred enters to see his headmaster and his German teacher seated at one end of a long, dark,
heavy wood table. Alfred always feels small in the presence of Headmaster Epstein, over six feet tall,
whose stately bearing, piercing eyes, and heavy, well-tailored beard embody his authority.
Headmaster Epstein motions to Alfred to sit in a chair at the end of the table. It is noticeably
smaller than the two tall-backed chairs at the other end. The headmaster wastes no time getting to the
point. “So, Rosenberg, I’m of Jewish ancestry, am I? And my wife, too, is Jewish, is she? And Jews are
an inferior race and should not teach Germans? And, I gather, certainly not be elevated to
headmaster?”
No response. Alfred exhales, tries to shrink further into his chair, and hangs his head.
“Rosenberg, do I state your position correctly?”
“Sir . . . uh, sir, I spoke too hastily. I meant these remarks only in a general way. It was an election
speech, and I spoke that way because that is what they wanted to hear.” Out of the corner of his eye,
Alfred sees Herr Schäfer slump in his chair, take off his glasses, and rub his eyes.
“Oh, I see. You spoke in a general way? But now here I am before you, not in general but in
particular.”
“Sir, I say only what all Germans think. That we must preserve our race and our culture.”
“And as for me and the Jews?”
Alfred silently hangs his head again. He wants to gaze out the window, midway down the table, but
looks up apprehensively at the headmaster.
“Yes, of course you can’t answer. Perhaps it will loosen your tongue if I tell you that my lineage and
that of my wife are pure German, and our ancestors came to the Baltics in the fourteenth century.
What’s more, we are devout Lutherans.”
Alfred nods slowly.
“And yet you called me and my wife Jews,” the headmaster continues.
“I did not say that. I only said there were rumors—”
“Rumors you were glad to spread, to your own personal advantage in the election. And tell me,
Rosenberg, the rumors are grounded in what facts? Or are they suspended in thin air?”
“Facts?” Alfred shakes his head. “Uh. Perhaps your name?”
“So, Epstein is a Jewish name? All Epsteins are Jews, is that it? Or 50 percent? Or just some? Or
perhaps only one in a thousand? What have your scholarly investigations shown you?”
No answer. Alfred shakes his head.
“You mean that despite your education in science and philosophy in our school you never think
about how you know what you know. Isn’t that one of the major lessons of the Enlightenment? Have
we failed you? Or you, us?”
Alfred looks dumbfounded. Herr Epstein drums his fingers on the long table, then continues.
“And your name, Rosenberg? Is your name a Jewish name also?”
“I’m sure it is not.”
“I’m not so sure. Let me give you some facts about names. In the course of the Enlightenment in
Germany . . .” Headmaster Epstein pauses and then barks, “Rosenberg, do you know when and what
the Enlightenment was?”
Glancing at Herr Schäfer and with a prayer in his voice, Alfred answers meekly, “Eighteenth century
and . . . and it was the age . . . the age of reason and science?”
“Yes, correct. Good. Herr Schäfer’s instruction has not been entirely lost on you. Late in that
century, measures were passed in Germany to transform Jews into German citizens, and they were
compelled to choose and pay for German names. If they refused to pay, then they might receive
ridiculous names, such as Schmutzfinger or Drecklecker. Most of the Jews agreed to pay for a prettier
or more elegant name, perhaps a flower—like Rosenblum—or names associated with nature in some
way, like Greenbaum. Even more popular were the names of noble castles. For example, the castle of
Epstein had noble connotations and belonged to a great family of the Holy Roman Empire, and its
name was often selected by Jews living in its vicinity in the eighteenth century. Some Jews paid lesser
sums for traditional Jewish names like Levy or Cohen.
“Now your name, Rosenberg, is a very old name also. But for over a hundred years it has had a
new life. It has become a common Jewish name in the Fatherland, and I assure you that if, or when,
you make the trip to the Fatherland, you will see glances and smirks, and you will hear rumors about
Jewish ancestors in your bloodline. Tell me, Rosenberg, when that happens, how will you answer
them?”
“I will follow your example, sir, and speak of my ancestry.”
“I have personally done my family’s genealogical research back for several centuries. Have you?”
Alfred shakes his head.
“Do you know how to do such research?”
Another headshake.
“Then one of your required pregraduation research projects shall be to learn the details of
genealogical research and then carry out a search of your own ancestry.”
“One of my projects, sir?”
“Yes, there will be two required assignments in order to remove any of my doubts about your
fitness for graduation as well as your fitness to enter the Polytechnic Institute. After our discussion
today, Herr Schäfer and I will decide upon another edifying project.”
“Yes sir.” Alfred is now growing aware of the precariousness of his situation.
“Tell me, Rosenberg,” Headmaster Epstein continues, “did you know there were Jewish students at
the rally last night?”
A faint nod from Alfred. Headmaster Epstein asks, “And did you consider their feelings and their
response to your words about Jews being unworthy for this school?”
“I believe my first duty is to the Fatherland and to protect the purity of our great Aryan race, the
creative force in all civilization.”
“Rosenberg, the election is over. Spare me the speeches. Address my question. I asked about
feelings of the Jews in your audience.”
“I believe that if we are not careful, the Jewish race will bring us down. They are weak. They are
parasitic. The eternal enemy. The anti-race to Aryan values and culture.”
Surprised by Alfred’s vehemence, Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer exchange concerned
glances. Headmaster Epstein probes more deeply.
“It appears you wish to avoid that question I asked. Let me try another line of discussion. The Jews
are a weak, parasitic, inferior little race?”
Alfred nods.
“So tell me, Rosenberg, how can such a weak race threaten our all-powerful Aryan race?”
As Alfred tries to formulate an answer, Herr Epstein continues, “Tell me, Rosenberg, have you
studied Darwin in Herr Schäfer’s classes?”
“Yes,” Alfred responds, “in Herr Schäfer’s history course and also in Herr Werner’s biology
course.”
“And what do you know of Darwin?”
“I know about evolution of the species and about the survival of the fittest.”
“Ah, yes, the fittest survive. Now of course you’ve thoroughly read the Old Testament in your
religion course, have you not?”
“Yes, in Herr Müller’s course.”
“So, Rosenberg, let’s consider the fact that almost all of the peoples and cultures—dozens of
them—described in the Bible have become extinct. Right?”
Alfred nods.
“Can you name some of these extinct people?”
Alfred gulps: “Phoenicians, Moabites . . . and Edomites.” Alfred glances at the nodding head of
Herr Schäfer.
“Excellent. But all of them dead and gone. Except the Jews. The Jews survive. Would not Darwin
claim that the Jews are the fittest of all? Do you follow me?”
Alfred responds in lightning quick fashion, “But not through their own strength. They have been
parasites and have held back the Aryan race from even greater fitness. They survive only by sucking
the strength and the gold and wealth from us.”
“Ah, they don’t play fair,” Headmaster Epstein says. “You’re suggesting there is a place for fairness
in nature’s grand scheme. In other words, the noble animal in its struggle for survival should not use
camouflage or hunting stealth? Strange, I don’t remember anything in Darwin’s work about fairness.”
Alfred, puzzled, sits silently.
“Well, never mind about that,” says the headmaster. “Let’s consider another point. Surely,
Rosenberg, you’d agree that the Jewish race has produced great men. Consider the Lord, Jesus, who
was Jewish-born.”
Again Alfred answers quickly, “I have read that Jesus was born in Galilee, not in Judea, where the
Jews were. Even though some Galileans eventually came to practice Judaism, they had not a drop of
true Israelite blood in them.”
“What?” Headmaster Epstein throws up his hands and turns toward Herr Schäfer and asks,
“Where do these notions come from, Herr Schäfer? If he were an adult, I would ask what he had been
drinking. Is this what you are teaching in your history course?”
Herr Schäfer shakes his head and turns to Alfred. “Where are you getting these ideas? You say you
read them but not in my class. What are you reading, Rosenberg?”
“A noble book, sir. Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.”
Herr Schäfer claps his hand to his forehead and slumps in his chair.
“What’s that?” Headmaster Epstein asks.
“Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book,” says Herr Schäfer. “He’s an Englishman, now Wagner’s
son-in-law. He writes imaginative history: that is, history that he invents as he goes along.” He turns
back toward Alfred. “How did you come upon Chamberlain’s book?”
“I read some of it at my uncle’s home and then went to buy it at the bookstore across the street.
They didn’t have it but ordered it for me. I’ve been reading it this last month.”
“Such enthusiasm! I only wish you had been so enthusiastic about your class texts,” says Herr
Shäfer, gesturing with a sweep of his arm to the shelves of leather-bound books lining the wall of the
headmaster’s office. “Even one class text!”
“Herr Schäfer,” asks the headmaster, “you’re familiar with this work, this Chamberlain?”
“As much as I’d wish to be with any pseudo-historian. He is a popularizer of Arthur Gobineau, the
French racist whose writings about the basic superiority of the Aryan races influenced Wagner. Both
Gobineau and Chamberlain make extravagant claims about Aryan leadership in the great Greek and
Roman civilizations.”
“They were great!” Alfred suddenly interjects. “Until they mixed with inferior races—the poisonous
Jews, the Blacks, the Asians. Then each civilization declined.”
Both Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer are startled by a student daring to interrupt their
conversation. The headmaster glances at Herr Schäfer as though it were his responsibility.
Herr Schäfer shifts the blame to his student: “If only he had such fervor in the classroom.” He
turns to Alfred. “How many times did I say that to you, Rosenberg? You seemed so uninterested in
your own education. How many times did I try to incite your participation in our readings? And yet suddenly today here you are, set on fire by a book. How can we understand this?” “Perhaps it is because I never read such a book before—a book that tells the truth about the nobility of our race, about how scholars have mistakenly written about history as the progress of humanity, when the truth is that our race created civilization in all the great empires! Not only in Greece and Rome, but also Egypt, Persia, even India. Each of these empires crumbled only when our race was polluted by surrounding inferior races.” Alfred looks toward Headmaster Epstein and says as respectfully as possible, “If I may, sir, this is the answer to your earlier question. This is why I do not worry about the hurt feelings of a couple of Jewish students, or about the Slavs, who are also inferior but not so organized as the Jews.” Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer again exchange glances, both of them now, finally, appreciative of the seriousness of the problem. This is no mere prankish or impulsive teenager. Headmaster Epstein says, “Rosenberg, please wait outside. We shall confer privately.”
==
“What talk is this? I am but a merchant—”
“He claims that if you had not been forced into business because of the death of your older
brother and your father, you would have been the next great rabbi of Amsterdam.”
“I must go. I have a meeting I must attend.”
“You’re going to the Sabbath service at the synagogue? Yes? We too. I am taking Franco, for he
must return to his faith. Can we walk with you?”
“No, I go to another kind of meeting.”
“What other kind?” says Jacob, but then immediately reverses himself. “Sorry. It’s not my affair.
Can we meet tomorrow? Would you be willing to help us on the Sabbath? It is permitted, since it is a
mitzvah. We need you. My cousin is in danger.”
“Strange.” Spinoza shakes his head. “Never have I heard such a request. I’m sorry, but you are
mistaken. I can offer nothing.”
Franco, who had been staring at the ground as Jacob spoke, now lifts his eyes and utters his first
words: “I ask for little, for only a few words with you. Do you refuse a fellow Jew? It is your duty to a
traveler. I had to flee Portugal just as your father and your family had to flee, to escape the
Inquisition.”
“But what can I—”
“My father was burned at the stake just a year ago. His crime? They found pages of the Torah
buried in the soil behind our home. My father’s brother, Jacob’s father, was murdered soon after. I
have a question. Consider this world where a son smells the odor of his father’s burning flesh. Where
is the God that created this kind of world? Why does He permit such things? Do you blame me for
asking that?” Franco looks deeply into Spinoza’s eyes for several moments and then continues.
“Surely a man named ‘blessed’—Bento in Portuguese and Baruch in Hebrew—will not refuse to
speak to me?”
Spinoza nods solemnly. “I will speak to you, Franco. Tomorrow midday?”
“At the synagogue?” Franco asks.
“No, here. Meet me here at the shop. It will be open.”
“The shop? Open?” Jacob interjects. “But the Sabbath?”
“My younger brother, Gabriel, represents the Spinoza family at the synagogue.”
“But the holy Torah,” Jacob insists, ignoring Franco’s tugging at his sleeve, “states God’s wish that
we not work on the Sabbath, that we must spend that holy day offering prayers to Him and
performing mitzvahs.”
Spinoza turns and speaks gently, as a teacher to a young student, “Tell me, Jacob, do you believe
that God is all powerful?”
Jacob nods.
“That God is perfect? Complete unto Himself.”
Again Jacob agrees.
“Then surely you would agree that, by definition, a perfect and complete being has no needs, no
insufficiencies, no wants, no wishes. Is that not so?”
Jacob thinks, hesitates, and then nods warily. Spinoza notes the beginnings of a smile on Franco’s
lips.
“Then,” Spinoza continues, “I submit that God has no wishes about how, or even if, we glorify
Him. Allow me, then, Jacob, to love God in my own fashion.”
Franco’s eyes widen. He turns toward Jacob as though to say, “You see, you see? This is the man I
seek.”==
CHAPTER TWO
REVAL, ESTONIA—MAY 3, 1910
Time: 4 PM
Place: A bench in the main corridor outside Headmaster Epstein’s office in the Petri-Realschule
Upon the bench fidgets the sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg, who is uncertain why he has been
summoned to the headmaster’s office. Alfred’s torso is wiry, his eyes grey-blue, his Teutonic face
well-proportioned; a lock of chestnut hair hangs in just the desired angle over his forehead. No dark
circles surround his eyes—they will come later. He holds his chin high. Perhaps he is defiant, but his
fists, clenching and relaxing, signal apprehension.
He looks like everyone and no one. He is a near-man with a whole life ahead of him. In eight years
he will travel from Reval to Munich and become a prolific anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic journalist.
In nine years he will hear a stirring speech at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party by a new
prospect, a veteran of World War I named Adolf Hitler, and Alfred will join the party shortly after
Hitler. In twenty years he will lay down his pen and grin triumphantly as he finishes the last page of
his book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Destined to become a million-copy best seller, it will
provide much of the ideological foundation of the Nazi party and offer a justification for the
destruction of European Jews. In thirty years his troops will storm into a small Dutch museum in
Rijnsburg and confiscate Spinoza’s personal library of one hundred and fifty-one volumes. And in
thirty-six years his dark-circled eyes will appear bewildered and he will shake his head no when asked
by the American hangman at Nuremberg, “Do you have any last words?”
Young Alfred hears the echoing sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor, and spotting Herr
Schäfer, his advisor and German teacher, he bolts to his feet to greet him. Herr Schäfer merely frowns
and shakes his head slowly as he passes and opens the headmaster’s door. But just before entering,
he hesitates, turns back to Alfred, and in a not unkind voice whispers, “Rosenberg, you disappointed
me, all of us, with your poor judgment in your speech last night. This poor judgment is not erased by
having being elected class representative. Even so, I continue to believe you are not without promise.
You graduate in only a few weeks. Don’t be a fool now.”
Last night’s election speech! Oh, so that’s it. Alfred hits the side of his head with his palm. Of
course—that is why I am ordered here. Though almost all forty members of his senior class had been
there—mostly Baltic Germans with a sprinkling of Russians, Estonians, Poles, and Jews—Alfred had
pointedly directed his campaign comments entirely to the German majority and stirred their spirits by
speaking of their mission as keepers of the noble German culture. “Keep our race pure,” he had told
them. “Do not weaken it by forgetting our noble traditions, by accepting inferior ideas, by mixing with
inferior races.” Perhaps he should have stopped there. But he got carried away. Perhaps he had gone
too far.
His reverie is interrupted by the opening of the massive ten-foot-high door and Headmaster
Epstein’s booming voice, “Herr Rosenberg, bitte, herein.”
Alfred enters to see his headmaster and his German teacher seated at one end of a long, dark,
heavy wood table. Alfred always feels small in the presence of Headmaster Epstein, over six feet tall,
whose stately bearing, piercing eyes, and heavy, well-tailored beard embody his authority.
Headmaster Epstein motions to Alfred to sit in a chair at the end of the table. It is noticeably
smaller than the two tall-backed chairs at the other end. The headmaster wastes no time getting to the
point. “So, Rosenberg, I’m of Jewish ancestry, am I? And my wife, too, is Jewish, is she? And Jews are
an inferior race and should not teach Germans? And, I gather, certainly not be elevated to
headmaster?”
No response. Alfred exhales, tries to shrink further into his chair, and hangs his head.
“Rosenberg, do I state your position correctly?”
“Sir . . . uh, sir, I spoke too hastily. I meant these remarks only in a general way. It was an election
speech, and I spoke that way because that is what they wanted to hear.” Out of the corner of his eye,
Alfred sees Herr Schäfer slump in his chair, take off his glasses, and rub his eyes.
“Oh, I see. You spoke in a general way? But now here I am before you, not in general but in
particular.”
“Sir, I say only what all Germans think. That we must preserve our race and our culture.”
“And as for me and the Jews?”
Alfred silently hangs his head again. He wants to gaze out the window, midway down the table, but
looks up apprehensively at the headmaster.
“Yes, of course you can’t answer. Perhaps it will loosen your tongue if I tell you that my lineage and
that of my wife are pure German, and our ancestors came to the Baltics in the fourteenth century.
What’s more, we are devout Lutherans.”
Alfred nods slowly.
“And yet you called me and my wife Jews,” the headmaster continues.
“I did not say that. I only said there were rumors—”
“Rumors you were glad to spread, to your own personal advantage in the election. And tell me,
Rosenberg, the rumors are grounded in what facts? Or are they suspended in thin air?”
“Facts?” Alfred shakes his head. “Uh. Perhaps your name?”
“So, Epstein is a Jewish name? All Epsteins are Jews, is that it? Or 50 percent? Or just some? Or
perhaps only one in a thousand? What have your scholarly investigations shown you?”
No answer. Alfred shakes his head.
“You mean that despite your education in science and philosophy in our school you never think
about how you know what you know. Isn’t that one of the major lessons of the Enlightenment? Have
we failed you? Or you, us?”
Alfred looks dumbfounded. Herr Epstein drums his fingers on the long table, then continues.
“And your name, Rosenberg? Is your name a Jewish name also?”
“I’m sure it is not.”
“I’m not so sure. Let me give you some facts about names. In the course of the Enlightenment in
Germany . . .” Headmaster Epstein pauses and then barks, “Rosenberg, do you know when and what
the Enlightenment was?”
Glancing at Herr Schäfer and with a prayer in his voice, Alfred answers meekly, “Eighteenth century
and . . . and it was the age . . . the age of reason and science?”
“Yes, correct. Good. Herr Schäfer’s instruction has not been entirely lost on you. Late in that
century, measures were passed in Germany to transform Jews into German citizens, and they were
compelled to choose and pay for German names. If they refused to pay, then they might receive
ridiculous names, such as Schmutzfinger or Drecklecker. Most of the Jews agreed to pay for a prettier
or more elegant name, perhaps a flower—like Rosenblum—or names associated with nature in some
way, like Greenbaum. Even more popular were the names of noble castles. For example, the castle of
Epstein had noble connotations and belonged to a great family of the Holy Roman Empire, and its
name was often selected by Jews living in its vicinity in the eighteenth century. Some Jews paid lesser
sums for traditional Jewish names like Levy or Cohen.
“Now your name, Rosenberg, is a very old name also. But for over a hundred years it has had a
new life. It has become a common Jewish name in the Fatherland, and I assure you that if, or when,
you make the trip to the Fatherland, you will see glances and smirks, and you will hear rumors about
Jewish ancestors in your bloodline. Tell me, Rosenberg, when that happens, how will you answer
them?”
“I will follow your example, sir, and speak of my ancestry.”
“I have personally done my family’s genealogical research back for several centuries. Have you?”
Alfred shakes his head.
“Do you know how to do such research?”
Another headshake.
“Then one of your required pregraduation research projects shall be to learn the details of
genealogical research and then carry out a search of your own ancestry.”
“One of my projects, sir?”
“Yes, there will be two required assignments in order to remove any of my doubts about your
fitness for graduation as well as your fitness to enter the Polytechnic Institute. After our discussion
today, Herr Schäfer and I will decide upon another edifying project.”
“Yes sir.” Alfred is now growing aware of the precariousness of his situation.
“Tell me, Rosenberg,” Headmaster Epstein continues, “did you know there were Jewish students at
the rally last night?”
A faint nod from Alfred. Headmaster Epstein asks, “And did you consider their feelings and their
response to your words about Jews being unworthy for this school?”
“I believe my first duty is to the Fatherland and to protect the purity of our great Aryan race, the
creative force in all civilization.”
“Rosenberg, the election is over. Spare me the speeches. Address my question. I asked about
feelings of the Jews in your audience.”
“I believe that if we are not careful, the Jewish race will bring us down. They are weak. They are
parasitic. The eternal enemy. The anti-race to Aryan values and culture.”
Surprised by Alfred’s vehemence, Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer exchange concerned
glances. Headmaster Epstein probes more deeply.
“It appears you wish to avoid that question I asked. Let me try another line of discussion. The Jews
are a weak, parasitic, inferior little race?”
Alfred nods.
“So tell me, Rosenberg, how can such a weak race threaten our all-powerful Aryan race?”
As Alfred tries to formulate an answer, Herr Epstein continues, “Tell me, Rosenberg, have you
studied Darwin in Herr Schäfer’s classes?”
“Yes,” Alfred responds, “in Herr Schäfer’s history course and also in Herr Werner’s biology
course.”
“And what do you know of Darwin?”
“I know about evolution of the species and about the survival of the fittest.”
“Ah, yes, the fittest survive. Now of course you’ve thoroughly read the Old Testament in your
religion course, have you not?”
“Yes, in Herr Müller’s course.”
“So, Rosenberg, let’s consider the fact that almost all of the peoples and cultures—dozens of
them—described in the Bible have become extinct. Right?”
Alfred nods.
“Can you name some of these extinct people?”
Alfred gulps: “Phoenicians, Moabites . . . and Edomites.” Alfred glances at the nodding head of
Herr Schäfer.
“Excellent. But all of them dead and gone. Except the Jews. The Jews survive. Would not Darwin
claim that the Jews are the fittest of all? Do you follow me?”
Alfred responds in lightning quick fashion, “But not through their own strength. They have been
parasites and have held back the Aryan race from even greater fitness. They survive only by sucking
the strength and the gold and wealth from us.”
“Ah, they don’t play fair,” Headmaster Epstein says. “You’re suggesting there is a place for fairness
in nature’s grand scheme. In other words, the noble animal in its struggle for survival should not use
camouflage or hunting stealth? Strange, I don’t remember anything in Darwin’s work about fairness.”
Alfred, puzzled, sits silently.
