A01=Daniel B. Schwartz
Abraham Geiger
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Antisemitism
Antithesis
Apologetics
Atheism
Author_Daniel B. Schwartz
Autobiography
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Baruch Spinoza
Berthold Auerbach
Biblical criticism
Category1=Non-Fiction
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Christianity
Conversion to Judaism
COP=United States
Criticism of religion
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German idealism
Gershom Scholem
God
Haskalah
Hebrew language
Heresy
Historical fiction
Immanence
Intellectual history
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Jewish culture
Jewish history
Jewish identity
Jewish literature
Jewish mysticism
Jewish philosophy
Jewish secularism
Jewish studies
Jews
Jonathan Israel
Judaism
Kabbalah
Language_English
Leo Strauss
Liberal Judaism (United Kingdom)
Literature
Maimonides
Marrano
Modernity
Moses Hess
Moses Mendelssohn
Orthodox Judaism
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Pantheism
Philosopher
Philosophy
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Rabbinic Judaism
Reappropriation
Rebuttal
Reform Judaism
Religion
Secularism
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Sephardi Jews
Shtetl
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Spinozism
Steven Nadler
Theism
Theology
Treatise
Uriel da Costa
V.
Wissenschaft des Judentums
Writing
Yeshiva
Yiddish
YIVO
Zionism
Product details
- ISBN 9780691162140
- Weight: 425g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2013
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist.
Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.
Daniel B. Schwartz is assistant professor of history at George Washington University.
