David Patterson, Anti-Semitism
and Its Metaphysical Origins [Cambridge University Press, 2015 – books.google]
Heeft één passage over Spinoza, op p. 228 in hoofdstuk 8, getiteld: “Jewish Jew Hatred,“ die ik hier meteen meeneem (zonder de verwijzingen):
In modern times "the
first of the great modern anti-Semites of the rationalist school," as
Edward Flannery* puts it, "was himself a Jew, Baruch Spinoza [1632-1677],"
who "discarded traditional Judaism as a gross superstition and believing
Jews as worshipers of a God of hate." Indeed, Emmanuel Levinas observes
that "Spinoza is the first messenger of the death of a God bearing the
well-known resemblance to man spoken of in Genesis." Thus, with the onset
of the Enlightenment heralded by the likes of Spinoza, there came a new form of
the conversion phenomenon in the secularization of the Jew and in the
liberalization of Judaism, both of which issued largely from the German Idealism
of the Enlightenment. Fackenheim refers to this turnabout among the
"enlightened" Jews as an "empty abstraction" that
"mistakes Jews for members of the Kant-Gesellschaft.”
He registers a complaint concerning this abandonment of traditional Judaism on
the part of these Jews who bartered the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for
the God Idea of Idealism:
Jewish
prayer, once between a
"subjective" self and an "objective" God, is viewed as the
self's disport with its own feelings, conducive to aesthetic or therapeutic
benefit. Halakhah, once a way walked before
God, is reduced to "custom and ceremony," performed for the sake
of warm emotions within or wholesome relations without. Judaism, once a
covenant involving a singling-out God and a singled-out Israel, is seen as a
man-made civilization, created by Jewish genius in its human solitariness. And
the human person, who once believed he actually
mattered to God, is now engineered into the mere feeling that he matters, on the ground that such feelings banish anxiety
and alienation." [citaat uit Emil L. Fackenheim, ]
Of course, the result is just
the opposite: the more Jews have tried to "fit in" socially and
culturally, the more alienated and anxiety-ridden they have become. For no one
matters to the idea of God.