“Well, never mind about that,” says the headmaster. “Let’s consider another point. Surely,
Rosenberg, you’d agree that the Jewish race has produced great men. Consider the Lord, Jesus, who
was Jewish-born.”
Again Alfred answers quickly, “I have read that Jesus was born in Galilee, not in Judea, where the
Jews were. Even though some Galileans eventually came to practice Judaism, they had not a drop of
true Israelite blood in them.”
“What?” Headmaster Epstein throws up his hands and turns toward Herr Schäfer and asks,
“Where do these notions come from, Herr Schäfer? If he were an adult, I would ask what he had been
drinking. Is this what you are teaching in your history course?”
Herr Schäfer shakes his head and turns to Alfred. “Where are you getting these ideas? You say you
read them but not in my class. What are you reading, Rosenberg?”
“A noble book, sir. Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.”
Herr Schäfer claps his hand to his forehead and slumps in his chair.
“What’s that?” Headmaster Epstein asks.
“Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book,” says Herr Schäfer. “He’s an Englishman, now Wagner’s
son-in-law. He writes imaginative history: that is, history that he invents as he goes along.” He turns
back toward Alfred. “How did you come upon Chamberlain’s book?”
“I read some of it at my uncle’s home and then went to buy it at the bookstore across the street.
They didn’t have it but ordered it for me. I’ve been reading it this last month.”
“Such enthusiasm! I only wish you had been so enthusiastic about your class texts,” says Herr
Shäfer, gesturing with a sweep of his arm to the shelves of leather-bound books lining the wall of the
headmaster’s office. “Even one class text!”
“Herr Schäfer,” asks the headmaster, “you’re familiar with this work, this Chamberlain?”
“As much as I’d wish to be with any pseudo-historian. He is a popularizer of Arthur Gobineau, the
French racist whose writings about the basic superiority of the Aryan races influenced Wagner. Both
Gobineau and Chamberlain make extravagant claims about Aryan leadership in the great Greek and
Roman civilizations.”
“They were great!” Alfred suddenly interjects. “Until they mixed with inferior races—the poisonous
Jews, the Blacks, the Asians. Then each civilization declined.”
Both Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer are startled by a student daring to interrupt their
conversation. The headmaster glances at Herr Schäfer as though it were his responsibility.
Herr Schäfer shifts the blame to his student: “If only he had such fervor in the classroom.” He
turns to Alfred. “How many times did I say that to you, Rosenberg? You seemed so uninterested in
your own education. How many times did I try to incite your participation in our readings? And yet suddenly today here you are, set on fire by a book. How can we understand this?” “Perhaps it is because I never read such a book before—a book that tells the truth about the nobility of our race, about how scholars have mistakenly written about history as the progress of humanity, when the truth is that our race created civilization in all the great empires! Not only in Greece and Rome, but also Egypt, Persia, even India. Each of these empires crumbled only when our race was polluted by surrounding inferior races.” Alfred looks toward Headmaster Epstein and says as respectfully as possible, “If I may, sir, this is the answer to your earlier question. This is why I do not worry about the hurt feelings of a couple of Jewish students, or about the Slavs, who are also inferior but not so organized as the Jews.” Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer again exchange glances, both of them now, finally, appreciative of the seriousness of the problem. This is no mere prankish or impulsive teenager. Headmaster Epstein says, “Rosenberg, please wait outside. We shall confer privately.”
==
CHAPTER THREE
AMSTERDAM—1656
Jodenbreestraat at dusk on the Sabbath teemed with Jews. Each carried a prayer book and a small
velvet bag containing a prayer shawl. Every Sephardic Jew in Amsterdam headed in the direction of
the synagogue, save one. After locking his shop, Bento stood on the doorstep, took a long look at the
stream of fellow Jews, inhaled deeply, and plunged into the crowd, heading in the opposite direction.
He avoided meeting the gaze of anyone and whispered reassurances to diminish his
self-consciousness. No one notices, no one cares. It is a good conscience, not a bad reputation, that
matters. I’ve done this many times. But his racing heart was impervious to the feeble weapons of
rationality. Then he tried to shut out the outside world, sink inward, and distract himself by marveling
at this curious duel between reason and emotion, a duel in which reason was always overmatched.
When the crowds thinned, he strolled with more ease and turned left on the street bordering the
Koningsgracht Canal toward the home and classroom of Franciscus van den Enden, teacher
extraordinaire of Latin and classics.
Though the encounter with Jacob and Franco had been remarkable, an even more memorable
meeting had taken place in the Spinoza export shop several months earlier, when Franciscus van den
Enden first entered the store. As he walked, Bento amused himself by recalling that encounter. The
details remained in his mind with perfect clarity.
It is nearly dusk, on the eve of the Sabbath, and a portly, formally attired, middle-aged man of courtly
bearing enters his import shop to inspect the wares. Bento is too absorbed with scribbling an entry into his
journal to notice his customer’s arrival. Finally, van den Enden politely coughs to indicate his presence and
then remarks, in a forceful but not unkindly manner, “Young man, we’re not too busy to attend to a
customer, are we?”
Dropping his pen in mid-word, Bento bolts to his feet. “Too busy? Hardly, sir. You’re the first customer of
the entire day. Please pardon my inattention. How may I help you?”
“I’d like a liter of wine and perhaps, depending upon the price, a kilogram of those scrawny raisins in the
lower bin.”
As Bento places a lead weight on one plate of his scale and uses a worn wooden scoop to add the raisins
to the other plate until they balance, van den Enden adds, “But I disturb your writing. What a refreshing
and uncommon—no, more than uncommon, let me say singular—experience, to enter a shop and come
upon a young clerk so absorbed in writing that he is unaware of customers. Being a teacher, I generally have
quite the opposite experience. I come upon my students not writing, and not thinking, when they should
be.”
“Business is bad,” replies Bento. “So I sit here hour after hour with nothing to do other than think and
write.”
The customer points toward Spinoza’s journal, still open at the page on which he had been writing. “Let
me hazard a guess about your writing. Business being bad, no doubt you worry about the fate of your
inventory. You chart expenses and income in your journal, make a budget, and list possible solutions?
Correct?”
Bento, face reddened, turns his journal face down.
“Nothing to hide from me, young man. I am a master spy, and I keep confidences. And I, too, think
forbidden thoughts. Moreover, I am by profession a teacher of rhetoric and most assuredly could improve
your writing.”
Spinoza holds up his journal for viewing and asks, with a hint of a grin, “How is your Portuguese, sir?”
“Portuguese! There you have me, young man. Yes to Dutch. Yes to French, English, German. Yes to
Latin and Greek. Yes even to some Spanish, and a smattering of Hebrew and Aramaic. But no to
Portuguese. Your spoken Dutch is excellent. Why not write in Dutch? Surely you are native here?”
“Yes. My father emigrated from Portugal when he was a child. Though I use Dutch in my commercial
dealings, I am not entirely at home in written Dutch. Sometimes I also write in Spanish. And I have been
steeped in Hebrew studies.”
“I’ve always yearned to read the Scriptures in their original language. Sadly the Jesuits gave me only
meager training in Hebrew. But you still have not yet responded about your writing.”
“Your conclusion that I write about budgets and improving sales is based, I assume, upon my comment
about business being slow. A reasonable deduction, but in this particular case, entirely incorrect. My mind
rarely dwells upon business, and I never write about it.”
“I stand corrected. But before pursuing further the focus of your writing, please permit me one small
digression—a pedagogical comment, a habit hard to break. Your use of the word ‘deduction’ is incorrect.
The process of building upon particular observations to construct a rational conclusion, in other words
building upward to theory from discrete observations, is induction, whereas deduction starts with a priori
theory and reasons downwards to a collection of conclusions.”
Noting Spinoza’s thoughtful, perhaps grateful, nod, van den Enden continues. “If not about business,
young man, then what do you write?”
“Simply what I see outside my shop window.”
Van den Enden turns to follow Bento’s gaze out to the street.
“Look. Everyone is on the move. Scurrying back and forth all day, all their lives. To what end? Riches?
Fame? Pleasures of the appetites? Surely these ends represent wrong turns.”
“Why?”
Bento has said all he wished to say but, emboldened by his customer’s question, continues, “Such goals
are breeders. Each time a goal is attained, it merely breeds additional needs. Thus more scurrying, more
seeking, ad infinitum. It must be that the true path toward imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. That’s
what I think and scribble about.” Bento blushes deeply. Never before has he shared such thoughts.
The customer’s face registers great interest. He puts down his shopping bag, draws nearer, and gazes at
Bento’s face.
That was the moment—the moment of moments. Bento loved that moment, that look of surprise,
that new and greater interest and regard on the stranger’s face. And what a stranger! An emissary from
the great, outside, non-Jewish world. A man of obvious consequence. He found it impossible to
review that moment only a single time. Instead he reimagined the scene a second and then,
sometimes, a third and fourth time. And each time he visualized it, tears filled his eyes. A teacher, an
elegant man of the world taking interest in him, taking him seriously, perhaps thinking, “This is an
extraordinary young man.”
With effort Bento ripped himself away from this moment of moments and continued his
recollection of their first meeting.
The customer persists, “You say that imperishable happiness lies elsewhere. Tell me about this
‘elsewhere.’”
“I only know that it does not lie in perishable objects. It lies not outside but within. It is the mind that
determines what is fearful, worthless, desirable, or priceless, and therefore it is the mind, and only the mind,
that must be altered.”
“What is your name, young man?”
“Bento Spinoza. In Hebrew I am called Baruch.”
“And in Latin your name is Benedictus. A fine, blessed name. I am Franciscus van den Enden. I conduct
an Academy in classics. Spinoza, you say . . . hmm, from the Latin spina and spinosus, meaning
respectively ‘thorn’ and ‘full of thorns.’”
“D’espinhosa in Portuguese,” says Bento, nodding. “‘From a thorny place.’”
“Your kinds of questions may prove thorny to orthodox, doctrinaire instructors.” Van den Enden’s lips curl
into a mischievous grin. “Tell me, young man, have you been a thorn in the side of your teachers?”
Bento grins too. “Yes, once that was true. But now I have removed myself from my teachers. I confine my
thorniness to my journal. My kinds of questions are not welcome in a superstitious community.”
“Superstition and reason have never been close comrades. But perhaps I can introduce you to
like-minded companions. Here, for example, is a man you should meet.” Van den Enden reaches into his
bag and extracts an old volume, which he hands to Bento. “The man is Aristotle, and this book contains his
exploration into your kinds of questions. He, too, regarded the mind and the pursuit of perfecting our powers
of reason as the supreme and unique human project. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics should be one of
your next lessons.”
Bento raises the book to his nostrils and inhales its aroma before opening the pages. “I know of this man
and would like to meet him. But we could never converse. I know no Greek.”
“Then Greek should be part of your education, too. After you have mastered Latin, of course. What a pity
that your learned rabbis know so little of the classics. So narrow is their landscape they often forget that
non-Jews also engage in the search for wisdom.”
Bento answers instantaneously, reverting as always to being Jewish when Jews were attacked. “That is
not true. Both Rabbi Menassch and Rabbi Mortera have read Aristotle in Latin translation. And
Maimonides thought Aristotle to be the greatest of philosophers.”
Van den Enden draws himself up. “Well said, young man, well said. With that answer you’ve now
passed my entrance examination. Such loyalty toward old teachers prompts me now to issue you a formal
invitation to study in my academy. The time has come for you not only to know of Aristotle but to know
him yourself. I can place him within your understanding along with the world of his comrades, such as
Socrates and Plato and many others.”
“Ah, but there is the matter of tuition? As I have said, business is bad.”
“We shall reach an accommodation. For one thing, we shall see what type of Hebrew teacher you are.
Both my daughter and I wish to improve our Hebrew. And we may yet discover other forms of barter. For
the present, I suggest you add a kilogram of almonds to my wine and raisins—and not the scrawny
raisins—let’s try those plump ones on the upper shelf.”
————
So compelling was this remembrance of the genesis of his new life that Bento, lost in reverie, walked
blocks past his destination. He came to with a start, oriented himself quickly, and retraced his steps
to the van den Enden house, a narrow, four-story home facing the Singel. As he climbed to the top
floor, where classes were held, Bento, as always, halted at each landing and peeked into the living
areas. He took little interest in the intricately tiled floor margined by a row of blue and white Delft
windmill tiles on the first landing.
At the second story the aroma of both sauerkraut and pungent curry reminded him that he had,
once again, forgotten to eat lunch or supper.
At the third story he did not linger to admire the gleaming harp and hanging tapestries but, as
always, savored the many oil paintings filling every wall. For several minutes Bento gazed at a small
painting of a boat beached on the shore and took careful note of the perspective provided by the large
figures on the shore and the two smaller figures in the boat—one standing in the prow and the other,
even smaller, sitting in the bow—and committed it to memory in order to make a charcoal copy later
that evening.
On the fourth level he was greeted by van den Enden and six young academy students, one
studying Latin and five who had progressed to Greek. Van den Enden began the evening, as always,
with a Latin dictation exercise that students were to translate into either Dutch or Greek. Hoping to
inject passion into the mastery of new languages, van den Enden taught from texts meant to interest
and amuse. Ovid had been the text for the past three weeks, and tonight van den Enden read a
portion from the story of Narcissus.
Unlike the other students, Spinoza displayed minimal interest in magical tales of fantastical
metamorphoses. It was soon apparent that he needed no amusements. Instead, he had a passion for
learning and a breathtaking aptitude for language. Though van den Enden had known immediately
that Bento was to be an extraordinary student, he continued to be astounded as the young man
grasped and retained every concept, every generality, and every grammatical singularity before the
explanations had left his teacher’s lips.
The quotidian task of Latin language drill was overseen by van den Enden’s daughter, Clara Maria,
a long-necked, gangly thirteen-year-old with a beguiling smile and crooked spine. Clara was herself a
prodigy in languages and shamelessly demonstrated her facility to the other students by switching
back and forth from tongue to tongue as she and her father discussed each student’s lessons for the
day. At first, Bento was shocked: one of the Jewish tenets he never challenged was the inferiority of
women—inferior rights and inferior intellects. Though he was stunned by Clara Maria, he came to
regard her as an oddity, a freak, an exception to the rule that women’s minds were not equal to men’s.
Once van den Enden left the room with the five students working on Greek, Clara Maria
commenced, with a gravity almost comical in a thirteen-year-old, to drill Bento and a German student,
Dirk Kerckrinck, on their vocabulary and declension homework. Dirk was studying Latin as a
prerequisite to entering medical school in Hamburg. After the vocabulary drill Clara Maria asked
Bento and Dirk to translate into Latin a popular Dutch poem by Jacob Cats on the proper behavior of
young unmarried women, which she read aloud in a charming manner. She beamed, stood, and
curtsied when Dirk, joined quickly by Bento, applauded her performance.
The final segment of the evening was always the highlight for Bento. All the students convened in
the larger classroom, the only one with windows, to listen to van den Enden discourse on the ancient
world. His topic for this evening was the Greek idea of democracy, in his opinion the most perfect
form of government, even though—here he glanced at his daughter, who attended all his
sessions—he admitted, “Greek democracy excluded over 50 percent of the population, namely
women and slaves.” He continued, “Consider the paradoxical position of women in Greek drama. On
the one hand, Greek women were either forbidden to attend performances or, in later, more
enlightened centuries, were permitted into the amphitheaters but could sit only in the areas with the
poorest view of the stage. And, yet, consider the heroic women in the drama—women of steel who
were protagonists of the greatest tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. Let me describe briefly three
of the most formidable characters in all of literature: Antigone, Phaedra, and Medea.”
------
After his presentation, during which he asked Clara Maria to read several of Antigone’s most
powerful passages in both Greek and Dutch, he asked Bento to stay for a few minutes after the others had left.
“I have a couple of issues to discuss with you, Bento. First, you remember my offer at our initial
meeting in your shop? My offer to introduce you to kindred thinkers?” Bento nodded, and van den Enden continued, “I haven’t forgotten, and I shall begin to fulfill that promise. Your progress in Latin
has been superb, and we shall now turn to the language of Sophocles and Homer. Next week Clara
Maria will begin instruction in the Greek alphabet. Moreover, I’ve chosen texts that should be of
special interest to you. We’ll work on passages from Aristotle and Epicurus that pertain to the very
issues in which you expressed interest during our first encounter.”
“You refer to my journal entries about perishable and imperishable goals?”
“Precisely. As a step toward perfecting your Latin, I suggest you now begin writing your entries in that language.”
==
“And one more matter,” van den Enden continued. “Clara Maria and I are ready to commence our
Hebrew training under your tutelage. Are you agreeable to beginning next week?”
“Gladly,” responded Bento. “It would give me much pleasure and also allow me to repay my great
debt to you.”
“Perhaps, then, it is time to think about pedagogical methods. Have you teaching experience?”
“Three years ago Rabbi Mortera asked me to assist him in teaching Hebrew to the younger
students. I have jotted down a great many thoughts about the intricacies of Hebrew and hope,
someday, to write a Hebrew grammar.”
“Excellent. Rest assured you will have eager and attentive students.”
“By coincidence,” Bento added, “I had an odd request for pedagogy this afternoon. Two distraught
men sought me out a few hours ago and attempted to engage me as an advisor of sorts.” Bento
proceeded to relate the details of the encounter with Jacob and Franco.
Van den Enden listened intently and, when Bento finished, said, “I’m going to add one more word
to your Latin vocabulary homework tonight. Please write down caute. You can guess the meaning
from the Spanish cautela.”
“Yes, ‘caution’—cuidado in Portuguese. But why caute?”
“Latin, please.”
“Quad cur caute?”
“I have a spy who tells me that your Jewish friends are not pleased that you study with me. Not
pleased at all. And they are not pleased with your growing distance from your community. Caute, my
boy. Take care to give them no further grievances. Trust no strangers with your deeper thoughts and
doubts. Next week we will see if Epicurus may offer useful counsel to you.”
===
CHAPTER FOUR
ESTONIA—MAY 10, 1910
After Alfred left, the two old friends stood and stretched while Headmaster Epstein’s secretary laid a
plate of apple and walnut strudel on the table. They sat down and quietly nibbled at it as she prepared
their tea.
“So, Hermann, this is the face of the future?” said Headmaster Epstein.
“Not a future I want to see. I’m glad for the hot tea—it’s chilling to be with him.”
“How worried should we be about this boy, about his influence upon his classmates?”
A shadow passed by—a student walking by in the hallway—and Herr Shäfer stood to close the
door, which had been left ajar.
“I’ve been his adviser since he started, and he’s been in a number of my classes. Strangely, I don’t
know him at all. As you see, there’s something mechanical and remote about him. I see the boys
engaged in animated conversations, but Alfred never joins in. He keeps himself well hidden.”
“Hardly hidden the last few minutes, Hermann.”
“That was entirely new. That jolted me. I saw a different Alfred Rosenberg. Reading Chamberlain
has emboldened him.”
“Maybe that has its bright side. Perhaps other books may yet come along to inflame him in a
different way. In general, though, you say he is not a lover of books?”
“Oddly, it’s hard to answer that. Sometimes I think he loves the idea of books, or the aura, or
perhaps only the covers of books. He often parades around school with a stack of books under his
arm—Hauptman, Heine, Nietzsche, Hegel, Goethe. At times his posturing is almost comical. It’s a
way of showing off his superior intellect, of bragging that he chooses books over popularity. I’ve
often doubted he really reads the books. Today I don’t know what to think.”
“Such passion for Chamberlain,” remarked the Headmaster. “Has he shown passion for other
things?”
“That’s the question. He has always kept his feelings very much in check, but I do remember a
flash of excitement in local prehistory. On a few occasions I’ve taken small groups of students to
participate in archeological digs just north of the church of St. Olai. Rosenberg always volunteered for
such expeditions. On one trip he helped uncover some Stone Age tools and a prehistoric hearth, and
he was thrilled.”
“Strange,” said the headmaster as he rifled through Alfred’s file. “He elected to come to our school
rather than the gymnasium, where he could have studied the classics and then been able to enter the
university for literature or philosophy, which seems to be where his interests lie. Why is he going to
the Politechnikum?”
“I think there are financial reasons. His mother died when he was an infant, and his father has
consumption and works only sporadically as a bank clerk. The new art teacher, Herr Purvit, considers
him a reasonably good draftsman and encourages him to pursue a career as an architect.”
“So he keeps his distance from the others,” said the headmaster closing Alfred’s file, “and yet he
won the election. And wasn’t he also president of the class a couple of years ago?”
“That has little to do with popularity, I think. The students don’t respect the office, and the popular
boys generally avoid being class president because of the chores involved and preparation required to
be the graduation speaker. I don’t think the boys take Rosenberg seriously. I’ve never seen him in the
midst of a group or joking around with others. More often he is the butt of pranks. He’s a loner,
always walking by himself around Reval with his sketchbook. So I wouldn’t be too concerned about
his spreading these extremist ideas here.”
Headmaster Epstein stood and walked to the window. Outside were broad-leafed trees with fresh
spring foliage and, further off, stately white buildings with red-brick roofs.
“Tell me more about this Chamberlain. My reading interests lie elsewhere. What’s the extent of his
influence in Germany?”
“Growing fast. Alarmingly fast. His book was published about ten years ago, and its popularity
continues to soar. I have heard it has sold over a hundred thousand copies.”
“Have you read it?”
“I started but grew impatient and scanned the rest of it. Many of my friends have read it. The
trained historians share my reaction—as does the church and, of course, the Jewish press. Yet many
prominent men praise it—Kaiser Wilhelm, the American Theodore Roosevelt—and many leading
foreign newspapers have reviewed it positively, some even ecstatically. Chamberlain uses lofty
language and pretends to speak to our nobler impulses. But I think he encourages our basest ones.”
“How do you explain his popularity?”
“He writes persuasively. And he impresses the uneducated. On any page you may find
profound-sounding quotations from Tertullian or St. Augustine, or maybe Plato or some
eighth-century Indian mystic. But it’s just the appearance of erudition. In fact he has simply plucked
unrelated quotations from the ages to support his preconceived ideas. His popularity is helped, no
doubt, by his recent marriage to Wagner’s daughter. Many regard him as the successor to Wagner’s
racist legacy.”
“Crowned by Wagner?”
“No, they never met. Wagner died before Chamberlain courted his daughter. But Cosima has given
him her blessing.”
The headmaster poured more tea. “Well, our young Rosenberg seems so thoroughly taken in by
Chamberlain’s racism that it may not be easy to peel him away from it. But when you think about it,
what unpopular, lonely, somewhat inept adolescent would not purr with pleasure to learn that he is of
superior stock? That his ancestors founded the great civilizations? Especially a boy who never had a
mother to admire him, whose father is on death’s doorstep, whose older brother is sickly, who—”
“Ah, Karl, I hear the echoes of your visionary, that Viennese doctor Freud, who also writes
persuasively and also dives into the classics, never failing to surface without a tasty quote clenched
between his teeth.”
“Mea culpa. I confess that his ideas seem ever more sensible to me. For instance, you just said a
hundred thousand copies of Chamberlain’s anti-Semitic book have been sold. Of the legions of
readers, how many dismiss him like you do? And how many are electrified by him like Rosenberg?
Why does the same book elicit such a range of responses? There must be something in the particular
reader that leaps out to embrace the book. His life, his psychology, his image of himself. There must
be something lurking deep in the mind—or, as this Freud says, the unconscious—that causes a
particular reader to fall in love with a particular writer.”
“A pithy topic for our next dinner discussion! Meanwhile my little student, Rosenberg, is, I suspect,
fretting and sweating out there. What shall we do with him?”
“Yes, we’re avoiding that. We promised him assignments and need to come up with some. Maybe
we’re overreaching. Is it even remotely possible to assign a task that could exert a positive influence
in just the few more weeks we have? I see so much bitterness in him, so much hatred for anyone but
the phantasm of the ‘true German.’ I think we need to get him away from ideas onto something
tangible, something that he can touch.”
“I agree. It’s harder to hate an individual than a race,” said Herr Schäfer. “I have a thought. I know
one Jew he must care about. Let’s call him back in, and I’ll start with that.”
Headmaster Epstein’s secretary removed the tea dishes and fetched Alfred, who resumed his seat
at the end of the table.
Herr Schäfer slowly filled his pipe, lit it, drew in and exhaled a cloud of smoke, and began,
“Rosenberg, we have a few more questions. I am aware of your sentiments about Jews in broad racial
terms but surely you have crossed the paths of fine Jews. I happen to know that you and I have had
the same personal doctor, Herr Apfelbaum. I have heard he delivered you.”
“Yes,” Alfred said. “He has been my doctor all my life.”
“And he has also been my close friend all these years. Tell me, is he poisonous? Is he a parasite?
No one in Reval works harder. When you were an infant, I saw with my own eyes how he worked day
and night trying to save your mother from tuberculosis. And I have been told that he wept at her
funeral.”
“Dr. Apfelbaum is a good man. He always gives us good care. And we always pay him, by the way.
But there can be good Jews. I know that. I speak no ill of him as a person, only of the Jewish seed. It is
undeniable that all Jews carry the seeds of a hateful race, and that—”
“Ah, that word again, ‘hateful,’” Headmaster Epstein interrupted, trying hard to restrain himself. “I
hear a great deal about hate, Rosenberg, but I hear nothing about love. Do not forget that love is the
center of Jesus’s message. Not only loving God but loving your neighbor as yourself. Don’t you see
some contradiction between what you read in Chamberlain and what you hear about Christian love in
church every week?”
“Sir, I am not in church every week. I’ve stopped going.”
“How does you father feel about that? How would Chamberlain feel?”
“My father says he has never set foot in a church. And I read that both Chamberlain and Wagner
claim that the teaching of the church more often weakens, than strengthens, us.”
“You do not love the Lord Jesus?”
Alfred paused; he sensed traps everywhere. This was treacherous ground: the headmaster had
already referred to himself as a devout Lutheran. Safety lay in staying with Chamberlain, and Alfred
struggled to recall the words in his book. “Like Chamberlain, I admire Jesus greatly. Chamberlain calls
him a moral genius. He had great power and courage, but unfortunately his teachings were Jewified
by Paul, who turned Jesus into a suffering, meek man. Every Christian church shows paintings or
stained glass of Jesus being crucified. None show images of the powerful and the courageous
Jesus—the Jesus who dared to challenge corrupt rabbis, the Jesus who single-handedly flung
moneychangers out of the temple!”
“So Chamberlain sees Jesus the lion, not Jesus the lamb?”
“Yes,” said Rosenberg, emboldened. “Chamberlain says that it was a tragedy that Jesus appeared in
the place and time he did. If Jesus had preached to Germanic people or, say, to Indian people, his
words would have had quite a different influence.”
“Let us return to my earlier question,” said the headmaster, who realized he had taken the wrong
trail. “I have a simple question: whom do you love? Who is your hero? The one whom you admire
above all others? Besides this Chamberlain, I mean.”
Alfred had no immediate answer. He deliberated long before answering. “Goethe.”
Both Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer straightened a bit in their seats. “Interesting choice,
Rosenberg,” said the headmaster. “Your choice or Chamberlain’s?”
“Both. And I think Herr Schäfer’s choice too. He praised Goethe in our class more than any other.”
Alfred looked at Herr Schäfer for confirmation and received an affirming nod.
“And tell me, why Goethe?” asked the headmaster.
“He is the eternal German genius. The greatest of Germans. A genius of writing, and science, and
art and philosophy. He is a genius in more fields than anyone.”
“An excellent answer,” said Headmaster Epstein, suddenly energized. “And I believe I now have
come upon the perfect pregraduation project for you.”
The two teachers conferred privately, whispering softly to one another. Headmaster Epstein left the
room and returned shortly carrying a large book. He and Schäfer bent over the book together and
flipped through the pages for several minutes scanning the text. After the headmaster jotted down
some page numbers, he turned to Alfred.
“Here is your project. You are to read, very carefully, two chapters—fourteen and sixteen—in
Goethe’s autobiography, and you are to write down every line that he writes about his own personal
hero, a man who lived a long time ago named Spinoza. Surely, you will welcome this assignment. It
will be a joy to read some of your hero’s autobiography. Goethe is the man you love, and I imagine it
will be of interest to you to learn what he says about the man he loves and admires. Right?”
Alfred nodded, warily. Baffled by the headmaster’s good spirits, he sensed a trap.
“So,” the headmaster continued, “let us be very clear about the assignment, Rosenberg. You are to
read chapters fourteen and sixteen in Goethe’s autobiography, and you are to copy every sentence he
writes about Benedict Spinoza. You are to make three copies, one for you and one for each of us. If
we find you miss any of his comments about Spinoza in your written assignment, you will be required
to do the whole assignment over again until you have it right. We will see you in two weeks to read
your written assignment and to discuss all aspects of your reading assignment. Is that clear?”
Another nod. “Sir, may I ask a question? Before, you said two assignments. I have to do
genealogical research; I have to read two chapters. And I have to write three copies of the material on
Benedict Spinoza.”
“That’s correct,” said the headmaster. “And your question?”
“Sir, isn’t that three assignments rather than two?”
“Rosenberg,” interjected Herr Schäfer, “twenty assignments would be lenient. Calling your
headmaster unfit for his position because he is Jewish is sufficient grounds for expulsion from any
school in Estonia or in the Fatherland.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wait, Herr Schäfer, perhaps the boy has a point. The Goethe assignment is so important that I
want him to do it with great thoroughness.” Headmaster Epstein turned to Alfred. “You’re excused
from the genealogy project. Concentrate fully on Goethe’s words. Meeting adjourned. We will see you
here in two weeks exactly. Same time. And be sure to turn in your copies of the written assignment to
me the day before.”
==
CHAPTER FIVE
AMSTERDAM—1656
“Good morning, Gabriel,” called Bento as he heard his brother washing in preparation for the
Sabbath services. Gabriel merely grunted in response but reentered their bedroom and sat down
heavily on the imposing four-poster bed that they shared. The bed, which filled most of the room,
was the one familiar remnant of their past.
Their father, Michael, had left all the family possessions to Bento, the elder son, but Bento’s two
sisters protested their father’s will on the grounds that he had chosen not to be a true member of the
Jewish community. Though the Jewish court had decided in favor of Bento, he then startled everyone
by immediately turning over all the family property to his siblings, keeping for himself only one
thing—his parents’ four-poster bed. After the marriage of his two sisters, he and Gabriel were left
alone in the fine three-story white house that the Spinoza family had rented for decades. Their home
fronted the Houtgracht, near the busiest intersections in the Jewish section of Amsterdam, just a
block from the small Beth Jacob Synagogue and the adjoining classrooms.
Bento and Gabriel had, with regret, decided to move. With their sisters gone, the old house was
too large and too haunted by images of the dead. And too expensive as well—the 1652 Dutch-English
war and pirate raids of ships from Brazil had been disastrous for the Spinoza import business,
obliging the brothers to rent a small house only a five-minute walk from the store.
Bento took a long look at his brother. When Gabriel was a child, people often called him “little
Bento,” for they had the same long, oval face, the same piercing owl eyes, the same powerful nose.
Now, however, the fully formed Gabriel was forty pounds heavier than his older brother, five inches
taller, and far stronger. And his eyes no longer seemed to peer far into the distance.
In silence, the brothers sat side by side. Ordinarily, Bento cherished silence and felt at ease sharing
meals with Gabriel or working together in the shop without exchanging a word. But this silence was
oppressive and begat dark thoughts. Bento thought about his sister, Rebekah, who in the past had
always been loquacious and bubbly. Now she, too, offered him silence and averted her glance
whenever she saw him.
And silent, too, were all the dead, all those who had died cradled by this very bed: his mother,
Hanna, who had died seventeen years ago, when he was barely six; his older brother, Isaac, six years
ago; his stepmother, Esther, three years ago; and both his father and his sister Miriam, only two years
ago. Of his siblings—that noisy, high-spirited, band who played and quarreled and made up and
sorrowed for their mother and slowly grew to love their stepmother—there remained only Rebekah
and Gabriel, both quickly receding from him.
Glancing at Gabriel’s puffy, pallid face, Bento broke the silence. “You slept poorly again, Gabriel? I
felt you thrashing about.”
“Yes, again. Bento, how can I sleep? Nothing is good now. What’s to be done? What’s to be done?
I hate the trouble between us. Here, this morning, I dress for the Sabbath. The sun shines for the first
time this week, there is some blue sky above, and I should feel joy, like everyone else, like our
neighbors on every side. Instead, because of my own brother—forgive me, Bento, but I will burst if I
do not speak. Because of you my life is miserable. There is no joy in going to my own synagogue to
join my own people to pray to my own God.”
“I am grieved to know that, Gabriel. I yearn for your happiness.”
“Words are one thing. Actions are another.”
“What actions?”
“What actions?” exclaimed Gabriel. “And to think that for so long, for my whole life, I used to
believe you knew everything. To someone else asking such a question, I’d say, ‘You’re joking,’ but I
know you never joke. Yet surely you know what actions I mean.”
Bento sighed.
“Well, let’s start with the action of rejecting Jewish customs, and rejecting even the community.
And then the action of dishonoring the Sabbath. And turning away from the synagogue and donating
practically nothing this year—those are the kinds of actions I mean.”
Gabriel looked at Bento, who remained silent.
“I’ll give you more actions, Bento. Only last night the action of saying no to Sabbath dinner at
Sarah’s home. You know I’m going to marry Sarah, yet you will not link the two families by joining us
for the Sabbath. Can you imagine how it feels for me? For our sister, Rebekah? What excuse can we
offer? Can we say that our brother prefers Latin lessons with his Jesuit?”
“Gabriel, it is better for everyone’s digestion that I do not come. You know that. You know that
Sarah’s father is superstitious.”
“Superstitious?”
“I mean extreme-orthodox. You’ve seen how my presence incites him into religious disputation.
You’ve seen how any response I offer merely sows more discord and more pain for you and for
Rebekah. My absence serves the cause of peace—of that I have no doubt. My absence equals peace
for you and for Rebekah. More and more I think of that equation.”
Gabriel shook his head, “Bento, remember when I was a child, I sometimes got scared because I
imagined the world disappeared when I closed my eyes? You corrected my thinking. You reassured
me about reality and the eternal laws of Nature. Yet now you make the same mistake. You imagine
that discord about Bento Spinoza vanishes when he is not present to witness it?
“Last night was painful,” Gabriel continued. “Sarah’s father began the meal by talking about you.
Once again he was furious that you bypassed our local Jewish court and turned your lawsuit over to
the Dutch civil court. No one else in memory, he said, has ever insulted the rabbinical court in that
fashion. It’s almost basis for an excommunication. Is that what you want? A cherem? Bento, our father
is dead; our older brother is dead. You’re the head of the family. Yet you insult us all by turning to the
Dutch court. And your timing! Could you at least have waited till after the wedding?”
“Gabriel, I have explained again and again, but you have not heard me. Listen again, so that you
may know all the facts. And, above all, please try to understand that I take my responsibility to you
and Rebekah seriously. Consider my dilemma. Our father, blessed be he, was generous. But he erred
in judgment when he guaranteed a note held by that greedy usurer, Duarte Rodriguez, for the grieving
widow Henriques. Her husband, Pedro, had been a mere acquaintance of our father, not even a
relative nor, as far as I know, a close friend. None of us have ever met him or her, and it is a mystery
why our father undertook to guarantee that note. But you know Father—when he saw people in pain,
he reached out to help with both hands without thinking of the consequences. When the widow and
her only child died last year in the plague leaving the debt unpaid, Duarte Rodriguez—that pious Jew
who sits on the bimah of the synagogue and already owns half the houses on
Jodenbreestraat—attempted to transfer his loss to us by pressuring the rabbinical court to demand
that the poor Spinoza family pay the debt of someone whom none of us ever knew.”
Bento paused, “You know this, Gabriel? Do you not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me finish, Gabriel. It is important that you fully know this. You may one day be head of the
family. So Rodriguez presented it to the Jewish court, a court containing many members who seek
favors from Rodriguez, as he is the synagogue’s major donor. Tell me, Gabriel: Would they want to
displease him? Almost immediately the court ruled that the Spinoza family must take on the entire
debt. And it is a debt that will drain our family’s resources for the rest of our lives. And even worse,
they also ruled that the inheritance our mother left us should go to pay the debt to Rodriguez. Do you
follow all this, Gabriel?”
After a reluctant nod from his brother, Spinoza continued. “So three months ago I turned to the
Dutch law because it is more reasonable. For one thing, the name Duarte Rodriguez has no sway over
them. And the Dutch law states that the head of the family must be twenty-five, to bear responsibility
for such a debt. Since I am not yet twenty-five, our family may be saved. We do not have to accept the
debts of our father’s estate, and, what’s more, we can receive the money that our mother meant for
us. And by us, I mean you and Rebekah—I intend to turn my entire share over to you. I have no family
and no need of money.
“And one last thing,” he went on. “About the timing. Since my twenty-fifth birthday falls before your
wedding, I had to act now. Now tell me, can you not see that I do act responsibly for the family? Do
you not value freedom? If I take no action, we shall be in servitude for our entire life. Do you want
that?”
“I prefer to leave the matter in God’s hands. You have no right to challenge the law of our religious
community. And as for servitude, I prefer it to ostracism. Besides, Sarah’s father spoke of more than
the lawsuit. Do you want to hear what else he said?”
“I think you want to tell me.”
“He said that the ‘Spinoza problem,’ as he calls it, could be traced back many years, back to your
impertinence during your bar mitzvah preparation. He remembered that Rabbi Mortera favored you
above all other students. That he thought of you as his possible successor. And then you called the
biblical story of Adam and Eve a ‘fable.’ Sarah’s father said that when the rabbi rebuked you for
denying the word of God, you responded, ‘The Torah is confused, for if Adam was the first man, who
exactly did his son, Cain, marry?’ Did you say that, Bento? Is it true you called the Torah ‘confused’?”
“It is true that the Torah calls Adam the first man. And it is true that it says that his son, Cain,
married. Surely we have the right to ask the obvious question: if Adam was the first man, then how
could there have been anyone for Cain to marry? This point—it’s called the ‘pre-adamites
question’—has been discussed in biblical studies for over a thousand years. So if you ask me
whether it is a fable I must answer yes—obviously the story is but a metaphor.”
“You say that because you don’t understand it. Does your wisdom surpass that of God? Don’t you
know that there are reasons why we cannot know and we must trust our rabbis to interpret and clarify
the scriptures?”
“That conclusion is wonderfully convenient for the rabbis, Gabriel. Religious professionals
throughout the ages have always sought to be the sole interpreters of mysteries. It serves them well.”
“Sarah’s father said that this insolence in questioning the Bible and our religious leaders is
offensive and dangerous not only to the Jews but to the Christian community also. The Bible is sacred
to them as well.”
“Gabriel, you believe we should forsake logic, forsake our right to question?”
“I don’t argue your personal right to logic and your right to question rabbinical law. I’m not
questioning your right to doubt the holiness of the Bible. In fact, I don’t even question your right to
anger God. That’s your affair. Perhaps it is your sickness. But you injure me and your sister by your
refusal to keep your views to yourself.”
“Gabriel, that conversation about Adam and Eve with Rabbi Mortera took place more than ten
years ago. After that I kept my opinions to myself. But two years ago I made a vow to conduct my life
in a holy manner, which includes never again lying. Thus, if I am asked for my opinion, I will offer it
truthfully—and that is why I declined to have dinner with Sarah’s father. But, most of all, Gabriel,
remember that we are separate souls. Others here do not mistake you for me. They do not hold you
responsible for your older brother’s aberrations.”
Gabriel walked out of the room shaking his head and muttering, “My older brother speaks like a
child.”
==
CHAPTER SIX
ESTONIA—1910
Three days later a pale and agitated Alfred sought a conference with Herr Schäfer.
“I have a problem, sir,” Alfred began as he opened his school bag and extracted Goethe’s
seven-hundred-page autobiography with several raggedly torn bits of paper jutting from the pages. He
opened to the first bookmark and pointed to the text.
“Sir, Goethe mentions Spinoza here in this line. And then again here, a couple of lines later. But
then there are several paragraphs where the name does not appear, and I can’t figure out if it’s about
him or not. Actually, I can’t understand most of this. It is very hard.” He turns the pages and points to
another section, “Here, it’s the same thing. He mentions Spinoza two or three times, then four pages
without mentioning him. As far as I can tell, it is not clear if he is speaking about Spinoza or not. He
is also talking about somebody named Jacobi. And this happens in four other places. I understood
Faust when we read it in your class, and I understood The Sorrows of Young Werther, but here in this
book I can’t understand page after page.”
“Much easier to read Chamberlain, is it not?” Instantaneously, Herr Schäfer regretted his sarcasm
and hastened to add, in a kinder voice, “I know that you may not grasp all of Goethe’s words,
Rosenberg, but you have to realize this is not a tightly organized work but a series of reflections on
his life. Have you ever kept a diary yourself or written about your own life?”
Alfred nodded. “A couple of years ago, but I only did it a few months.”
“Well, consider this something like a diary. Goethe wrote it as much for himself as for the reader.
Trust me, when you get older and know more about Goethe’s ideas, you’ll understand and appreciate
his words more. Let me have the book.”
After scanning the pages that Alfred had marked, Herr Schäfer said, “I see the problem. You’re
raising a legitimate question, and I’ll need to revise the assignment. Let’s go over these two chapters
together.” Their heads close together, Herr Schäfer and Alfred pored at length over the text, and on a
notepad Herr Schäfer jotted down a series of page and line numbers.
Handing Alfred the notepad, he said, “Here is what you have to copy. Remember, three copies
legibly written. But there is a problem. This is only twenty or twenty-five lines, so much shorter a task
than the headmaster originally assigned that I doubt it will satisfy him. So you must do something
additional: memorize this shortened version, and recite it at our meeting with Headmaster Epstein. I
think this will be acceptable to him.”
A few seconds later, noting a trace of a scowl on Alfred’s face, Herr Schäfer added, “Alfred, even
though I don’t like this change in you—this race superiority nonsense—I’m still on your side. Over
the past four years you’ve been a good and obedient student—though, as I’ve often told you, you
could have been more diligent. It would be tragic for you to ruin your chances for the future by not
graduating.” He let that sink in. “Put your whole heart into this assignment. Headmaster Epstein will
want more than just copying and reciting. He will expect you to understand the reading. So, apply
yourself, Rosenberg. I myself wish to see you graduate.”
“Do I still hand my copy to you before I make the two other copies?”
Herr Schäfer’s heart dropped at Alfred’s mechanical response, but he only said, “If you follow my
instructions on the note pad, it will not be necessary.”
As Alfred walked away, Herr Schäfer called him back. “Rosenberg, a minute ago, I just reached out
to you and said that your were a good student and that I wished you to graduate. Did you not have
some response? I have been your teacher for four years, after all.”
“Yes sir.”
“‘Yes sir?’”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“All right, Alfred, you can go.”
Herr Schäfer packed his briefcase with student papers yet to read, brushed Alfred from his mind,
and, instead, thought of his two children, his wife, and the spaetzle and verivorst dinner she had
promised for that night.
Alfred left in a state of confusion about his assignment. Had he made things worse? Or had he
gotten a break? After all, memorization was easy for him. He liked memorizing passages for drama
presentations and speeches.
————
Two weeks later Alfred stood at one end of Herr Epstein’s long table looking for instructions from the
headmaster, who, today, looked larger and fiercer than ever. Herr Schäfer, much smaller, his face
grave, gestured for Alfred to begin his recitation. Taking a last look at his copy of Goethe’s words,
Alfred stood and announced, “From the autobiography of Goethe,” and began:
“‘The mind which worked so decisively upon me and had so great an influence on my whole
manner of thinking was Spinoza. After I had looked about throughout the world in vain for a means of
cultivating my strange nature, I came at last upon the Ethics of this man. I here found a sedative for
my passions; there seemed to open for me a wide and free view over the material and mortal world.’”
“So, Rosenberg,” interrupted the headmaster. “What is it that Goethe got from Spinoza?”
“Uh, was it his ethics?
“No, no. Good Lord, didn’t you understand that the Ethics is the name of Spinoza’s book? What is
Goethe saying he got from Spinoza’s book? What do you think he means by ‘a sedative for my
passions’?”
“Something that calmed him down?”
“Yes, that’s part of it. But continue now—that idea will come up again very shortly.”
Albert recited to himself for a moment to recapture his spot and began:
“‘But what especially fastened me to Spinoza was the boundless interest which shone—’”
“Disinterest—not interest,” barked Headmaster Epstein, who was following every word of the
recitation closely in the notes. “‘Disinterest’ means not being attached emotionally.”
Alfred nodded and continued:
“‘But what especially fastened me to Spinoza was the boundless disinterest which shone forth
from every sentence. That marvelous expression: ‘He who loves God rightly must not desire God to
love him in return,’ with all the premises on which it rests and all the consequences which follow
from it, filled my whole power of thought.’”
“That’s a difficult passage,” said the headmaster. “Let me explain. Goethe is saying that Spinoza
taught him to free his mind from the influence of others. To find his own feelings and his own
conclusions and then act upon them. In other words, let your love flow, and do not let it be
influenced by the idea of the love you may get in return. We could apply that very idea to election
speeches. Would Goethe make a speech based on the admiration he would get from others? Of
course not! Nor would he say what others want him to say. You understand? You get that point?”
Alfred nodded. What he truly understood was that Headmaster Epstein had a deep resentment
toward him. He waited until the headmaster gestured for him to continue:
“‘Further, it must not be denied that the closest unions follow from opposites. The all-composing
calmness of Spinoza was in strong contrast with my all-disturbing activity. His mathematical method
was the opposite of my poetic feelings. His disciplined way of thought made me his impassioned
disciple, his most decided worshipper. Mind and heart, understanding and feeling, sought each other
with a necessary affinity, and hence came the union of the most different natures.’”
“Do you know what he means here by the two different natures, Rosenberg?” Headmaster Epstein
asked.
“I think he means mind and heart?”
“Exactly. And which is Goethe and which Spinoza?”
Alfred looked puzzled.
“This is not just an exercise in memory, Rosenberg! I want you to understand these words. Goethe
is a poet. So which is he, mind or heart?”
“He is heart. But he also had a great mind.”
“Ah, yes. Now I understand your confusion. But here he is saying that Spinoza offers him balance
that allows him to reconcile his passion and bursting imagination with the necessary calmness and
reason. And that is why Goethe says he is Spinoza’s ‘most decided worshipper.’ You understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“Now continue.”
Alfred hesitated, signs of panic in his eyes. “I’ve lost my place. I’m not sure where we are.”
“You’re doing fine,” interjected Herr Schäfer, in an effort to calm him down. “We know it’s hard to
recite with so many interruptions. You may check your notes to find your place.”
Alfred took a deep breath, scanned his notes briefly, and continued:
“‘Some have represented the man as an atheist and considered him reprehensible, but then they
also admitted he was a quiet, reflective man, a good citizen, a sympathetic person. So Spinoza’s
critics seem to have forgotten the words of the Gospel, ‘By their fruits, you shall know them’; for how
can a life pleasing to men and God spring from corrupt principles? I still remember what calm and
clearness came over me when I first turned over the pages of the Ethics of that remarkable man. I
therefore hastened to the work again to which I had been so much indebted, and again the same air
of peace floated over me. I gave myself up to the reading and thought, when I looked into myself, that
I had never beheld the world so clearly.’”
Alfred exhaled deeply as he finished the last line. The headmaster signaled him to take his seat and
commented, “Your recitation was satisfactory. You have a good memory. Now let’s examine your
understanding of this last section. Tell me, does Goethe think Spinoza is an atheist?”
Alfred shook his head.
“I didn’t hear your answer.”
“No sir.” Alfred spoke loudly. “Goethe did not think he was an atheist. But others thought he was.”
“And why did Goethe disagree with them?”
“Because of his ethics?”
“No, no. Have you already forgotten that Ethics is the name of Spinoza’s book? Again, why did
Goethe disagree with Spinoza’s critics?”
Alfred trembled and remained silent.
“Good Lord, Rosenberg, look at your notes,” said the headmaster.
Alfred scanned the final paragraph and ventured. “Because he was good and lived a life pleasing to
God?”
“Exactly. In other words it is not what you believe or say you believe, it is how you live that matters.
Now, Rosenberg, a last question about this passage. Tell us again, what did Goethe get from
Spinoza?”
“He said he got an air of peace and calmness. He also says he beheld the world more clearly.
Those were the two main things.”
“Exactly. We know that the great Goethe carried a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics in his pocket for a year.
Imagine that—an entire year! And not only Goethe but many other great Germans. Lessing and Heine
reported a clarity and calmness that came from reading this book. Who knows, there may come a
time in your life when you, too, will need the calmness and clarity that Spinoza’s Ethics offers. I shan’t
ask you to read that book now. You’re too young to grasp its meaning. But I want you to promise that
before your twenty-first birthday you will read it. Or perhaps I should say, read it by the time you’re
fully grown. Do I have your word as a good German?”
“Yes sir, you have my word.” Alfred would have promised to read the entire encyclopedia in
Chinese to get out of this inquisition.
“Now, let’s move to the heart of this assignment. Are you fully clear why we assigned you this
reading assignment?”
“Uh, no, sir. I thought it was just because I said I admired Goethe above all others.”
“Certainly that is part of it. But surely you understood what my real question was?”
Alfred looked blank.
“I’m asking you, what does it mean to you that the man you admire above all others chooses a Jew
as the man he admires above all others?”
“A Jew?”
“Did you not know that Spinoza was a Jew?”
Silence.
“You have found out nothing about him these last two weeks?”
“Sir, I know nothing about this Spinoza. That was not part of my assignment.”
“And so, thank God, you avoided the dreaded step of learning something extra? Is that it,
Rosenberg?”
“Let me put it this way,” interjected Herr Schäfer. “Think of Goethe. What would he have done in
this situation? If Goethe had been required to read the autobiography of someone unknown to him,
what would Goethe have done?”
“He would have educated himself about this person.”
“Exactly. This is important. If you admire someone, emulate him. Use him as your guide.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Still, let us proceed with my question,” said Headmaster Epstein. “How do you explain Goethe’s
boundless admiration and gratitude to a Jew?”
“Did Goethe know he was a Jew?”
“Good God. Of course he knew.”
“But, Rosenberg,” said Herr Schäfer, who was now also growing impatient, “think about your
question. What does it matter if he knew Spinoza was a Jew? Why would you even ask that question?
Do you think a man of Goethe’s stature—you yourself called him the universal genius—would not
embrace great ideas regardless of their source?”
Alfred looked staggered. Never had he been exposed to such a blizzard of ideas. Headmaster
Epstein, putting his hand on Herr Schäfer’s arm to quiet him, did not relent.
“My major question to you is still unanswered: how do you explain that the universal German
genius is so very much helped by the ideas of a member of an inferior race?”
“Perhaps it is what I answered about Dr. Apfelbaum. Maybe because of a mutation there can be a
good Jew, even though the race is corrupt and inferior.”
“That’s not an acceptable answer,” said the headmaster. “It is one thing to speak of a doctor who
is kind and plies his chosen profession well and quite another thing to speak in this way of a genius
who may have changed the course of history. And there are many other Jews whose genius is
well-known. Think about them. Let me remind you of those you know yourself but maybe did not
know were Jews. Herr Schäfer tells me that in class you’ve recited the poetry of Heinrich Heine. He
tells me, too, that you like music, and I imagine you have listened to the music of Gustav Mahler and
Felix Mendelssohn. Right?”
“They’re Jews, sir?”
“Yes, and you must know that Disraeli, the great prime minister of England, was a Jew?”
“I did not know that, sir.”
“Yes. And right now in Riga they are doing the opera of Tales of Hoffmann composed by Jacob
Offenbach, another born of the Jewish race. So many geniuses. What is your explanation?”
“I can’t answer the question. I will have to think about it. Please may I go, sir? I’m not feeling well. I
promise to think about it.”
“Yes, you may go,” said the headmaster. “And I want very much for you to think. Thinking is good.
Think about our talk today. Think about Goethe and the Jew, Spinoza.”
————
After Alfred’s departure, Headmaster Epstein and Herr Schäfer looked at one another for a few
moments before the headmaster spoke. “He says he’s going to think, Hermann. What’s the chance of
his thinking?”
“Next to zero, I would guess,” said Herr Schäfer. “Let’s graduate him and be rid of him. He has a
lack of curiosity that is, most likely, incurable. Excavate anywhere in his mind, and we run into the
bedrock of unfounded convictions.”
“I agree. I have no doubt that Goethe and Spinoza are, at this very moment, fast receding from his
thoughts and will never trouble him again. Nonetheless I feel relieved by what has just happened. My
fears are quelled. This young man has neither the intelligence nor fortitude to cause mischief by
swaying others to his way of thinking.”
==
CHAPTER SEVEN
AMSTERDAM—1656
Bento stared out the window, watching his brother walk toward the synagogue. Gabriel is right; I do
injury to those closest to me. My choices are horrendous—either I must shrink myself by giving up my
innermost nature and hobbling my curiosity, or I must harm those closest to me. Gabriel’s account of the
rage toward him expressed at the Sabbath dinner brought to mind van den Enden’s paternal warning
about the growing dangers Bento faced in the Jewish community. He meditated escape strategies
from his trap for almost an hour before rising, dressing, making himself coffee, and walking out the
back door, cup in hand, to the Spinoza Import and Export Shop.
There he dusted and swept litter through the front door into the street, and emptied a large sack of
fragrant dried figs, a new shipment from Spain, into a bin. Sitting at his usual window seat, Bento
sipped his coffee, nibbled on the figs, and focused on the daydreams coasting through his mind. He
had lately been practicing a meditation wherein he disconnected himself from his flow of thought and
viewed his mind as a theater and himself as a member of the audience watching the passing show.
Gabriel’s face in all its sadness and confusion immediately appeared on stage, but Bento had learned
how to lower the curtain and pass on to the next act. Soon van den Enden materialized. He praised
Bento’s progress in Latin while lightly grasping his shoulder in a fatherly manner. That touch—he
liked the feel of it. But, now, Bento thought, with Rebekah and now Gabriel turning away, who will ever
touch me again?
Bento’s mind then drifted to an image of himself teaching Hebrew to his teacher and to Clara
Maria. He smiled as he drilled his two students, like children, in the aleph, bet, gimmel and smiled
even more at the vision of little Clara Maria in turn drilling him on the Greek alpha, beta, gamma. He
noticed the bright, almost luminous quality of Clara Maria’s image—Clara Maria, that
thirteen-year-old wraith with the crooked back, that woman-child whose impish smile belied her
pretense of a grown-up severe teacher. A stray thought floated by: If only she were older. . .
By midday, his long meditation was interrupted by movement outside the window. In the distance
he saw Jacob and Franco conversing as they headed toward his shop. Bento had vowed to conduct
himself in a holy manner and knew that it was not virtuous to observe others surreptitiously,
especially others who might be discussing him. Yet he could not shift his attention from the strange
scene unfolding before his eyes.
Franco lagged three or four steps behind Jacob, whereupon Jacob turned, seized his hand, and
tried to tug him. Franco pulled away and shook his head vigorously. Jacob replied and, after looking
about to ensure that there were no witnesses in view, placed his huge hands on Franco’s shoulders,
shook him gruffly, and pushed him along in front of him until they arrived at the shop.
For a moment Bento leaned forward, riveted to this drama, but soon reentered a meditative state
and considered the riddle of Franco’s and Jacob’s odd behavior. In a few minutes he was pulled out
of his reverie by the sound of his shop door opening and footsteps inside.
He bolted to his feet, greeted his visitors, and pulled over two chairs for them while he himself sat
on a huge crate of dried figs. “You arrive from the Sabbath services?”
“Yes,” said Jacob, “one of us refreshed and one of us more agitated than before.”
“Interesting. The identical event launches two different reactions. And the explanation for that
curious phenomenon?” asked Bento.
Jacob hastened to respond. “The matter is not so interesting, and the explanation is obvious.
Unlike Franco, who has no Jewish education, I am schooled in the Jewish tradition and the Hebrew
language and—”
“Allow me to interrupt,” Bento said. “But even at the onset your explanation requires explanation.
Every child raised in Portugal in a Marrano family is unschooled in Hebrew and Jewish ritual. That
includes my father, who learned his Hebrew only after he left Portugal. He told me that when he was a
boy in Portugal, great punishment would be meted out to any family educating children in the
Hebrew language or Jewish tradition. In fact,” Spinoza turned to Franco, “did I not yesterday hear of a
beloved father killed because the Inquisition found a buried Torah?”
Franco, nervously running his fingers through his long hair, said nothing but nodded slightly.
Turning back to Jacob, Bento continued, “So my question, Jacob, is whence your knowledge of
Hebrew?”
“My family became New Christians three generations ago,” Jacob said quickly, “but they have
remained crypto-Jews, determined to keep the faith alive. My father sent me to Rotterdam to work in
his trading business as a youth of eleven, and for the next eight years I spent every night studying
Hebrew with my uncle, a rabbi. He prepared me for bar mitzvah in the Rotterdam synagogue and
then continued my Jewish education until his death. I’ve spent most of the last twelve years in
Rotterdam and returned recently to Portugal only to rescue Franco.”
“And you,” Bento turned toward Franco, whose eyes had interest only in the poorly swept floor of
the Spinoza import store, “you have no Hebrew?”
But Jacob answered, “Of course not. There is, as you just said, no Hebrew permitted in Portugal.
We are all taught to read the scriptures in Latin.”
“So, Franco, you have no Hebrew?”
Once again Jacob interposed, “In Portugal no one dares to teach Hebrew. Not only would they face
instant death, but their whole family would be hunted down. At this very moment Franco’s mother
and two sisters are in hiding.”
“Franco”—Bento bent down to peer directly into his eyes—“Jacob continues to answer for you.
Why do you choose not to respond?”
“He tries only to help me,” responded Franco in a whisper.
“And you are helped by remaining silent?”
“I am too upset to trust my words,” said Franco, speaking more loudly. “Jacob speaks rightly, my
family is endangered, and, as he says, I have no Jewish education aside from the aleph, bet, gimmel he
taught me by drawing the letters in the sand. And even these he had to erase by grinding his feet on
them.”
Bento turned his body entirely to Franco, pointedly facing away from Jacob. “Is it your view also
that, though he was refreshed by the service, you were agitated by it?”
Franco nodded.
“And your agitation was because . . .”
“Because of doubt and feelings.” Franco cast a furtive look at Jacob. “Feelings so strong that I fear
to describe them. Even to you.”
“Trust me to understand your feelings and not to judge them.”
Franco looked down, his head trembling.
“Such great fear,” Bento continued. “Let me attempt to calm you. First, please let’s consider if your
fear is rational.”
Franco grimaced and stared at Spinoza, puzzled.
“Let us see if your fear makes sense. Consider these two facts: first, I represent no threat. I give you
my promise I will never repeat your words. Furthermore I, too, doubt many things. I may even share
some of your feelings. And, second, there is no danger in Holland; there is no Inquisition here. Not in
this shop nor this community nor this city nor even this country. Amsterdam has been independent
of Iberia for many years. You know this, do you not?”
“Yes,” Franco replied softly.
“Yet even so, some part of your mind, not under your control, continues to behave as though there
is great immediate danger. Is it not remarkable how our minds are divided? How our reason, the
highest part of our mind, is subdued by our emotions?”
Franco showed no interest in these remarkable events.
Bento hesitated. He felt both a growing impatience and a sense of mission, almost of duty. But
how to proceed? Was he expecting too much too soon from Franco? He recalled many occasions
when reason failed to quell his own fears. It had happened just last evening while walking against the
crowd heading toward the synagogue Sabbath service.
Finally he decided to use his only available leverage and in his most gentle voice said, “You begged
me to help you. I agreed to do so. But if you want my help, you must trust me today. You must help
me help you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Franco, sighing.
“Well, then, your next step is to enunciate your fears.”
Franco shook his head, “I cannot. They are terrifying. And they are dangerous.”
“Not too terrifying to withstand the light of reason. And I’ve just shown you they are not dangerous
if there is nothing to fear. Courage! Now is the time to face them. If not, I say to you again”—here
Bento spoke firmly—“there is no purpose in our continuing to meet.”
Franco inhaled deeply and began, “In the synagogue today I heard the scriptures chanted in a
strange language. I understood nothing—”
“But Franco,” interrupted Jacob, “of course you understood nothing. Over and over I tell you this
problem is temporary. The rabbi has Hebrew classes. Patience, patience.”
“And over and over,” Franco shot back, anger now flooding into his voice, “I tell you it’s more than
the language. Listen to me sometime! It is the whole spectacle. In the synagogue this morning, I
looked around and saw everyone with their fancy embroidered skull caps, with their fringed blue and
white prayer shawls, their heads bobbing back and forth like parrots at their feed pan, eyes lifted to
the heavens. I heard it, I saw it, and I thought—no, I cannot say what I thought.”
“Say it, Franco,” said Jacob. “You told me only yesterday that this is the teacher you seek.”
Franco closed his eyes. “I thought what is the difference between this and the spectacle—no, let
me speak my mind—the nonsense that went on in the Catholic Mass we New Christians had to
attend? After Mass, when we were children, Jacob, do you remember how you and I used to ridicule
the Catholics? We ridiculed the outlandish costumes of the priests, the endless gory pictures of the
crucifixion, the genuflecting to the bits of bones of the saints, the wafer and wine and eating the flesh
and drinking the blood.” Franco’s voice rose. “Jewish or Catholic . . . there is no difference . . . It is
madness. It is all madness.”
Jacob put his skullcap on his head, placed his hand upon it, and softly chanted a prayer in Hebrew.
Bento, too, was shaken and searched carefully for the correct, the most serene, words. “To think such
thoughts and to believe that you are the only one. To feel alone in your doubt. That must be
terrifying.”
Franco hastened on. “There is something more, another more terrible thought. I keep thinking that
for this madness my father sacrificed his life. For this madness he endangered all of us—me, his own
parents, my mother, my brother, my sisters.”
Jacob could not restrain himself. Stepping closer and bending his huge head to Franco’s ear, he
said, not unkindly, “Perhaps the father knows more than the son.”
Franco shook his head, opened his mouth, but then said nothing.
“And think, too,” Jacob went on, “of how your words make your father’s death meaningless. To
think such thoughts truly makes his death a wasted death. He died to keep the faith sacred for you.”
Franco appeared beaten and bowed his head.
Bento knew he had to intervene. First, he turned to Jacob and said softly, “Only a moment ago you
pleaded with Franco to speak his mind. Now that he finally does as you ask, is it not better to
encourage him rather than to silence him?”
Jacob took a half step backward. Bento continued addressing Franco in the same serene voice,
“What a dilemma for you, Franco: Jacob claims that if you don’t believe things you find unbelievable,
then you’ve made your father’s martyrdom a wasted death. And who would want to harm his own
father? So many obstacles to thinking for yourself. So many obstacles to perfecting ourselves by
using our God-given ability to reason.”
Jacob shook his head. “Wait, wait—that last part about God-given ability to reason? That’s not
what I said. You’re twisting things. You talk about reason? I’ll show you reason. Use your common
sense. Open your eyes. I want you to compare! Look at Franco. He suffers, he weeps, he grovels, he
despairs. You see him?”
Bento nodded.
“And now look at me. I am strong. I love life. I take care of him. I rescued him from the Inquisition.
I am sustained by my faith and by the embrace of my fellow Jews. I am comforted by the knowledge
that our people and our tradition continue. Compare the two of us with your precious reason, and tell
me, wise man, what reason concludes.”
False ideas offer false and fragile comfort, thought Bento. But he held his tongue.
Jacob pressed harder. “And apply that to yourself, as well, scholar. What are we, what are you,
without our community, without our tradition? Can you live wandering the earth alone? I hear you
take no wife. What kind of life can you have without people? Without family? Without God?”
Bento, who always avoided conflict, felt shaken by Jacob’s invective.
Jacob turned to Franco and gentled his voice. “You will feel sustained as I do when you know the
words and the prayers, when you understand what things mean.”
“With that statement I agree,” said Bento, attempting to placate Jacob, who had been glowering at
him. “Bewilderment adds to your state of shock, Franco. Every Marrano who leaves Portugal is
disoriented, has to be newly educated to become a Jew again, has to start like a child and learn the
aleph, bet, gimmel. For three years I assisted the rabbi in Hebrew courses for Marranos, and I assure
you that you will learn quickly.”
“No,” insisted Franco, now resembling the resistant Franco whom Bento had seen through the
window. “Neither you, Jacob Mendoza, nor you, Bento Spinoza, listen to me. Once again I tell you, It
is not the language. I know no Hebrew, but this morning at the synagogue, all through the service, I
read the Spanish translation of the holy Torah. It is full of miracles. God divides the Red Sea; He
assails the Egyptians with afflictions; He speaks disguised as a burning bush. Why do all the miracles
happen then, in the age of the Torah? Tell me, both of you, why is the miracle season over? Has the
mighty, all-powerful God gone to sleep? Where was that God when my father was burned at the
stake? And for what reason? For protecting the sacred book of that very God? Wasn’t God powerful
enough to save my father, who revered Him so? If so, who needs such a weak God? Or didn’t God
know my father revered Him? If so, who needs such an unknowing God? Was God powerful enough
to protect him but chose not to? If so, who needs such an unloving God? You, Bento Spinoza, the
one they call ‘blessed,’ you know about God; you are a scholar. Explain that to me.”
“Why were you afraid to speak?” Bento asked. “You pose important questions, questions that have
puzzled the pious throughout the centuries. I believe the problem has its root in a fundamental and
massive error, the error of assuming that God is a living, thinking being, a being in our image, a being
who thinks like us, a being who thinks about us.
“The ancient Greeks understood this error. Two thousand years ago, a wise man named
Xenophanes wrote that if oxen, lions, and horses had hands with which to carve images, they would
fashion God after their own shapes and give him bodies like their own. I believe that if triangles could
think they would create a God with the appearance and attributes of a triangle, or circles would create
circular—”
Jacob interrupted Bento, outraged. “You speak as though we Jews know nothing of the nature of
God. Do not forget that we have the Torah containing his words. And, Franco, do not think that God
is without power. Do not forget that the Jews persist, that no matter what they do to us, we persist.
Where are all those vanished people—the Phoenicians, Moabites, Edomites—and so many others
whose names I do not know? Do not forget that we must be guided by the law that God Himself gave
to the Jews, gave to us, His chosen people.”
Franco gave Spinoza a glance as though to say, You see what I have to face? and turned to Jacob.
“Everyone believes God chose them—the Christians, the Muslims—”
“No! What does it matter what others believe? What matters is what is written in the Bible.” Jacob
turned to Spinoza, “Admit it, Baruch, admit it, scholar: does not the word of God say that the Jews are
the chosen people? Can you deny that?”
“I have spent years studying that question, Jacob, and if you wish, I will share the results of my
research.” Bento spoke gently, as a teacher might address an inquisitive student. “To answer your
questions about the specialness of the Jews we must go back to the source. Will you accompany me
in exploring the very words of the Torah? My copy is only a few minutes away.”
Both nodded, exchanging glances, and rose to follow Bento, who carefully put the chairs back in
place and locked the shop door before escorting them to his home.
==
CHAPTER EIGHT
REVAL, ESTONIA—1917–1918
Headmaster Epstein’s prediction that Rosenberg’s limited curiosity and intelligence would render
him harmless proved entirely wrong. And wrong, too, was the headmaster’s prediction that Goethe
and Spinoza would instantaneously vanish from Alfred’s thoughts. Far from it: Alfred was never able
to cleanse his mind of the image of the great Goethe genuflecting before the Jew Spinoza. Whenever
thoughts of Goethe and Spinoza (now forever melded) appeared, he held the dissonance only briefly
and then swept it away with every ideational broom at hand. Sometimes he was persuaded by
Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s argument that Spinoza, like Jesus, was of the Jewish culture but did
not possess one drop of Jewish blood. Or perhaps Spinoza was a Jew who stole thoughts from Aryan
thinkers. Or perhaps Goethe had been under a spell, mesmerized by the Jewish conspiracy. Many
times Alfred contemplated pursuing these ideas in depth through library research but never followed
through. Thinking, really thinking, was such hard work, like moving heavy trunks about in the attic.
Instead, Alfred grew more adept at suppression. He diverted himself. He plunged into many
activities. Most of all, he persuaded himself that the strength of convictions obviates the need for
inquiry.
A true and noble German honors an oath, and as his twenty-first birthday approached, Alfred
remembered his pledge to the headmaster to read Spinoza’s Ethics. He intended to keep his word,
bought a used copy of the book, and launched into it only to be greeted on the first page by a long list
of incomprehensible definitions:
I. By that which is Self-Caused, I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of
which the nature is only conceivable as existent.
II. A thing is called Finite After Its Kind when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature;
for instance, a body is called finite because we always conceive another greater body. So, also, a
thought is limited by another thought, but a body is not limited by thought, nor a thought by body.
III. BY SUBSTANCE, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived Theologically through itself; in
other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
IV. BY ATTRIBUTE, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of
substance.
V. BY MODE, I mean the modifications [“Affectiones”] of substance, or that which exists in, and is
conceived through, something other than itself.
VI. BY GOD, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite
attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
Who could understand this Jewish stuff? Alfred flung the book across the room. A week later he
tried again, skipping the definitions and moving to the next section of Axioms:
I. Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.
II. That which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself.
III. From a given definite cause an effect necessarily follows; and, on the other hand, if no definite
cause be granted, it is impossible that an effect can follow.
IV. The knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of a cause.
V. Things which have nothing in common cannot be understood, the one by means of the other;
the conception of one does not involve the conception of the other.
These were equally indecipherable, and again the book took flight. Later he sampled the next
section, the propositions, which were also inaccessible. Finally it dawned on him that each
successive part depended logically upon the preceding definitions and axioms, and nothing would
come of further sampling. From time to time he picked up the slim volume, turned to the portrait of
Spinoza facing the title page, and was transfixed by that long oval face and those gigantic, soulful,
heavy-lidded Jewish eyes (which stared directly into his own eyes regardless of how he rotated the
book). Get rid of this cursed book, he told himself—sell it (but it would fetch nothing, being much
the worse for wear after several aerial excursions). Or just give it away, or throw it away. He knew he
should do this, but, strangely, Alfred could not part with the Ethics.
Why? Well, the oath, of course, was a factor but not the compelling one. Had not the headmaster
said that one had to be fully grown to understand Ethics? And did he not have years of education still
ahead of him before he was fully grown?
No, no, it was not the oath that vexed him: it was the Goethe problem. He worshipped Goethe.
And Goethe worshipped Spinoza. Alfred could not rid himself of this cursed book because Goethe
loved it enough to carry it in his pocket for an entire year. This obscure Jewish nonsense had calmed
Goethe’s unruly passions and made him see the world more clearly than ever before. How could that
be? Goethe saw something in it that he could not discern. Perhaps, someday, he would find the
teacher who could explain this.
The tumultuous events of the First World War soon pushed this conundrum out of
consciousness. After graduating from the Reval Oberschule and saying farewell to Headmaster
Epstein, Herr Schäfer, and his art teacher, Herr Purvit, Alfred began his studies in the Polytechnic
Institute in Riga, Latvia, about two hundred miles from his home in Reval. But in 1915, as the German
troops threatened both Estonia and Latvia, the entire Polytechnic Institute was moved to Moscow,
where Alfred lived until 1918, when he handed in his final project—an architectural design for a
crematorium—and received his degree in architecture and engineering.
Though his academic work was superior, Alfred never felt at home in engineering and preferred,
instead, to spend his time reading mythology and fiction. He was fascinated by the tales of Norse
mythology contained in the Edda as well as the intricately plotted novels of Dickens and the
monumental works of Tolstoy (which he read in Russian). He dabbled in philosophy, skimming the
essential ideas of Kant, Schopenhauer, Fichte, Nietzsche, and Hegel and, as before, shamelessly took
pleasure in reading philosophical works in conspicuous public places.
During the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution Alfred was appalled by the sight of hundreds of
thousands of frenzied protestors taking to the streets, demanding the overthrow of the established
order. He had come to believe, on the basis of Chamberlain’s work, that Russia owed everything to
Aryan influence through the Vikings, the Hanseatic League, and German immigrants like himself. The
collapse of the Russian civilization meant only one thing: the Nordic foundations were being
overthrown by the inferior races—the Mongols, Jews, Slavs, and Chinese—and the soul of the real
Russia would soon be lost. Was this to be the fate, too, of the Fatherland? Would racial chaos and
degradation come to Germany itself?
The sight of the surging crowds repulsed him. The Bolsheviks were animals whose mission was to
destroy civilization. He scrutinized their leaders and grew convinced that at least 90 percent were
Jews. From 1918 forward, Alfred rarely spoke of the Bolsheviks: it was always the “Jewish Bolsheviks,”
and that double epithet was destined to work its way into Nazi propaganda. After graduation in 1918
Alfred was thrilled to board the train taking him across Russia back to his home in Reval. As the train
chugged westward, he sat day after day staring at the endless Russian expanse. Transfixed by the
space—ah, the space—he thought of Houston Smith Chamberlain’s wish for more Lebensraum for
the Fatherland. Here, outside his second-class train window, was the Lebensraum that Germany so
desperately needed, and yet the sheer vastness of Russia made it unconquerable unless . . . unless an
army of Russian collaborators was to fight side by side with the Fatherland. Another germ of an idea
took hold: this forbidding open space—what to do with all of it? Why not put the Jews there, all the
Jews of Europe?
The train whistle and the clenching and squealing of the brakes signaled that he had arrived home.
Reval was as cold as Russia. He donned all the sweaters he owned, knotted his scarf tightly around
his neck, and with bags in hand and diploma in briefcase, exhaling clouds of mist, he walked the
familiar streets and arrived at the door of his childhood home, the dwelling of Aunt Cäcilie—his
father’s sister. His knock was welcomed with shrieks of “Alfred,” broad smiles, male handshakes, and
female embraces, and he was ushered quickly into the warm fragrant kitchen for coffee and streusel
while a young nephew was sent galloping to fetch Aunt Lydia living a few doors down the street. Soon
she arrived laden with food for a celebratory dinner.
Home was much as he recalled it, and such persistence of the past offered Alfred a rare respite
from his tormented sense of rootlessness. The sight of his own room, virtually unchanged after so
many years, brought an expression of childlike glee to his face. He sank into his old reading chair and
basked in the familiar sight of his aunt noisily beating the pillow and fluffing the down coverlet into
place on his bed. Alfred scanned the room: there was the handkerchief-sized scarlet prayer rug on
which, for a few months, years ago (when his antireligious father was out of earshot), Alfred said his
bedtime prayers: “Bless Mother in heaven, bless Father and make him well again, and heal my
brother, Eugen, and bless Aunt Ericka and Aunt Marlene, and bless all our family.”
There on the wall, still glaring and powerful and blissfully unaware of the faltering fortunes of the
German army, was the huge poster of Kaiser Wilhelm. And on the shelf under the poster were his lead
figures of Viking warriors and Roman soldiers, which he now picked up tenderly. Bending down to
examine the small bookcase crammed with his favorite books, Alfred beamed to see them still aligned
in the same order he had left them in so many years ago—his favorite, Young Werther, first, then
David Copperfield, followed by all the others in order of descending merit.
Alfred continued to feel at home during dinner with aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces. But when
everyone had left and silence descended, and he lay under his down coverlet, his familiar anomie
returned. “Home” began to pale. Even the image of his two aunts, still grinning, waving, and nodding,
slowly receded into the distance, leaving only chilly darkness. Where was home? Where did he
belong?
The next day he roamed the streets of Reval searching for familiar faces, even though all his
childhood playmates were grown and scattered, and, besides, he knew deep in his heart that he was
searching for phantoms—the friends he wished he had had. He strolled to the Oberschule, where the
halls and open classrooms looked both familiar and uninviting. He waited outside the classroom of
the art teacher, Herr Purvit, who had once been so kind to him. When the bell rang, he entered to
speak to his old teacher between classes. Herr Purvit searched Alfred’s face, uttered a sound of
recognition, and inquired about his life in such general terms that Alfred, walking away as the
students for the next class scampered into their seats, doubted he had been truly recognized. Next he
searched in vain for the room of Herr Schäfer but noted the room of Herr Epstein, no longer
headmaster but once again a history teacher, and slipped by quickly with his face turned away. He did
not wish to be asked about keeping his Spinoza vow or learn that the vow of Alfred Rosenberg had
long ago evaporated from Herr Epstein’s mind.
Outside again he headed toward the town square, where he saw the German army headquarters,
and impulsively made a decision that might change his entire life. He told the guard on duty, in
German, that he wished to enlist, and was directed to Sergeant Goldberg, a hulking figure with a large
nose, bushy mustache, and “Jew” writ large on his face. Without looking up from his paperwork, the
sergeant briefly listened to Alfred and then gruffly dismissed his request. “We are at war. The German
army is for Germans, not for citizens of combatant occupied countries.”
Disconsolate, and stung by the sergeant’s manner, Alfred took refuge in a beer hall a few doors
away, ordered a stein of ale, and sat at one end of a long table. As he raised his stein for his first sip,
he noted a man in civilian dress staring at him. Their eyes met briefly, and the stranger raised his
stein and nodded to Alfred. Alfred hesitantly reciprocated, then sank back into himself. A few minutes
later, when he again looked up, he saw the stranger, tall, thin, attractive, with a long German skull and
deep blue eyes, still staring at him. Finally, the man arose and, stein in hand, walked toward Alfred
and introduced himself.
==
CHAPTER NINE
AMSTERDAM—1656
Bento led Jacob and Franco to the house he shared with Gabriel and directed them to his study,
passing first through a small living room furnished with no trace of a woman’s hand—only a rude
wooden bench and chair, a straw broom in the corner, and a fireplace with bellows. Bento’s study
contained a rough-hewn writing table, a high stool, and a rickety wooden chair. Three of his own
charcoal sketches of Amsterdam canal scenes were pinned to the wall above two shelves bending
under the weight of a dozen sturdily bound books. Jacob immediately headed to the shelves to peer at
the book titles, but Bento beckoned for him and Franco to sit while he hastily fetched another chair
from the adjoining room.
“Now to work,” he said as he lifted his well-worn copy of the Hebrew Bible, set it down heavily in
the center of the table, and opened it for Jacob and Franco’s inspection. Suddenly he thought better
of it and stopped, letting the pages fall back into place.
“I shall keep my promise to show you precisely what our Torah says, or doesn’t say, about the Jews
being the chosen people. But I prefer to begin with my major conclusions resulting from years of
Bible study.”
With Jacob and Franco’s approval, Bento began. “The Bible’s central message about God, I believe,
is that He is perfect, complete, and possesses absolute wisdom. God is everything and from Himself
created the world and everything in it. You agree?”
Franco nodded quickly. Jacob thought it over, stuck out his lower lip, opened his right fist to show
his palm, and offered a slow, cautious nod.
“Since God, by definition, is perfect and has no needs, then it follows that He did not create the
world for Himself but for us.”
He received a nod from Franco and a bewildered look and outstretched palms from Jacob that
indicated, “What does this have to do with anything?”
Bento calmly continued, “And since He created us out of his own substance, His purpose for all of
us—who, again, are part of God’s substance—is to find happiness and blessedness.”
Jacob nodded heartily as though he had finally heard something he could agree with. “Yes, I’ve
heard my uncle speak of the God-spark in each of us.”
“Exactly. Your uncle and I are entirely in agreement,” said Spinoza and, noting a slight frown on
Jacob’s face, resolved to refrain from such remarks in the future—Jacob was too intelligent and
suspicious to be patronized. He opened the Bible and searched the pages. “Here, let’s begin with
some verses from the Psalms.” Bento began reading the Hebrew slowly while pointing with his finger
to each word that, for Franco’s sake, he translated into Portuguese. After only a couple of minutes
Jacob interrupted, shaking his head and saying, “No, no, no.”
“No what?” asked Bento. “You don’t care for my translation? I assure you that—”
“It’s not your words,” interrupted Jacob. “It’s your manner. As a Jew, I am offended by the way you
handle our holy book. You don’t kiss it or honor it. You practically threw it on the table; you point
with an unwashed finger. And you read with no chanting, no inflection of any sort. You read in the
same voice as you might read a purchase agreement for your raisins. That type of reading offends
God.”
“Offends God? Jacob, I beg you to follow the path of reason. Have we not just agreed that God is
full, has no needs, and is not a being like us? Could such a God possibly be offended by such trivia
as my reading style?”
Jacob shook his head in silence, while Franco nodded in agreement and moved his chair closer to
Bento.
Bento continued to read the psalm aloud in Hebrew and translate into Portuguese for Franco. “The
Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” Bento skipped ahead in the same
psalm and read, “‘The Lord is near unto all them that call upon Him.’ Trust me,” he said, “I can find a
host of such passages clearly stating that God has granted to all men the same intellect and has
fashioned their hearts alike.”
Bento turned his attention to Jacob, who again shook his head. “You disagree with my translation,
Jacob? I can assure you it says ‘all men’; it does not say ‘all Jews.’”
“I cannot disagree: the words are the words. What the Bible says the Bible says. But the Bible has
many words, and there are many readings, and many interpretations by many holy men. Do you
ignore or not even know the great commentaries of Rashi and of Abarbanel?”
Bento was unflustered. “I was weaned on the commentaries and the super-commentaries. I read
them from sunup till sundown. I have spent years studying the holy books, and as you yourself have
told me, many in our community respect me as a scholar. Several years ago I struck out on my own,
acquired a mastery of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic, put the commentaries of others aside, and
studied the actual words of the Bible afresh. To truly understand the words of the Bible, one must
know the ancient language and read it in a fresh, unfettered spirit. I want us to read and understand
the exact words of the Bible, not what some rabbi thought they meant, not some imagined metaphors
that scholars pretend to see, and not some secret message that Kabbalists see in certain patterns of
words and numerical values of letters. I want to go back to read what the Bible actually says. That is
my method. Do you wish me to continue?”
Franco said, “Yes, please go on,” but Jacob hesitated. His agitation was evident, for as soon as he
heard Bento emphasize the phrase “all men,” he sensed where Bento’s argument was heading—he
could smell the trap ahead. He tried a preemptive maneuver: “You haven’t yet answered my pressing
and simple question, ‘Do you deny that the Jews are the chosen people?’”
“Jacob, your questions are the wrong questions. Obviously I’m not being clear enough. What I
want to do is challenge your whole attitude toward authority. It is not a question of whether I deny it, or
some rabbi or other scholar claims it. Let us not look upward to some grand authority but instead
look to the words of our holy book, which tell us that our true happiness and blessedness consist
solely in the enjoyment of what is good. The Bible does not tell us to take pride in the fact that we
Jews alone are blessed or that we have more enjoyment because others are ignorant of true
happiness.”
Jacob gave no sign he was persuaded, so Bento tried another tactic. “Let me give you an example
from our own experience today. Earlier, when we were in the shop, I learned that Franco knows no
Hebrew. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me this: should I therefore rejoice that I know more Hebrew than he? Does his
ignorance of Hebrew make me more learned than I was an hour ago? Joy of our superiority over
others is not blessed. It is childish or malicious. Is that not true?”
Jacob conveyed skepticism by hunching his shoulders, but Bento felt energized. Burdened by his
years of necessary silence, he now relished the opportunity to express aloud many of the arguments
he had been constructing. He addressed Jacob. “Surely you must agree that blessedness resides in
love. It is the paramount, the core message of the entire Scriptures—and of the Christian Testament
as well. We must make a distinction between what the Bible says and what the religious professionals
say that it says. Too often rabbis and priests promote their own self-interest by biased readings,
readings that claim that only they hold the key to truth.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Bento saw Jacob and Franco exchanging astonished glances; he
nonetheless persisted. “Here, look, at this section in Kings 3:12.” Spinoza opened the Bible to a place
he had marked with a red thread. “Listen to the words God offers Solomon: ‘No one shall be as wise
as you in time to come.’ Think now, both of you, for a moment about that comment by God to the
world’s wisest man. Surely this is evidence that the words of the Torah can not be taken literally. They
must be understood in the context of the times—”
“Context?” interrupted Franco.
“I mean the language and the historical events of the day. We cannot understand the Bible from
the language of today: we must read it with knowledge of the language conventions of the time it was
written and compiled, and that is about two thousand years ago.”
“What?” exclaimed Jacob. “Moses wrote the Torah, the first five books, far more than two
thousand years ago!”
“That’s a big topic. I’ll come back to that in a couple of minutes. For now, let me continue with
Solomon. The point I want to make is that God’s comment to Solomon is simply an expression used
to convey great, surpassing wisdom and is meant to increase Solomon’s happiness. Can you possibly
believe God would expect Solomon, the wisest of all men, to rejoice that others would always be less
intelligent than He? Surely God, in his wisdom, would have wished that everyone be gifted with the
same faculties.”
Jacob protested. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You pick out a few words or
sentences, but you ignore the clear fact that we are chosen by God. The Holy Book says this again
and again.”
“Here, look at Job,” said Bento, entirely undeterred. He flipped the pages to Job 28 and read, “‘All
men should avoid evil and do good.’ In such passages,” Bento continued, “it is plain that God had in
mind the entire human race. And then keep in mind too that Job was a Gentile, yet, of all men, he was
most acceptable to God. Here are these lines—read for yourself.”
Jacob refused to look. “The Bible may have some of those words. But there are thousands of
opposite words. We Jews are different, and you know it. Franco has just escaped the Inquisition. Tell
me, Bento, when have the Jews held Inquisitions? Others slaughter Jews. Have we ever slaughtered
others?”
Bento calmly turned the pages, this time to Joshua 10:37 and read: “‘And they took Eglon, and
smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and all the souls
that were therein; he left none remaining. He destroyed it utterly.’ Or Joshua 11:11 about the city of
Hazor,” Bento continued, “‘and the Hebrews smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of
the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe: and He burnt Hazor with fire.’
“Or here again, Samuel 18:6–7, ‘When David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine the
women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines,
with joy, and with instruments of music . . . The women sang one to another as they played, Saul has
slain his thousands, David his ten thousands.’
“Sadly there is much evidence in the Torah that when the Israelites had power, they were as cruel
and as pitiless as any other nation. They were not morally superior, more righteous, or more
intelligent than other ancient nations. They were superior only in that they had a well-ordered society
and a superior government that allowed them to persist for a very long time. But that ancient Hebrew
nation has long ceased to exist, and ever since they have been on a par with their fellow peoples. I see
nothing in the Torah that suggests that Jews are superior to other peoples. God is equally gracious to
all.”
With a look of disbelief on his face Jacob said, “You are saying there is nothing that distinguishes
Jews from Gentiles?”
“Exactly, but it is not I saying this, but the Holy Bible.”
“How can you be called ‘Baruch’ and speak thusly? Are you actually denying that God chose the
Jews, favored them, helped the Jews, expected much from them?”
“Again, Jacob, reflect upon what you say. Once again I remind you: human beings choose, favor,
help, value, expect. But God? Does God have these human attributes? Remember what I said about
the fallacy of imagining God to be in our image. Remember what I said about triangles and a
triangular God.”
“We were made in His image,” said Jacob. “Turn to Genesis. Let me show you those words—”
Bento recited from memory, “‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and
let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and
over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in His own image, in the
image of God He created him; male and female He created them.’”
“Exactly, Baruch, those are the words,” said Jacob. “Would that your piety were as great as your
memory. If those are God’s words, then who are you to question that we are made in His image?”
“Jacob, use your God-given reason. We cannot take such words literally. They are metaphors. Do
you truly believe that we mortals, some of us deaf or crooked or constipated or wretched, are made in
God’s image? Think of those like my mother who died in their twenties, those born blind or deformed
or demented with huge cavernous water heads, those with scrofula, those whose lungs fail them and
who spit blood, those who are avaricious or murderous—are they, too, in God’s image? You think
God has a mentality like ours and wishes to be flattered and grows jealous and vindictive if we
disobey His rules? Could such flawed, mutilated modes of thought be present in a perfect being?
This is merely the manner of talking of those who wrote the Bible.”
“Of those who wrote the Bible? You speak disparagingly of Moses and Joshua and the Prophets
and Judges? You deny the Bible is the word of God?” Jacob’s voice grew louder with each sentence,
and Franco, who was intent on every word Bento uttered, put his hand on his arm to still him.
“I disparage no one,” Bento said. “That conclusion comes from your mind. But I do say that the
words and ideas of the Bible come from the human mind, from the men who wrote these passages
and imagined—no, I should better say wished—that they resembled God, that they were made in
God’s image.”
“So you do deny that God speaks through the voices of the Prophets?”
“It’s obvious that any words in the Bible referred to as ‘God’s words’ originate only in the
imagination of the various prophets.”
“Imagination! You say ‘imagination’?” Jacob placed his hand before his mouth open with horror,
while Franco tried to suppress a smile.
Bento knew that each utterance from his lips shocked Jacob, yet he could not still himself. He felt
exhilarated to burst his shackles of silence and express aloud all the ideas he had pondered in secret
or shared with the rabbi only in heavily veiled form. Van den Enden’s warning of “caute, caute” came
to mind, but for once he ignored reason and plunged ahead.
“Yes, it’s obviously imagination, Jacob, and don’t be so shocked: we know this from the very words
of the Torah.” Out of the corner of his eye Bento noted Franco’s grin. Bento continued, “Here, Jacob,
read this with me in Deuteronomy 34:10: ‘And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto
Moses whom the Lord knew face to face.’ Now, Jacob, consider what that means. You know, of
course, that the Torah tells us not even Moses saw the Lord’s face, right?”
Jacob nodded. “Yes, the Torah says so.”
“So, Jacob, we’ve eliminated vision, and it must mean that Moses heard God’s real voice, and that
no prophet following Moses heard His real voice.”
Jacob had no reply.
“Explain to me,” said Franco, who had been listening carefully to Bento’s every word. “If none of
the other prophets heard the voice of God, then what is the source of prophecies?”
Welcoming Franco’s participation, Bento answered readily: “I believe that the prophets were men
endowed with unusually vivid imaginations, but not necessarily highly developed reasoning power.”
“Then, Bento,” said Franco, “you believe that miraculous prophecies are nothing more than the
imagined notions of prophets?”
“Exactly.”
Franco continued, “It is as though there is nothing supernatural. You make it appear that
everything is explainable.”
“That is precisely what I believe. Everything, and I mean everything, has a natural cause.”
“To me,” said Jacob, who had been glaring at Bento as he spoke about the prophets, “there are
things known only to God, things caused only by God’s will.”
“I believe that the more we can know, the fewer will be the things known only to God. In other
words, the greater our ignorance, the more we attribute to God.”
“How can you dare to—”
“Jacob,” Bento interrupted. “Let us review why we three are meeting. You came to me because
Franco was in a spiritual crisis and needed help. I did not seek you out—in fact I advised you to see
the rabbi instead. You said that you had been told the rabbi would only make Franco feel worse.
Remember?”
“Yes, that is true,” said Jacob.
“Then what end is served for you and me to enter into such dispute? Instead there is only one real
question.” Bento turned to Franco. “Tell me, am I being of help to you? Has anything I’ve said been
of aid?”
“Everything you’ve said has provided comfort,” said Franco. “You help my sanity. I was losing my
bearings, and your clear thought, the way you take nothing on the basis of authority, is—is like
nothing I have ever heard. I hear Jacob’s anger, and I apologize for him, but for me—yes, you have
helped me.”
“In that case,” said Jacob suddenly rising to his feet, “we have gotten what we came for, and our
business here is finished.” Franco appeared shocked and remained seated, but Jacob grabbed his
elbow and guided him toward the door.
“Thank you, Bento,” said Franco, as he stood in the doorway. “Please, tell me, are you available for
further meetings?”
“I am always available for a reasoned discussion—just come by the shop. But,” Bento turned
toward Jacob, “I am not available for a disputation that excludes reason.”
Once out of sight of Bento’s house, Jacob smiled broadly, put his arm around Franco, and grasped
his shoulder, “We’ve got all we need now. We worked well together. You played your part
well—almost too well, if you ask me—but I’m not even going to discuss that, because we have now
finished what we had to do. Look at what we have. The Jews are not chosen by God; they differ in no
way from other peoples. God has no feelings about us. The prophets merely imagine things. The
Holy Scriptures are not holy but entirely the work of humans. God’s word and God’s will are
nonexistent. Genesis and the rest of the Torah are fables or metaphors. The rabbis, even the greatest
of them, have no special knowledge but instead act in their self-interest.”
Franco shook his head. “We don’t have all we need, not yet. I want to see him again.”
“I’ve just recited all his abominations: his words are pure heresy. This is what Uncle Duarte
requested of us, and we have done as he wished. The evidence is overwhelming: Bento Spinoza is not
a Jew; he is an anti-Jew.”
“No,” repeated Franco, “we do not have enough. I need to hear more. I’m not testifying until I have
more.”
“We have more than enough. Your family is in danger. We made a bargain with Uncle Duarte—and
no one wiggles out of a bargain with him. That is exactly what this fool Spinoza tried to do—to
swindle him by bypassing the Jewish court. It was only through Uncle’s contacts, Uncle’s bribes, and
Uncle’s ship that you are not still cowering in a cave in Portugal. And in only two weeks, his ship goes
back for your mother and sister and my sister. Do you want them to be murdered like our fathers? If
you don’t go with me to the synagogue and testify to the governing committee, then you’ll be the one
lighting their pyres.”
“I’m not a fool, and I’m not going to be ordered around like a sheep,” said Franco. “We have time,
and I need more information before I testify to the synagogue committee. Another day makes no
difference, and you know it. And what’s more, Uncle is obligated to take care of his family even if we
do nothing.”
“Uncle does what Uncle wants. I know him better than you. He follows no rules but his own, and
he is not generous by nature. I don’t ever want to visit your Spinoza again. He slanders our whole
people.”
“That man has more intelligence than the whole congregation put together. And if you don’t want
to go, I’ll speak to him alone.”
“No, if you go, I go. I won’t let you go alone. The man is too persuasive. I feel unsettled myself. If
you go alone, the next thing I’ll see is a cherem for you as well as for him.” Noting Franco’s puzzled
look, Jacob added, “Cherem is excommunication—another Hebrew word you’d better learn.”
==
CHAPTER TEN
REVAL, ESTONIA—NOVEMBER 1918
“Guten Tag,” the stranger said, extending his hand, “I’m Friedrich Pfister. Do I know you? You look
familiar.”
“Rosenberg, Alfred Rosenberg. Grew up here. Just returned from Moscow. Got my degree from the
Polytechnic just last week.”
“Rosenberg? Ah, yes, yes—that’s it. You’re Eugen’s baby brother. I see his eyes in you. May I join
you?”
“Of course.”
Friedrich set his stein of ale on the table and sat down facing Alfred. “Your brother and I were the
closest of friends, and we still stay in touch. I saw you often at your home—even gave you piggyback
rides. You’re what—six, seven years younger than Eugen?”
“Six. You look familiar, but I can’t quite remember you. I don’t know why, but I have little memory
of my early life—it is all blotted out. You know, I was only nine or ten when Eugen left home to study
in Brussels. I’ve hardly seen him since. You say you’re in touch with him now?”
“Yes, only two weeks ago we had dinner in Zurich.”
“Zurich? He’s left Brussels?”
“About six months ago. He had a relapse of consumption and came to Switzerland for a rest cure.
I’ve been studying in Zurich and visited him there in the sanitarium. He’ll be discharged in a couple
of weeks and then move to Berlin for an advanced banking course. I happen to be moving to Berlin
for study in a few weeks, so we’ll be meeting often there. You know none of this?”
“No, we’ve gone our separate ways. We were never close and now have pretty much lost touch.”
“Yes, Eugen mentioned that—wistfully, I thought. I know your mother died when you were an
infant—that was hard for both of you—and I recall your father also died young, of consumption?”
“Yes, he was only forty-four. That was when I was eleven. Tell me, Herr Pfister—”
“Friedrich, please. A brother of a friend is also a friend. So we are now Friedrich and Alfred?”
A nod from Alfred.
“And Alfred, a minute ago you were going to ask? . . .”
“I wonder if Eugen ever mentioned me?”
“Not at our last meeting. We hadn’t met for about three years and had a lot of catching up to do.
But he has spoken of you many times in the past.”
Alfred hesitated and then blurted out, “Could you tell me all he said about me?”
“All? I’ll try, but first permit me to make an observation: on the one hand you tell me,
matter-of-factly, that you and your brother have never been close and you seem to have made no
efforts to contact one another. Yet today you seem eager—I would even say hungry—for news. A bit
of a paradox. That makes me wonder if you’re on a type of search for yourself and your past?”
Alfred’s head jerked back for a moment; he was startled by the perceptiveness of the question.
“Yes, that’s true. I’m amazed you saw that. These days are . . . well, I don’t know how to say it . . .
chaotic. I saw roiling crowds in Moscow reveling in anarchy. Now it’s sweeping across eastern
Europe, across all of Europe. Oceans of displaced people. And I’m unsettled along with them,
perhaps more lost than others . . . cut off from everything.”
“And so you seek an anchor in the past—you yearn for the unchanging past. I can understand that.
Let me dredge my memory for Eugen’s comments about you. Give me a minute, let me concentrate,
and I’ll jostle the images and let them surface.”
Friedrich closed his eyes, then shortly opened them. “There’s an obstacle—my own memories of
you seem to get in the way. First let me convey them, and then I’ll be able to retrieve Eugen’s
comments. All right?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” mumbled Alfred. But it wasn’t entirely fine. On the contrary, this entire
conversation was most odd: every word that came out of Friedrich’s mouth was strange and
unexpected. Even so, he trusted this man who had known him as a child. Friedrich had the aroma of
“home.”
Closing his eyes again, Friedrich commenced to speak in a faraway voice: “Pillow fight—I tried but
you wouldn’t play . . . I couldn’t get you to play. Serious—so, so serious. Order, order . . . toys,
books, toy soldiers, everything very orderly . . . you loved those toy soldiers . . . deadly serious little
boy . . . I carried you piggyback sometimes . . . I think you liked it . . . but you always jumped off
quickly . . . was fun not all right? . . . house felt cold . . . motherless . . . father removed, depressed . . .
you and Eugen never spoke . . . where were your friends? . . . never saw friends at your house . . . you
were fearful . . . running to your room, closing your door, always running to your books . . .”
Friedrich stopped, opened his eyes, took a hearty gulp of ale, and turned his eyes to Alfred. “That’s
all that comes out of my memory bank about you—perhaps other memories will surface later. Is this
what you wanted, Alfred? I want to be sure. I want to give the brother of my closest friend what he
wants and needs.”
Alfred nodded and then quickly turned his head, self-conscious about his amazement: never had
he heard such talk before. Though Friedrich’s words were German, his language was an alien tongue.
“Then I’ll continue and retrieve Eugen’s comments about you.” Friedrich once again closed his
eyes and a minute later spoke again in the same strange, faraway tone, “Eugen, speak to me of
Alfred.” Friedrich then slipped into yet another voice, a voice perhaps meant to be Eugen’s voice.
“Ah . . . my shy fearful brother, a wonderful artist—he got all the family talent—I loved his sketches
of Reval—the port and all the ships at anchor, the Teutonic castle with its soaring tower—they were
accomplished drawings even for an adult, and he was only ten. My little brother—always
reading—poor Alfred—a loner . . . so fearful of other children . . . not popular—the boys mocked him
and called him ‘the philosopher’—not much love for him—our mother dead, our father dying, our
aunts good-hearted but always busy with their own families—I should have done more for him, but
he was hard to reach . . . and I was living on mere scraps myself.”
Friedrich opened his eyes, blinked once or twice and then, resuming his natural voice, said, “That’s
what I remember. Oh, yes there was one other thing, Alfred, which I have mixed feelings about saying:
Eugen blamed you for your mother’s death.”
“Blamed me? Me? I was only a couple of weeks old.”
“When someone dies, we often look for something, someone, to blame.”
“You can’t be serious. Are you? I mean Eugen really said that? It makes no sense.”
“We often believe things that make no sense. Of course you didn’t kill her, but I imagine Eugen
harbors the thought that if his mother had never gotten pregnant with you, then she’d be alive now.
But, Alfred, I’m guessing. I can’t recall his exact words, but I do know he had a resentment toward
you that he himself labeled irrational.”
Alfred, now ashen, remained silent for several minutes. Friedrich stared at him, sipped some ale,
and said gently, “I fear I may have said too much. But when a friend asks, I try to give all I can.”
“And that is a good thing. Thoroughness, honesty—good, noble German virtues. I commend you,
Friedrich. And so much rings true. I have to admit that I have sometimes wondered why Eugen did
not do more for me. And that taunt—‘Little philosopher’—how often did I hear that from the other
boys! I think it influenced me greatly, and I plotted my revenge on all of them by becoming a
philosopher after all.”
“At the Polytechnic? How is that possible?”
“Not exactly a certified philosopher—my degree is in engineering and architecture, but my true
home was philosophy, and even at the Polytechnic I found some learned professors who guided my
private readings. More than anything I have come to worship German clarity of thought. It is my only
religion. Yet right now, at this very moment, I’m floundering in a muddled state of mind. In fact, I’m
almost dizzy. Perhaps I just need time to assimilate all you’ve said.”
“Alfred, I think I can explain what you feel. I’ve experienced it myself, and I’ve seen it in others.
You’re not responding to the memories I’ve shared. It’s something else. I can best explain it by
speaking in a philosophical mode. I, too, have had much philosophy training, and it is a pleasure to
speak with one of similar inclination.”
“It would be a pleasure for me as well. I have been surrounded by engineers for years and yearn for
a philosophical conversation.”
“Good, good. Let me start in this way: remember the shock and disbelief toward Kant’s revelation
that external reality is not as we ordinarily perceive it—that is, we constitute the nature of external
reality by virtue of our internal mental constructs? You’re well acquainted with Kant, I imagine?”
“Yes, very well acquainted. But his relevance to my current state of mind is? . . .”
“Well, what I mean is that suddenly your world, I refer now to your internal world, constituted so
much by your past experiences, is not as you thought it was. Or, to put it another way, let me use a
term from Husserl, and say your noema has exploded.”
“Husserl? I avoid Jewish pseudo-philosophers. And what is a noema?”
“I advise you, Alfred, not to dismiss Edmund Husserl—he’s one of the greats. His term noema
refers to the thing as we experience it, the thing as structured by us. For example, think of the idea of
a building. Then think of leaning against a building and finding that the building is not solid and that
your body passes right through it. At that moment your noema of a building explodes—your
Lebenswelt (life-world) suddenly is not as you thought.”
“I respect your advice. But please clarify further—I understand the concept of a structure that we
impose upon the world, but still I’m puzzled about the relevance for Eugen and me.”
“Well, what I’m saying is that your view about the lifelong relationship you had with your brother
is, in one big stroke, altered. You thought of him one way, and suddenly the past shifts, just a bit, and
you find out now that he sometimes regarded you with resentment—even though, of course, the
resentment was irrational and unfair.”
“So you’re saying that I’m dizzy because the solid ground of my past has been shifted?”
“Precisely. Well put, Alfred. Your mind is on overload because it is totally preoccupied with
reconstituting the past, and it has not the capacity to do its normal jobs—like taking care of your
equilibrium.”
Alfred nodded, “Friedrich, this has been an astounding conversation. You’re giving me a lot to
ponder. But let me point out that some of this dizziness preceded our talk.”
Friedrich waited calmly, expectantly. He seemed to know how to wait.
Alfred hesitated, “I don’t usually share this much. In fact I hardly talk about myself to anyone, but
there is something about you that is very—what shall I say—trusting, inviting.”
“Well, in a way I’m family. And, of course, you know that you can’t make old friends anew.”
“Old friends anew . . .” Alfred thought for a moment, then smiled, “I understand. Very clever. Well,
I started the day feeling estranged—I just arrived yesterday from Moscow. I’m alone now. I was
married for a brief time—my wife has consumption, and her father placed her in a sanitarium in
Switzerland a few weeks ago. But it’s more than the consumption: her wealthy family strongly
disapproves of me and my poverty, and I’m certain our very short marriage is over. We have spent
little time together and even stopped writing much to one another.”
Alfred hastily took a swallow of his ale and continued. “When I arrived here yesterday, my aunts
and uncles and nieces and nephews seemed glad to see me and their welcome felt good. I felt I
belonged. But not for long. By the time I woke this morning I once again felt estranged and homeless
and walked around the city looking and looking in search of . . . what? I guess, for home, for friends,
even for familiar faces. Yet I saw only strangers. Even in the Realschule, I met no one I knew except
for my favorite teacher, the art teacher, and he only pretended to recognize me. And then, less than an
hour ago, came the final blow. I decided to go where I truly belonged, to stop living in exile, to
reconnect with my race and to return to the Fatherland. Intending to join the German army, I went to
the German military headquarters across the street. There, the enlistment sergeant, a Jew named
Goldberg, flicked me off like an insect. He waved me away with the words that the German army was
for Germans, not for citizens of combatant countries.”
Friedrich nodded sympathetically. “Maybe the final blow was a blessing. Maybe you were fortunate
to get a reprieve, a pardon from a senseless, muddy death in the trenches.”
“You said I was an oddly serious child. I guess I’m still that way. For example, I take my Kant
seriously: I consider it a moral imperative to enlist. What would our world be like if everyone deserted
the mortally wounded Fatherland? When he calls, his sons must answer.”
“It is odd, isn’t it,” said Friedrich, “how we Baltic Germans are so much more German than the
Germans. Perhaps all of us who are displaced Germans have that same powerful longing you
describe—for home, a place where we really belong. We Baltic Germans are in the midst of a plague
of rootlessness. I feel it especially keenly at this moment because my father died earlier this week.
That’s why I’m in Reval. Now I, too, don’t know where I belong. My maternal grandparents are Swiss,
and yet I don’t really belong there, either.”
“My condolences,” Alfred said.
“Thank you. In many ways I’ve had it easier than you: my father was almost eighty, and I had his
full healthy presence my entire life. And my mother is still alive. I’ve spent my time here helping her
move into her sister’s home. In fact, I just left her napping and must rejoin her shortly. But before I
leave, I want to say that I believe the issue of home is deep and urgent for you. I can stay a bit longer
if you’d like to explore that more.”
“I don’t know how to explore it. In fact your ability to talk about deeply personal things with such
ease amazes me. I’ve never heard anyone express his inner thoughts as openly as you.”
“Would you like me to help you do that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean help you identify and understand your feelings about home.”
Alfred looked wary but, after a long slow gulp of his Latvian ale, agreed.
“Try this. Do just what I did when I dredged up my memories of you as a child. Here’s my
suggestion: think of the phrase ‘not at home,’ and say it to yourself several times: ‘not at home,’ ‘not
at home,’ ‘not at home.’”
Alfred’s lips silently mouthed the words for a minute or two, and then he shook his head. “Nothing
comes. My mind is on strike.”
“The mind never goes on strike; it is always working, but something often blocks our knowledge of
it. Usually it’s self-consciousness. In this case, I imagine it is self-consciousness about me. Try again.
Let me suggest you close your eyes and forget about me, forget about what I will think of you, forget
about how I might judge what you say. Remember I am trying to help, and remember that you have
my word that this conversation will remain only with me. I’ll not share it even with Eugen. Now close
your eyes, let your thoughts pop into your mind about ‘not at home,’ and then give voice to them.
Just say what comes to mind—it doesn’t have to make sense.”
Alfred again closed his eyes, but no words came.
“Can’t quite hear you. Louder, a little louder, please.”
Softly Alfred began to speak. “Not at home. Nowhere. Not with Aunt Cäcilie, or Aunt Lydia . . . no
place for me, not in school, not with other boys, not in my wife’s family, not in architecture, not in
engineering, not in Estonia, not in Russia . . . Mother Russia, what a joke . . .”
“Good, good—keep going,” urged Friedrich.
“Always outside, looking in, always want to show them . . .” Alfred grew silent, opened his eyes.
“Nothing else comes . . .”
“You said you want to show them. Show who, Alfred?”
“All those who mocked me. In the neighborhood, at the Realschule, at the Polytechnic,
everywhere.”
“And how will you show them, Alfred? Stay in your loose frame of mind. You don’t have to make
sense.”
“I don’t know. Somehow I will make them notice me.”
“If they notice you, will you be at home then?”
“Home doesn’t exist. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I have no preordained plan, but I do now have an idea. It’s just a guess, but I wonder if you can
ever be at home anywhere, because home is not a place—it’s a state of mind. Really being at home is
feeling at home in your own skin. And, Alfred, I don’t think you feel at home in your skin. Perhaps you
never have. Perhaps you have been searching for home in the wrong place all your life.”
Alfred looked thunderstruck. His jaw sagged; his eyes riveted on Friedrich. “Your words speed
right to my heart. How come you know such things, such miraculous things? You said you were a
philosopher. Is that where this comes from? I must read this philosophy.”
“I’m an amateur. Just like you, I would have loved spending my life in philosophy, but I have to
earn a living. I went to medical school in Zurich and learned a lot about helping others talk about
difficult things. And now,” Friedrich rose from his seat, “I must leave you. My mother is waiting, and I
must return to Zurich the day after tomorrow.”
“Unfortunate. This has been enlightening, and I feel as though we were just starting. Is there no
time for a continuation before you leave Reval?”
“I have only tomorrow. My mother always rests in the afternoon. Perhaps the same time? Shall we
meet here?”
Alfred restrained his greediness and his wish to exclaim, “Yes, yes.” Instead he bowed his head in
just the proper manner: “I look forward to it.”
==
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AMSTERDAM—1656
At the van den Enden academy the following evening, Clara Maria’s assiduous Latin drill was
interrupted by her father. He bowed formally to his daughter and said, “Forgive me for intruding,
Mademoiselle van den Enden, but I must have a word with Mr. Spinoza.” Turning toward Bento, he
said, “Please come to the large alcove in an hour and join the Greek class, where we shall discuss
some texts by Aristotle and Epicurus. Even though your Greek is still rudimentary, these two
gentlemen have something important to say to you.” To Dirk he said, “I know that you have little
interest in Greek since it is, disgracefully, no longer a requirement for medical school, but you may
find aspects of this discussion useful in your future work with patients.”
Van den Enden bowed again formally to his daughter. “And now, Mademoiselle, I shall leave you
to continue putting them through their Latin paces.”
Clara Maria continued reading short passages from Cicero, which Bento and Dirk took turns
translating into Dutch. Several times she tapped her ruler on the table to alert the distracted Bento,
who, rather than attend to Cicero, was caught up entirely with the delightful movement of Clara
Maria’s lips when she pronounced her m’s and p’s in multa, pater, puer, and, most wonderfully of all,
praestantissimum.
“Where is your concentration today, Bento Spinoza?” said Clara Maria, trying hard to contort her
most pleasing thirteen-year-old, pear-shaped face into a stern frown.
“Sorry, I was, for a moment, lost in thought, Miss van den Enden.”
“No doubt thinking about my father’s Greek symposium?”
“No doubt,” dissembled Bento, who had been thinking far more about the daughter than the
father. He also continued to be haunted by Jacob’s angry words a few hours earlier, predicting his
destiny as a lonely, isolated man. Jacob was opinionated, closed-minded, and wrong on so many
issues, but in this he was right: Bento knew he could have no wife—no family, no community.
Reason told him that freedom should be his goal and that his struggle to free himself from the
constraints of the superstitious Jewish community would be farcical if he were simply to exchange
them for the shackles of a wife and family. Freedom was his only quarry, the freedom to think, to
analyze, to transcribe the thunderous thoughts echoing in his mind. But it was hard, oh so hard, to
wrench his attention from the lovely lips of Clara Maria.
Van den Enden began his discussion with his Greek class by exclaiming, “Eudaimonia. Let’s
examine the two roots: eu?” He cupped his ear with his hand and waited. Students timidly called out
“good,” ‘‘normal,’’ “pleasant.” Van den Enden nodded and repeated the exercise with daimon and
received a more invigorated chorus of “spirit,” “imp,” “minor deity.”
“Yes, yes, and yes. All are correct but in consort with eu the meaning veers toward ‘good fortune’
and, thus, eudaimonia usually connotes ‘well-being’ or ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing.’ Are these three
terms synonyms? At first they appear to be, but in fact philosophers beyond count have discoursed
on their shades of difference. Is eudaimonia a state of mind? A way of life?” Without waiting for an
answer, van den Enden added, “Or is it sheer hedonistic pleasure? Or might it be connected to the
concept of arete, which means?” Cupping his ears, he waited until two students simultaneously called
out “virtue.”
“Yes, exactly, and many ancient Greek philosophers incorporate virtue into the concept of
eudaimonia, thus perhaps elevating it from the subjective state of feeling happy to a greater
consideration of living a moral, virtuous, desirable life. Socrates had strong feelings about that. Recall
your last week’s reading of Plato’s Apologia, in which he accosts a fellow Athenian and raises the
question of arete with these words . . .” At this point van den Enden assumed a theatrical pose and
recited Plato in Greek and then, slowly, translated the text into Latin for Dirk and Bento: “Are you not
ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors as possible, while
you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth or the best possible state of your soul?”
“Now, keep in mind that Plato’s earlier works reflect the ideas of his teacher, Socrates, whereas in
his later work, such as The Republic, we see the emergence of Plato’s own ideas emphasizing absolute
standards for justice and other virtues in the metaphysical realm. What is Plato’s idea of our
fundamental goal in life? It is to attain the highest form of knowledge, and that, in his view, was the
idea of the ‘good,’ from which all else derives value. Only then, Plato says, are we able to reach
eudemonia—in his view, a state of harmony of the soul. Let me repeat that phrase: ‘harmony of the
soul.’ It’s worth remembering; it may serve you well in your life.
“Now let’s look at the next great philosopher, Aristotle, who studied with Plato for perhaps twenty
years. Twenty years. Remember that, those of you who have whimpered about my curriculum being
too hard and too long.
“In the parts of The Nichomachean Ethics you shall be reading this week, you will see that Aristotle
also had some strong views on the good life. He was certain that it did not consist of sensual
pleasure or fame or wealth. What did Aristotle hold to be our purpose in life? He thought it was to
fulfill our innermost unique function. ‘What is it,’ he asks, ‘that sets us off from other forms of life?’ I
pose that question to you.”
No instant answers from the class. Finally one student said, “We can laugh, and other animals
can’t,” eliciting some chuckles from his classmates.
Another: “We walk on two legs.”
“Laugh and legs—is that the best you can do?” exclaimed van den Enden. “Such foolish answers
trivialize this discussion. Think! What is the major attribute that sets us off from lower life forms?”
Suddenly he turned to Bento: “I pose that question to you, Bento Spinoza.”
Without a moment’s reflection, Bento said, “I believe it is our unique ability to reason.”
“Precisely. And hence Aristotle claimed that the happiest person is the one who most fulfills that
very function.”
“So the highest and happiest of endeavors is to be a philosopher?” asked Alphonse, the cleverest
student in the Greek class, who felt unnerved by Bento’s rapid-fire answer. “Doesn’t it seem
self-serving for a philosopher to make that claim?”
“Yes, Alphonse, and you’re not the first thinker to draw that conclusion. And that very observation
provides us with a segue to Epicurus, another important Greek thinker who weighed in with radically
different ideas about eudemonia and about the mission of the philosopher. When you read some of
Epicurus in two weeks, you’ll see that he, too, spoke of the good life but used another word entirely.
He speaks much of ataraxia, which translates . . .” Again van den Enden cupped his ear.
Alphonse instantly called out “tranquility,” and soon others added “calm” and “peace of mind.”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” said van den Enden, obviously growing more pleased with his class’s
performance. “For Epicurus, ataraxia was the only true happiness. And how do we achieve it? Not
through Plato’s harmony of the soul nor Aristotle’s attainment of reason but simply by the elimination
of worry or anxiety. If Epicurus were speaking to you at this moment, he would urge you to simplify
life. Here’s how he might put it if he were standing here today.”
Van den Enden cleared his throat and spoke in a collegial manner: “Lads, your needs are few, they
are easily attained, and any necessary suffering can be easily tolerated. Don’t complicate your life with
such trivial goals as riches and fame: they are the enemy of ataraxia. Fame, for example, consists of
the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish. To achieve and maintain
fame, we must like what others like and shun whatever it is that they shun. Hence, a life of fame or a
life in politics? Flee from it. And wealth? Avoid it! It is a trap. The more we acquire the more we crave,
and the deeper our sadness when our yearning is not satisfied. Lads, listen to me: if you crave
happiness, do not waste your life struggling for that which you really do not need.”
“Now,” continued van den Enden, settling back into his own voice, “note the difference between
Epicurus and his predecessors. Epicurus thinks the greatest good is to attain ataraxia through
freedom from all anxiety. Now, comments and questions? Ah, yes, Mr. Spinoza. A question?”
“Does Epicurus propose only a negative approach? I mean, does he say that removal of distress is
all that is needed and that man without extraneous worry is perfect, naturally good, happy? Are there
no positive attributes for which we should strive?”
“Excellent question. And the readings I have selected shall illuminate his answer. Fortunately, Mr.
Spinoza, you shall not have to wait to perfect your Greek, because you can read the ideas of Epicurus
in Latin written by the Roman poet Lucretius, who lived about two hundred years later. I shall select
the appropriate pages for you in due time. Today I sought only to touch on the central idea that
distinguishes him from others: that the good life consists of the removal of anxiety. But even a light
reading will indicate that Epicurus is far more complex. He encourages knowledge, friendship, and
virtuous, temperate living. Yes, Dirk, you have a question? It appears as if my Latin students are more
inquisitive about the Greeks than my Greek class.”
“In Hamburg,” Dirk said, “I know a tavern that is called ‘The Epicurean Delight.’ So good wine and
ale are part of his good life?”
“I’ve been waiting for that question—it was certain to appear. Many mistakenly use his name to
indicate good food or wine. Were he to know this, Epicurus would be astonished. I believe that this
curious error stems from his strict materialism. He believed that there is no afterlife and that since
this life is all there is, we should strive for earthly happiness. But do not make the error of concluding
that Epicurus suggests we should spend our lives wallowing in sensual or lustful activities.
Absolutely not—he lived and advocated an almost ascetic life. I repeat: he believed we could best
maximize pleasure by minimizing pain. One of his major conclusions was that the fear of death was a
major source of pain, and he spent much of his life seeking philosophical methods to lessen the fear
of death. Further questions, please.”
“Does he mention service to others and one’s community or love?” asked Dirk.
“An apt inquiry from a future physician. You will be interested to know that he considered himself a
medical philosopher, ministering to the ailments of the soul just as a physician ministers to the
ailments of the body. He once said that a philosophy unable to heal the soul has as little value as
medicine unable to heal the body. I’ve already mentioned some of the soul’s ailments arising from a
pursuit of fame, power, wealth, and sexual lust, but they were only secondary. The behemoth of
anxieties underlying and feeding all the other worries is the fear of death and the afterlife. In fact one
of the first principles in the ‘catechism’ that his students had to learn was that we are mortal, that
there is no afterlife, and therefore we have nothing to fear from the gods after death. You’ll read more
about this in Lucretius very soon, Dirk. Now I’ve forgotten what the rest of your question was.”
“First,” said Dirk, “I have to say that I don’t know the word ‘behemoth.’”
“Good question. Who here knows that word?” Only Bento raised his hand.
“Mr. Spinoza, tell us.”
“Monstrous beast,” said Bento. “From the Hebrew b’hëmãh that appears in Genesis and also in
Job.”
“Job, eh. I didn’t know that myself. Thank you. Now, back to your question, Dirk.”
“I asked about love and service to one’s community.”
“As far as I know, Epicurus did not marry but believed in marriage and the family for some—those
who are ready for the responsibility. But he staunchly disapproved of irrationally impassioned love
that enslaves the lover and ultimately leads to more pain than pleasure. He says that once lustful
infatuation is consummated, the lover experiences boredom or jealousy or both. But he gave great
weight to a higher love, the love of friends, that awakens us to a state of blessedness. It is of interest
to know that he was inclusive and treated all human souls equally: his was the only school in Athens
that welcomed both women and slaves.
“But your question about service, Dirk, is important. His position was that we should live a quiet,
secluded life, avoid public responsibilities, holding office, or any other type of responsibility that
might threaten our ataraxia.”
“I hear nothing about religion,” said a Catholic student, Edward, whose uncle had been the bishop
of Antwerp. “I hear about the love of friends but nothing about the love of God or of God’s purpose
in his scheme of happiness.”
“You’ve put your finger on an important point, Edward. Epicurus is shocking to today’s readers
because his formula for happiness pays so little attention to the Divine. He believed that happiness
emanates only from our own mind and places no importance on our relationship with anything
supernatural.”
“Are you saying,” asked Edward, “that he denied the existence of God?”
“You mean gods, in the plural? Remember the time period, Edward. This is the fourth century BC,
and Greek culture, like every early culture aside from the Hebrews, was polytheistic,” said van den
Enden.
Edward nodded and rephrased his question: “Did Epicurus deny the Divine?”
“No, he was bold, but not foolhardy. He was born about sixty years after Socrates had been
executed for heresy, and he knew that disbelief in the gods would have been bad for one’s health. He
took a safer position and stated that the gods existed, lived blissfully on Mount Olympus, but were
entirely unconcerned with human life.”
“But what kind of God is that? How can one imagine that God would not want us to live according
to His plan?” asked Edward. “It is unimaginable that a God who sacrificed His own son for us did not
intend for us to live in a particular holy manner.”
“There are many conceptions of gods invented by many cultures,” Bento interjected.
“But I know with the deepest certainty that Christ, our Lord, loves us and has a place for us in his
heart and a design for us,” said Edward, looking upward.
“The strength of a belief has no relationship to its veracity,” shot back Bento. “Every god has his
deep and fierce believers.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” van den Enden intervened, “let us postpone this discussion until we
have read and mastered the texts. But let me say to you, Edward, that Epicurus was not flippant about
the gods: he incorporated them into his view of ataraxia and urged us to keep the gods close to our
hearts by emulating them and using them as models for a life of blissful tranquility. What’s more, in
the service of avoiding disturbance”—at this point van den Enden cast a glance in Bento’s
direction—“he strongly advised his followers to participate serenely in all community activities,
including religious ceremonies.”
Edward was not mollified. “But to pray simply to avoid disturbance seems a sham observance.”
“Many have voiced that opinion, Edward, and yet Epicurus also writes that we should honor the
gods as perfect beings. Moreover we obtain aesthetic pleasure from contemplating their perfect
existence. The time is late, gentlemen. These are all excellent questions, and we’ll consider every one
of them as we read his work.”
The day ended with Bento and his teachers switching roles. He gave a half-hour Hebrew lesson to
father and daughter, after which van den Enden asked him to stay a bit longer for a private
discussion.
“You remember our talk the first time we met?”
“I remember very well, and you are indeed introducing me to like-minded companions.”
“No doubt you’ve noted that some of Epicurus’s comments are most apt to your current
predicament in your community.”
“I wondered if you had aimed some of his comments about participating serenely in the
community’s religious ceremonies in my direction.”
“Exactly so. And did they reach their target?”
“Almost, but they were so weighted down with self-contradiction that they fell short.”
“How so?”
“For me I cannot imagine tranquility sprouting from the soil of hypocrisy.”
“You refer, I assume, to Epicurus’s advice to do anything necessary to fit in with a community,
including participating in public prayer.”
“Yes, I call that hypocrisy. Even Edward responded to that. How can inner harmony be present if
one is untrue to oneself?”
“I particularly wanted to speak to you about Edward. What do you think about how he feels about
our discussion and about you?”
Surprised at this question, Bento paused. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
“I ask for a guess.”
“Well, he’s not happy with me. He’s angry, I suppose. Perhaps threatened.”
“Yes, good guess. Highly predictable, I would say. Now answer this question. Is that what you
want?”
Bento shook his head.
“And would Epicurus think that you’ve acted in a way conducive to the good life?”
“I must agree that he would not. At the moment, however, I believed that I was acting wisely in
refraining from other utterances.”
“Such as?”
“That God did not make us in His image—we made Him in our image. We imagine He is a being
like us, hears our murmured prayers and cares about what we wish—”
“Good Lord! If this is what you almost said, then I see your point. Let us say, then, you acted
unwisely but not entirely foolishly. Edward is a devout Catholic. His uncle was a Catholic bishop. To
expect him to lay down his beliefs on the basis of a few comments, even rational comments, is highly
irrational and perhaps dangerous. Amsterdam has a reputation for being the most tolerant city in
Europe at the moment. But remember the meaning of the word ‘tolerant’—it connotes that we all be
tolerant of others’ beliefs, even though we deem them irrational.”
“More and more,” said Bento, “I believe that if one lives among men with greatly different beliefs,
then one cannot accommodate them without greatly changing oneself.”
“Now I begin to understand my spy’s report of unrest about you in the Jewish community. Do you
express all your ideas to other Jews?”
“About a year ago in my meditations I resolved to be truthful at all times—”
“Ah,” van den Enden interjected, “now I see why business is so bad. A truth-telling businessman is
an oxymoron.”
Bento shook his head. “Oxymoron?”
“From the Greek: oxys means sharp; moros means foolish. Hence oxymoron alludes to an internal
paradox. Imagine what a truth-telling merchant might say to his customer: ‘Please buy these
raisins—it would be a great favor to me. They are years old, wizened, and I must be rid of them before
the shipment of succulent raisins arrives next week.’”
Perceiving no trace of a grin from Bento, van den Enden was reminded of something he had
already discerned—Bento Spinoza had no sense of humor. He retraced his steps. “But I do not mean
to make light of the serious things you tell me.”
“You asked about my discretion in my community. I have maintained silence about my views aside
from my brother and those two strangers from Portugal who sought my advice. In fact, I saw them a
few hours ago, and in an effort to be helpful to the one professing to be in a spiritual crisis, I did not
hold back from expressing my opinions about superstitious beliefs. I have been engaged in a critical
reading of the Hebrew Bible with those two visitors. Ever since I unburdened myself to them I’ve
experienced what you called ‘internal harmony.’”
“You sound as though you have long stifled yourself.”
“Not fully enough for my family or for my rabbi, who is entirely displeased with me. I long for a
community that is not in thrall to false beliefs.”
“You will search the world over and not find a nonsuperstitious community. As long as there is
ignorance, there will be adherence to superstition. Dispelling ignorance is the only solution. That is
why I teach.”
“I worry that it is a losing battle,” replied Bento. “Ignorance and superstitious beliefs spread like
wildfire, and I believe that religious leaders feed that fire to secure their positions.”
“Dangerous words, those. Words beyond your years. Again I say to you that discretion is required
to remain a part of any community.”
“I’m persuaded I must be free. If such a community is not to be found, then perhaps I must live
without a community.”
“Remember, what I said about caute. If you are not cautious, it is possible that your wishes, and
perhaps your fears, will come to pass.”
“It is now beyond the pale of ‘possible.’ I believe I have already started the process,” replied Bento.
==
CHAPTER TWELVE
ESTONIA—1918
On the day after their first meeting, Alfred got to the beer hall early and sat staring at the entrance
until he spotted Friedrich. He jumped to his feet to greet him. “Friedrich, good to see you. Thank you
for making the time for me.”
After collecting their beer at the counter, they sat again at the same quiet corner table. Alfred had
resolved not to be the focus of the entire conversation once again and began, “How are you and your
mother doing?”
“My mother’s still in shock, still trying to grasp that my father is gone from existence. At times she
seems to forget he’s gone. Twice she thought she saw him in a crowd of people outside. And the
denial in her dreams, Alfred—it’s extraordinary! When she woke this morning, she said it was terrible
to open her eyes: she was so happy walking and talking to my father in her dream that she hated
waking to rejoin a reality in which he was still dead.”
“As for me,” Friedrich continued, “I’m struggling on two fronts, just like the German army. Not
only do I have to grapple with the fact of his death, but in this short time I’m here, I have to help my
mother. And that is tricky.”
“What do you mean by ‘tricky’?” asked Alfred.”
“To help someone, I believe you have to enter into that person’s world. But whenever I try to do
that with my mother, my mind flits away, and in a moment or two I’m suddenly thinking of something
entirely different. Just a little while ago my mother was weeping, and as I put my arm around her to
console her, I noted how my thoughts were wandering to meeting with you today. For a moment I felt
guilty. Then I reminded myself that I’m only human and that humans have an inbuilt tendency toward
protective distraction. I’ve been pondering why I cannot stay focused on my father’s death. I believe
the reason is that it confronts me with my own death and that prospect is simply too fearsome to
behold. I can think of no other explanation. What do you think?” Friedrich stopped and turned to look
squarely into Alfred’s eyes.
“I don’t know about these things, but your conclusion seems plausible. I, too, never allow myself
to think deeply about death. I always hated it when my father insisted on taking me to my mother’s
grave.”
Friedrich remained silent until he was certain Alfred intended to say no more and said, “So, Alfred,
that’s a very long answer to your polite inquiry about how I am doing, but as you see, I love observing
and discussing all these machinations of my mind. Did I give a more involved answer than you
expected or wished?”
“It was a longer answer to my inquiry than I expected, but it was real, it was deep, and it was
heartfelt. I admire how you avoid superficiality—how willing you are to share your thoughts so
honestly and unself-consciously.”
“And you, Alfred, you too went deep within yourself at the end of yesterday’s conversation. Any
after-effects?”
“I confess I’ve been unsettled: I’m still trying to understand our talk.”
“What part wasn’t clear?”
“I’m not referring to clarity of ideas but to the strange feeling I had when talking with you. I mean
we only spoke a brief time—what, perhaps three-quarters of an hour? And yet I revealed so much and
felt so involved, so strangely . . . close. As though I’ve known you intimately all my life.”
“That an uncomfortable feeling?”
“It’s mixed. It was good because it takes the edge off my isolation, my sense of homelessness. But
it was uncomfortable because of the extreme oddness of the conversation yesterday—as I keep
saying to you, I’ve never had an intimate talk like that nor trusted a stranger so quickly.”
“But I’m not a stranger because of Eugen. Or let’s say I’m a familiar stranger who has had access
to the inner chambers of your childhood home.”
“You’ve been in my mind a great deal since yesterday, Friedrich. One matter has arisen, and I
wonder if you would permit a personal question . . .”
“Of course, of course. No need to ask—I like personal questions.”
“When I asked you how you acquired such skills in speaking and exploring the mind, you answered
that it was your medical training. Yet I’ve been thinking of all the doctors I’ve known, and none, not a
single one, has shown even a trace of your engaging manner. With them it’s all business—a few
cursory questions, never a personal inquiry, then a quick scribbling of some mysterious Latin
prescription followed by ‘Next patient, please.’ Why are you so different, Friedrich?”
“I haven’t been totally candid, Alfred,” replied Friedrich, looking into Alfred’s eyes with his usual
straightforwardness. “It is true I am a physician, but I’ve withheld something from you—I’ve also
completed training in psychiatry, and it was that experience that has shaped the way that I think and
speak.”
“That fact seems so . . . so innocuous. Why such pains to conceal it?”
“Nowadays more and more people become nervous, back away, and look for the exit when they
learn I am a psychiatrist. They have silly notions that psychiatrists can read minds and know all their
dark secrets.”
Alfred nodded. “Well, perhaps not so silly. Yesterday it was as if you could read my mind.”
“No, no, no. But I am learning to read my own mind, and by virtue of that experience I can serve as
a guide for you to read your own mind. That’s the major new direction of my field.”
“I have to confess that you’re the first psychiatrist I’ve ever met. I know nothing about your field.”
“Well, for centuries, psychiatrists have primarily been diagnosticians and custodians for
hospitalized psychotic, almost always incurable patients, but all that has changed in the last decade.
The change began with Sigmund Freud in Vienna, who invented a talking treatment called
psychoanalysis, which permits us to help patients overcome psychological problems. Today we can
treat such ailments as extreme anxiety or intractable grief or something we call hysteria—an ailment
in which a patient has psychologically caused physical symptoms like paralysis or even blindness. My
teachers in Zurich, Carl Jung and Eugen Bleuler, have been pioneers in this field. I’m intrigued by this
approach and will soon be starting advanced training in psychoanalysis in Berlin with Karl Abraham, a
highly regarded teacher.”
“I’ve heard some things about psychoanalysis. I’ve heard it referred to as another Jewish intrigue.
Are your teachers all Jews?”
“Certainly not Jung or Bleuler.”
“But, Friedrich, why involve yourself in a Jewish field?”
“It will be a Jewish field unless we Germans step in. Or put it another way: It’s too good to be left
to the Jews.”
“But why contaminate yourself? Why become the student of Jews?”
“It’s a field of science. Look, Alfred, consider the example of another scientist, the German Jew
Albert Einstein. All of Europe is buzzing about him—his work will forever change the face of physics.
You can’t speak of modern physics as Jewish physics. Science is science. In medical school one of
my instructors in anatomy was a Swiss Jew—he didn’t teach me Jewish anatomy. And if the great
William Harvey were Jewish, you’d still believe in the circulation of the blood, right? If Kepler were
Jewish, you’d still believe in the earth revolving about the sun? Science is science regardless of the
discoverer.”
“It’s different with the Jews,” Alfred interjected. “They corrupt, they monopolize, they suck every
field dry. Take politics. I saw firsthand the Jewish Bolsheviks undermine the entire Russian
government. I saw the face of anarchy on the streets of Moscow. Take banking. You’ve seen the role
of the Rothschilds in this war: they pull the strings, and all of Europe dances. Take the theater. Once
they take over, they allow only Jews to work.”
“Alfred, we all love to hate the Jews, but you do it with such . . . such intensity. It’s come up so
often in our brief conversations. Let’s see . . . There was the attempted enlistment with the Jewish
sergeant, and Husserl, Freud, the Bolsheviks. What do you say to our making a philosophical inquiry
into this intensity?”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the things I love about psychiatry is that, unlike any other field of medicine, it veers close
to philosophy. Like philosophers, we psychiatrists rely on logical investigation. We not only help
patients identify and express feelings, but we also ask ‘why’? What is their source? Why do certain
complexes arise in the mind? Sometimes I think our field really began with Spinoza, who believed
that everything, even emotion and thought, has a cause that can be discovered with proper
investigation.”
Noting the baffled expression on Alfred’s face, Friedrich continued. “You seem puzzled. Let me try
to clarify. Consider our very brief excursion into something that haunts you—the sense of not being
at home. Yesterday, in only a few minutes of informal meandering, we came upon several sources of
your feeling of being unrooted. Think of them—there was the absence of your mother and your ill and
distant father. Then you talked of having chosen the wrong academic field, and now your lack of
self-esteem, which results in your not being at home in your skin—right? You follow me?”
Alfred nodded.
“Now, just imagine how much richer our excavation would be if we had many, many hours over
several weeks to explore these sources more fully. Do you see?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“That is what my field is all about. And what I was suggesting earlier is that even your particularly
powerful Jew-hatred must have psychological or philosophical roots.”
Drawing back slightly, Alfred said, “There we differ. I prefer to say that I am fortunate to be
enlightened enough to understand the dangers that the Jew poses for our race and the damage they
have done to great civilizations in the past.”
“Please understand, Alfred, you have no quarrels with me about your conclusions. We both have
these feelings about the Jews. My point is only that you feel them so very keenly and with such
extraordinary passion. And the love of philosophy that you and I share dictates that we can examine
the logical base of all thoughts and beliefs. Not true?”
“Here I cannot go with you, Friedrich. I cannot follow you. It seems almost obscene to subject
such obvious conclusions to philosophic inquiry. It’s like analyzing why you feel the sky is blue or
why you love beer or sugar.”
“Ah yes, Alfred, perhaps you’re right.” He recalled Bleuler admonishing him on more than one
occasion: “Young man, psychoanalysis is not a battering ram: we do not just hammer away until
exhausted egos raise tattered white flags of surrender. Patience, patience. Win the patient’s
confidence. Analyze and understand resistance—sooner or later resistance will melt away and the
road to the truth will open up.” Friedrich knew he should drop the topic. But his internal impetuous
demon who had to know could not be stilled.
“Let me make one last point, Alfred. Let’s consider the example of your brother, Eugen. You’d
agree he is deeply intelligent, brought up in the exact culture as you, same heredity, environment,
same relatives surrounding him, and yet he does not invest the Jewish problem with much passion.
He is not German-intoxicated and prefers to think of Belgium as his real home. Fascinating puzzle.
Brothers with the same environment yet such different points of view.”
“We had similar but not identical environments. For one thing, Eugen did not have my bad luck of
encountering a Jew-loving headmaster in the Realschule.”
“What? Headmaster Peterson? Impossible. I knew him well when I attended that school.”
“No, not Peterson. He was on sabbatical my senior year, and his place was taken by Herr Epstein.”
“Wait a minute, Alfred—I’m just beginning to recall Eugen telling me a story about you and Herr
Epstein and some serious trouble you got into just before your graduation. What happened exactly?”
Alfred told Friedrich the entire story—about his anti-Semitic speech, about Epstein’s fury, about
his immersion in Chamberlain, about the forced assignment of reading Goethe’s comments about
Spinoza, and about his promise to read Spinoza.
“Quite a story, Alfred. I’d like to see those chapters in Goethe’s autobiography. Promise that you’ll
point them out to me some day. And tell me this: Did you keep your promise to read Spinoza?”
“I tried again and again but could not get into it. It was such abstruse fluff. And the
incomprehensible definitions and axioms in the beginning were an insurmountable roadblock.”
“Ah, you started with the Ethics. A big mistake. It’s a difficult work to read without a guide. You
should have begun with his simpler The Theological and Political Treatise. Spinoza is a paragon of
logic. I put him up there in my pantheon of Socrates, Aristotle, and Kant. Someday we must meet
again in the Fatherland, and if you wish, I shall help you read the Ethics.”
“As you can imagine, I have highly charged feelings about reading the work of this Jew. Yet the
great Goethe revered him, and I did give my oath to the headmaster to read him. So you could help
me understand Spinoza? Your offer is kind. Even enticing. I shall try to make our paths cross in
Germany, and I look forward to learning about Spinoza from you.”
“Alfred, I must return to my mother, and as you know, I leave tomorrow for Switzerland. But I wish
to say one last thing before we part. I feel in a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand I care about you and
wish only for your welfare, but on the other hand I am burdened with some information that may pain
you but will, I think, ultimately lead you to some truths about yourself.”
“How can I, as a philosopher, refuse to pursue the truth?”
“I expected no less a noble answer from you, Alfred. What I must tell you is that your brother over
the years and even last month has spent hours with me discussing the fact that his mother’s
grandmother—your great-grandmother—was Jewish. He said he once visited her in Russia and that,
even though she had converted to Christianity in childhood, she acknowledged her Jewish forebears.”
Alfred silently glared into the distance.
“Alfred?”
“I deny this. This is a scurrilous rumor that has long hovered about, and I resent your propagating
it. I deny it. My father denies it. My aunts, my mother’s sisters, deny it. My brother is a confused
fool!” Alfred’s face was suffused with anger. Refusing to meet Friedrich’s gaze, he added, “I cannot
imagine why Eugen embraces this lie, why he tells others, and why you tell me.”
“Please, Alfred.” Friedrich lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “First, let me assure you I do not
propagate it. You are the only person I have mentioned this to, and it shall remain that way. You have
my oath, my German oath. As for why I told you—let’s reason it out. I did say to you I had a dilemma:
telling you seemed painful, and yet not telling you seemed worse. How can I pretend to be your friend
and not tell you? Your brother told me this, and it seemed relevant to our discussion. Good friends,
not to mention fellow philosophers, can and should speak of everything. Your resentment to me is
great?”
“I am stunned that you say this to me.”
Friedrich thought of his supervision with Bleuler, who had admonished him many times: “You do
not have to say everything you think, Doctor Pfister. Therapy is not a place for you to feel better by
discharging troublesome thoughts. Learn to hold them. Learn to be a vehicle for unruly thoughts.
Timing is everything.” He turned to Alfred. “Then, perhaps I erred and should have kept it to myself. I
must learn that there are some things that must be left unsaid. Forgive me, Alfred. I told you out of
friendship, out of my belief that your unbridled passion may ultimately be self-destructive. Look how
close you came to being thrown out of the Realschule. Your future education, your degree, your bright
future ahead of you would have all been sacrificed. I wanted to help make sure such events did not
happen in the future.”
Alfred looked far from persuaded. “Let me ponder upon it. And now I know you must be on your
way.”
Taking a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and handing it to Alfred, Friedrich said,
“Should you wish to see me again for any reason—a continuation of any part of our discussion,
guidance for reading Spinoza, anything—here is my current address in Zurich and my contact
information in Berlin, where I shall be after three months. Alfred, I do hope we meet again. Auf
wiedersehen.”
Alfred sat glumly for fifteen minutes. He emptied his stein and stood to leave. He unfolded the
sheet of paper Friedrich had left, stared at Friedrich’s addresses, then ripped it into quarters and
threw it on the floor, and headed out of the beer hall. Just as he reached the exit, however, Alfred
stopped, reconsidered, walked back to his table, and bent down to retrieve the pieces of the torn
page.
==
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AMSTERDAM—1656
About 10 o’clock the following morning the Spinoza brothers were hard at work in their shop, Bento
sweeping and Gabriel opening a newly arrived crate of dried figs. They were interrupted when Franco
and Jacob appeared at the door and stood there hesitating until Franco said, “If your offer is still
open, we would like to continue our discussion. Please, we are available any time that is convenient
for you.”
“I am glad to resume,” Bento said, but turning to Jacob, he asked, “You wish this also, Jacob?”
“I wish only what is best for Franco.”
Bento considered that response for a moment and replied, “Wait one minute, please,” and then,
after a whispered conference with his brother in the back of the shop, Bento announced, “I can be at
your service now. Shall we walk to my house and continue our study of the scriptures?”
The massive Bible was on the table and the chairs in place as if Bento had been expecting them.
“Where shall we begin? We touched on many questions last time.”
“You were going to tell us about Moses not writing the Torah,” said Jacob, speaking in a softer,
more conciliatory manner than the day before.
“I’ve studied the matter for many years and believe that a careful and open-minded reading of the
books of Moses provides much internal evidence that Moses could not possibly have been the
author.”
“Internal evidence? Explain to me,” said Franco.
“There are inconsistencies in the story of Moses; some parts of the Torah contradict other parts,
and many passages don’t hold up to simple logic. I’ll give examples and start with an obvious one
that others before me have noted.
“The Torah not only describes the manner of Moses’ death and burial, and the thirty days’
mourning of the Hebrews, but further compares him with all the prophets who came after him and
states that he surpassed them all. A man obviously cannot write about what happens to him after his
death, nor can he compare himself with other prophets yet to be born. So it’s certain that part of the
Torah cannot have been written by him. Not true?”
Franco nodded. Jacob shrugged.
“Or look here.” Bento opened the Bible to a page marked by a thread and pointed to a passage in
Genesis 22. “You see here that Mount Moriah is called the mount of God. And historians inform us it
acquired that name after the building of the Temple, a great many centuries after the death of Moses.
Look at this passage, Jacob: Moses clearly says that God will at some future time choose a spot to
which this name will be given. So earlier it says one thing and later an opposing thing. You see the
internal contradiction, Franco?”
Both Franco and Jacob nodded.
“May I present another example?” Bento asked, still troubled by Jacob’s outbursts of temper at
their last meeting. Confrontations were always uncomfortable for him, but at the same time he was
thrilled to finally share his thoughts with an audience. He steadied himself; he knew what to do—a
temperate delivery and a presentation of undeniable evidence. “The Hebrews in the time of Moses
indisputably knew what territories belonged to the tribe of Judah but absolutely did not know them
under the name of Argob or the Land of the Giants, as cited in the Bible. In other words, the Torah
uses names that did not come into existence until many centuries after Moses.”
Seeing nods from both, Bento continued. “Similarly, in Genesis. Let’s consider this passage.”
Bento turned to another page marked with a red thread and read the Hebrew passage for Jacob: “and
the Canaanite was then in the land.” Now that passage could not have been written by Moses because
the Canaanite were driven out after the death of Moses. It has to have been written by someone else
looking back upon that time, someone who knew that the Canaanite had been driven out.”
After nods from his audience, Bento went on, “Here’s another obvious problem. Moses is
supposed to be the author, and yet the text not only speaks of Moses in the third person but also
bears witness to many details concerning him; for instance, ‘Moses talked with God’; ‘Moses was the
meekest of men’; and that passage I cited yesterday, ‘The Lord spoke with Moses face to face.’”
“This is what I mean by internal inconsistencies. The Torah is so crammed with them that it is
clearer than the sun at noontime that the books of Moses could not have been written by Moses, and
it is irrational to continue claiming Moses himself was the author. Do you follow my argument?”
Again Franco and Jacob nodded.
“The same can be said for the book of Judges. No one can possibly believe that each judge wrote
the book bearing his name. The way the several books are connected one with the other suggests that
they all have the same author.
“If so, then who wrote it, and when?” asked Jacob.
“The dating is helped by such statements as this”—he turned to a page in Kings for Jacob to
read—“‘In those days there was no king.’ You see the wording, Jacob? That means this passage had
to be written after a kingship was established. My best guess is that a major writer-compiler of the
book of Kings was Ibn Ezra.”
“Who is he?” asked Jacob.
“A priestly scribe who lived in the fifth century BC. He was the one who led five thousand Hebrew
exiles from Babylon back to their home city of Jerusalem.”
“And when was the entire Bible compiled?” asked Franco.
“I think we can be certain that before the time of the Maccabees—that is, around 200 BC—there
was no official collection of sacred books called the Bible. It seems to have been compiled from a
multitude of documents by the Pharisees at the time of the restoration of the Temple. So please keep
in mind that what is holy and what is not holy is merely the collected opinion of some very human
rabbis and scribes, some of whom were serious-minded, blessed men while others may have been
struggling for their own personal status, battling upstarts in their own congregation, getting hunger
pangs, thinking about dinner, and worrying about their wives and children. The Bible was put together
by human hands. There is no other possible explanation for the many inconsistencies. No rational
person could imagine that a divine omniscient author deliberately wrote with the object of
contradicting himself freely.”
Jacob, looking confounded, attempted a parry. “Not necessarily. Are there not learned Kabbalists
who suggest that the Torah contains deliberate errors that contain many hidden secrets and that God
has preserved from corruption every word, indeed every letter, of the Bible?”
Bento nodded. “I have studied the Kabbalists and believe they wish to establish that they alone
possess the secrets of God. I find in their writings nothing that has the air of a divine secret, but
instead only childish lucubrations. I wish us to examine the words of the Torah itself, not the
interpretation of triflers.”
After a brief silence he asked, “Have I now made clear to you my thoughts about the authorship of
the scriptures?”
“That you have,” said Jacob. “Perhaps we should move on to other topics. For example, please
address Franco’s questions about miracles. He asked why the Bible is replete with them and yet there
are none to be seen since then. Tell us your thoughts about miracles.”
“Miracles exist only through man’s ignorance. In ancient times any occurrence that could not be
explained through natural causes was considered a miracle, and the greater the ignorance of the
masses about the workings of Nature, the greater the number of miracles.”
“But there are great miracles that were seen by multitudes: the Red Sea parting for Moses, the sun
staying still for Joshua.”
“‘Seen by multitudes’ is solely a manner of speaking, a way of trying to claim the veracity of
unbelievable events. In the case of miracles I am of the opinion that the larger the multitude that
claimed to have seen it, the less believable is the event.”
“Then how can you explain these unusual events that happen at precisely the right moment, when
the Jewish people were in peril?”
“I’ll start by reminding you of the millions of precisely right moments when miracles do not occur,
when the most pious and righteous of individuals are greatly imperiled, cry out for help, and are
answered only with silence. Franco, you spoke of that at our very first meeting, when you asked where
were the miracles when your father was burned to death. Right?”
“Yes,” Franco agreed softly, glancing at Jacob. “I said that, and I say it again—where were the
miracles when the Portuguese Jews were in peril? Why was God silent?”
“Such questions should be asked,” encouraged Bento. “Let me offer a few further thoughts about
miracles. We must keep in mind that there are always attendant natural circumstances that are
omitted in miracle reporting. For example, Exodus tells us, ‘Moses stretched forth his hand and the
seas returned to their strength . . .’ but later in the song of Moses, we read additional material: ‘Thou
didst blow with thy wind and the sea covered them.’ In other words, some descriptions omit the
natural causes, the winds. Thus, we see that the scriptures narrate them in the order that has the
most power to move men, particularly uneducated men, to devotion.”
“And the sun stood still for Joshua’s great victory? That too was fiction?” asked Jacob, straining to
remain calm.
“That miracle is most wobbly. First, remember that the ancients all believed the sun moved and
the Earth stood still. We know now that it is the Earth that revolves around the sun. That error itself is
evidence of the human hands behind the Bible’s construction. What’s more, the particular form of
the miracle was shaped by political motivations. Was not the sun god worshipped by the enemies of
Joshua? Hence, the miracle is a message trumpeting that the Hebrews’ God was more powerful than
the Gentiles’ God.”
“That is wonderfully explained,” said Franco.
“Don’t believe everything you hear from him, Franco,” said Jacob. “So, Bento,” he asked, “is that
the whole explanation of the miracle in Joshua?”
“That’s only part. The rest of the explanation lies in the idioms of the day. Many so-called miracles
are only manners of expression. It’s the way people talked and wrote in those times. What the writer
of Joshua probably meant when he said the sun stood still was simply that the day of the battle
seemed long. When the Bible states that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it only means that Pharaoh
was obstinate. When it says that God clave the rocks for the Hebrews and water gushed forth, it
merely meant that the Hebrews found springs and quenched their thirst. In the scriptures almost
anything unusual was attributed to an act of God. Even trees of unusual size are called trees of God.”
“And,” Jacob asked, “what about the miracle of the Jews surviving whereas the other nations have
not?”
“I see nothing miraculous in it, nothing that cannot be explained by natural causes. The Jews have
survived since the Diaspora because they have always refused to blend in with other cultures. They
have remained separate by virtue of their complex rites, their dietary rules, and the sign of
circumcision, which they scrupulously observe. Thus they survive, but at a cost: their stubborn
adherence to separateness has drawn down upon them universal hatred.”
Bento paused and, seeing the shocked faces of both Franco and Jacob, said, “Perhaps I give you
indigestion by serving up too many difficult things for you to swallow today?”
“Do not worry about me, Bento Spinoza,” said Jacob. “Surely you know that listening is not the
same as swallowing,”
“I may be mistaken, but I believe you nodded at least thrice to my words. Am I correct?”
“Most of what I hear is arrogance. You believe you know more than countless generations of
rabbis, more than Rashi, Gersonides, more than Maimonides.”
“Yet you nodded.”
“When you show evidence, when you show two statements in Genesis that contradict one another,
that I cannot deny. Yet, even so, I am certain there are explanations for that beyond your knowledge. I
am certain it is you, not the Torah, that is mistaken.”
“Is there no contradiction in your words? On the one hand you respect evidence and at the same
time remain certain of something for which there is no evidence.” Bento turned to Franco. “And you?
You have been unusually silent. Indigestion?”
“No, no indigestion, Baruch—do you mind my calling you by your Hebrew rather than your
Portuguese name? I prefer it. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because you are unlike any Portuguese
man I ever saw. No indigestion—you give me the reverse. What would that be? Soothing, I think.
Stomach soothing. Soul soothing too.”
“I remember how frightened you were during our first talk. You risked so much by sharing your
reaction to rituals in both the synagogue and the cathedral. You referred to them both as madness.
You remember?”
“How could I forget? But to know that I am not alone, to know that others—especially you—share
them. That is a gift that saves my sanity.”
“Franco, your answer gives me the fortitude to go further and teach you more about ritual. I have
reached the conclusion that rituals of our community have nothing to do with divine law, nothing to
do with blessedness and virtue and love, and everything to do with civic tranquility and perpetuation
of rabbinical authority—”
“Once again,” Jacob interrupted, his voice rising, “you go too far. Is there no limit to your
arrogance? A schoolchild knows that the scriptures teach that observation of ritual is the law of God.”
“We disagree. Again, Jacob, I do not ask you to believe me. I appeal to your reason and simply ask
you to look at the words of the Holy Book with your own eyes. There are many places in the Torah
that tell us to follow your heart and not take ritual too seriously. Let us look at Isaiah, who teaches
most plainly that the divine law signifies a true manner of life, not a life of ceremonial observances.
Isaiah plainly tells us to forego sacrifices and feasts and sums up the whole of divine law in these
simple words”—Bento opened the Bible to a bookmark in Isaiah and read—“Cease to do evil, learn to
do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed.”
“So you’re saying that rabbinical law is not the Torah’s law?” asked Franco.
“What I’m saying is that the Torah contains two kinds of law: there is moral law, and there are laws
designed to keep Israel together as a theocracy separate from its neighbors. Unfortunately the
Pharisees, in their ignorance, failed to understand the difference and thought that the observance of
the state laws was the sum total of morality, whereas such laws were merely intended for the welfare
of the community. They were not meant to instruct the Jews but instead to keep them under control.
There is a fundamental difference in the purpose of each of the two kinds of laws: observation of
ceremonial law leads only to civic tranquility, whereas observation of divine or moral law leads to
blessedness.”
“So,” said Jacob, “do I hear correctly? Do you counsel Franco not to heed ceremonial law? Not to
attend the synagogue, not to pray, not to observe Jewish dietary laws?”
“You misunderstand me,” said Bento, drawing on his recently acquired knowledge of the views of
Epicurus. “I do not negate the importance of civic tranquility, but I do differentiate it from true
blessedness.” Bento turned to Franco. “If you love your community, wish to be a part of it, wish to
raise your family here, wish to live among your own, then you must participate agreeably in
community activities, including religious observances.”
Turning back to Jacob, he asked, “Can I be more clear?”
“I hear that you say we should follow ritual law only for the sake of appearances, and that it really
doesn’t count for much because the only thing that matters is this other divine law that you still have
not defined,” said Jacob.
“By divine law, I mean the highest good, the true knowledge of God and love.”
“That’s a vague answer. What is ‘true knowledge’?”
“True knowledge means the perfection of our intellect that permits us to know God more fully.
Jewish communities have penalties for failing to follow ritual law: public criticism by the congregation
and the rabbi or, in extreme instances, banishment or cherem. Is there a penalty for failing to follow
divine law? Yes, but it is not some particular punishment; it is the absence of the good. I love the
words of Solomon, who says, ‘When wisdom enters into your heart and knowledge is pleasant to thy
soul, then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity, yea, every good path.’”
Jacob shook his head. “These high-sounding phrases do not conceal the fact that you are
challenging basic Jewish law. Maimonides himself teaches that those who follow the commandments
of the Torah are rewarded by God with bliss and happiness in the world to come. With my own ears, I
have heard Rabbi Mortera himself emphatically declare anyone who denies the divinity of the Torah
will be cut off from immortal life with God.”
“And I say his phrases—‘the world to come’ and ‘immortal life with God’—are human words, not
divine words. Moreover, these words are not to be found in the Torah; they are the phrases of rabbis
writing commentaries on commentaries.”
“So,” insisted Jacob, “do I hear you deny the existence of the world to come?”
“The world to come, immortal life, blissful afterlife—I repeat, all such phrases are the inventions of
rabbis.”
“You deny,” Jacob persisted, “that the righteous will find everlasting joy and communion with God
and that the evil will be vilified and doomed to eternal punishment?”
“It is against reason to think that we, as we are today, will persist after death. The body and the
mind are two aspects of the same person. The mind cannot persist after the body dies.”
“But,” Jacob spoke loudly, now visibly agitated, “we know the body will be resurrected. All of our
rabbis teach us that. Maimonides stated this clearly. It is one of the thirteen articles of Jewish faith. It
is the ground of our faith.”
“Jacob, I must be a poor guide. I thought I had fully explained the impossibility of such things, yet
now you’re once more wandering into the land of miracles. Again, I remind you these are all human
opinions; they have nothing to do with the laws of Nature, and nothing can occur contrary to the fixed
laws of Nature. Nature, which is infinite and eternal and encompasses all substance in the universe,
acts according to orderly laws that cannot be superseded by supernatural means. A decayed body,
returned to dust, cannot be reassembled. Genesis tells us this most clearly: ‘You will eat your bread
until you return to the earth, from which you were taken, because earth you are and to earth you shall
return.’”
“Does that mean I will never be reunited with my martyred father?” asked Franco.
“I, like you, yearn to see my blessed father again. But the laws of Nature are what they are. Franco, I
share your longing, and when I was a child, I too believed that all time would come to an end and
someday after death we should be reunited—I with my father and my mother, even though I was so
young when she died that I can hardly remember her. And of course they would be reunited with their
parents and they with theirs, ad infinitum.”
“But now,” Bento continued in a soft, teacherly voice, “I have given up these childish hopes and
have replaced them by the certain knowledge that I hold my father inside me—his face, his love, his
wisdom—and in this manner I am already united with him. Blessed reunion must occur in this life
because this life is all we have. There is no eternal blessedness in the world to come because there is
no world to come. Our task, and I believe the Torah teaches us this, is to attain blessedness in this
life now by living a life of love and of learning to know God. True piety consists in justice, charity, and
love of one’s neighbor.”
Jacob stood and gruffly pushed his chair aside. “Enough! I’ve heard enough heresy for one day.
Enough for one lifetime. We’re leaving. Let’s go, Franco.”
As Jacob grabbed Franco’s hand, Bento said, “No, not yet. Jacob, there’s one remaining important
question that, to my surprise, you have neglected to ask.”
Jacob let go of Franco’s arm and looked warily at Bento. “What question?”
“I have told you that Nature is eternal, infinite, and encompasses all substance.”
“Yes?” Jacob’s face was furrowed and quizzical. “What question?”
“And have I not told you that God is eternal, infinite, and encompasses all substance?”
Jacob nodded, entirely bewildered.
“You say you have been listening, you say you have heard enough, but yet you have not asked me
the most fundamental question.”
“What fundamental question?”
“If God and Nature have the identical properties, then what is the difference between God and
Nature?”
“All right,” said Jacob. “I ask you: what is the difference between God and Nature?”
“And I give you the answer you already know: there is no difference. God is Nature. Nature is
God.”
Both Jacob and Franco stared at Bento, and without another word Jacob yanked Franco to his feet
and dragged him into the street.
When out of sight, Jacob put his arm around Franco and squeezed him. “Good, good, Franco, we
got just exactly what we needed out of him. And you regarded him a wise man? What a fool he is!”
Franco yanked himself away from Jacob’s embrace. “Things are not always what they seem to be.
You may be the fool to think him a fool.”
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