AMSTERDAM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Manasseh ben Israel.--Baruch Spinoza.--The Drama in
Hebrew.--Moses Zacut, Joseph Felix Penso, Moses Chayim
Luzzatto.
Holland was the centre of Jewish hope in the seventeenth century, and
among its tolerant and cultivated people the Marranos, exiled from Spain
and Portugal, founded a new Jerusalem. Two writers of Marrano origin,
wide as the poles asunder in gifts of mind and character, represented
two aspects of the aspiration of the Jews towards a place in the wider
world. Manasseh ben Israel (1604-1657) was an enthusiast who based his
ambitious hopes on the Messianic prophecies; Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
lacked enthusiasm, had little belief in the verbal promises of
Scripture, yet developed a system of ethics in which God filled the
world. Manasseh ben Israel regained for the Jews admission to England;
Spinoza reclaimed the right of a Jew to a voice in the philosophy of the
world. Both were political thinkers who maintained the full rights of
the individual conscience, and though the arguments used vary
considerably, yet Manasseh ben Israel's splendid _Vindiciæ Judeorum_ and
Spinoza's "Tractate" alike insist on the natural right of men to think
freely. They anticipated some of the greatest principles that won
acceptance at the end of the eighteenth century.
Manasseh ben Israel was born in Lisbon of Marrano parents, who emigrated
to Amsterdam a few years after their son's birth. He displayed a
youthful talent for oratory, and was a noted preacher in his teens. He
started the first Hebrew printing-press established in Amsterdam, and
from it issued many works still remarkable for the excellence of their
type and general workmanship. Manasseh was himself, not only a
distinguished linguist, but a popularizer of linguistic studies. He
wrote well in Hebrew, Latin, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and was
the means of instructing many famous Christians of the day in Hebrew and
Rabbinic. Among his personal friends were Vossius, who translated
Manasseh's "Conciliator" from Spanish into Latin. This, the most
important of Manasseh's early writings, was as popular with Christians
as with Jews, for it attempted to reconcile the discrepancies and
contradictions apparent in the Bible. Another of his friends was the
painter Rembrandt, who, in 1636, etched the portrait of Manasseh. Huet
and Grotius were also among the friends and disciples who gathered round
the Amsterdam Rabbi.
An unexpected result of Manasseh ben Israel's zeal for the promotion of
Hebrew studies among his own brethren was the rise of a new form of
poetical literature. The first dramas in Hebrew belong to this period.
Moses Zacut and Joseph Felix Penso wrote Hebrew dramas in the first half
of the seventeenth century in Amsterdam. The "Foundation of the World"
by the former and the "Captives of Hope" by the latter possess little
poetical merit, but they are interesting signs of the desire of Jews to
use Hebrew for all forms of literary art. Hence these dramas were hailed
as tokens of Jewish revival. Strangely enough, the only great writer of
Hebrew plays, Moses Chayim Luzzatto (1707-1747), was also resident in
Amsterdam. Luzzatto wrote under the influence of the Italian poet
Guarini. His metres, his long soliloquies, his lyrics, his dovetailing
of rural and urban scenery, are all directly traceable to Guarini.
Luzzatto was nevertheless an original poet. His mastery of Hebrew was
complete, and his rich fancy was expressed in glowing lines. His dramas,
"Samson," the "Strong Tower," and "Glory to the Virtuous," show
classical refinement and freshness of touch, which have made them the
models of all subsequent efforts of Hebrew dramatists.
Manasseh ben Israel did not allow himself to become absorbed in the
wider interests opened out to him by his intimacy with the greatest
Christian scholars of his day. He prepared a Spanish translation of the
Pentateuch for the Amsterdam Jews, who were slow to adopt Dutch as their
speech, a fact not wonderful when it is remembered that literary Dutch
was only then forming. Manasseh also wrote at this period a Hebrew
treatise on immortality. His worldly prosperity was small, and he even
thought of emigrating to Brazil. But the friends of the scholar found a
post for him in a new college for the study of Hebrew, a college to
which it is probable that Spinoza betook himself. In the meantime the
reports of Montesinos as to the presence of the Lost Ten Tribes in
America turned the current of Manasseh's life. In 1650 he wrote his
famous essay, the "Hope of Israel," which he dedicated to the English
Parliament. He argued that, as a preliminary to the restoration of
Israel, or the millennium, for which the English Puritans were eagerly
looking, the dispersion of Israel must be complete. The hopes of the
millennium were doomed to disappointment unless the Jews were readmitted
to England, "the isle of the Northern Sea." His dedication met with a
friendly reception, Manasseh set out for England in 1655, and obtained
from Cromwell a qualified consent to the resettlement of the Jews in the
land from which they had been expelled in 1290.
The pamphlets which Manasseh published in England deserve a high place
in literature and in the history of modern thought. They are
immeasurably superior to his other works, which are eloquent but
diffuse, learned but involved. But in his _Vindiciæ Judeorum_ (1656)
his style and thought are clear, original, elevated. There are here no
mystic irrelevancies. His remarks are to the point, sweetly reasonable,
forcible, moderate. He grapples with the medieval prejudices against the
Jews in a manner which places his works among the best political
pamphlets ever written. Morally, too, his manner is noteworthy. He
pleads for Judaism in a spirit equally removed from arrogance and
self-abasement. He is dignified in his persuasiveness. He appeals to a
sense of justice rather than mercy, yet he writes as one who knows that
justice is the rarest and highest quality of human nature; as one who
knows that humbly to express gratitude for justice received is to do
reverence to the noblest faculty of man.
Fate rather than disposition tore Manasseh from his study to plead
before the English Parliament. Baruch Spinoza was spared such
distraction. Into his self-contained life the affairs of the world
could effect no entry. It is not quite certain whether Spinoza was born
in Amsterdam. He must, at all events, have come there in his early
youth. He may have been a pupil of Manasseh, but his mind was nurtured
on the philosophical treatises of Maimonides and Crescas. His thought
became sceptical, and though he was "intoxicated with a sense of God,"
he had no love for any positive religion. He learned Latin, and found
new avenues opened to him in the writings of Descartes. His associations
with the representatives of the Cartesian philosophy and his own
indifference to ceremonial observances brought him into collision with
the Synagogue, and, in 1656, during the absence of Manasseh in England,
Spinoza was excommunicated by the Amsterdam Rabbis. Spinoza was too
strong to seek the weak revenge of an abjuration of Judaism. He went on
quietly earning a living as a maker of lenses; he refused a
professorship, preferring, like Maimonides before him, to rely on other
than literary pursuits as a means of livelihood.
In 1670 Spinoza finished his "Theologico-Political Tractate," in which
some bitterness against the Synagogue is apparent. His attack on the
Bible is crude, but the fundamental principles of modern criticism are
here anticipated. The main importance of the "Tractate" lay in the
doctrine that the state has full rights over the individual, except in
relation to freedom of thought and free expression of thought. These are
rights which no human being can alienate to the state. Of Spinoza's
greatest work, the "Ethics," it need only be said that it was one of the
most stimulating works of modern times. A child of Judaism and of
Cartesianism, Spinoza won a front place among the great teachers of
mankind.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANASSEH BEN ISRAEL.
Graetz.--V, 2.
H. Adler.--_Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of
England_, Vol. I, p. 25.
Kayserling.--_Miscellany of the Society of Hebrew Literature_,
Vol. I.
Lady Magnus.--_Jewish Portraits_, p. 109.
English translations of works, _Vindiciæ Judeorum_, _Hope of Israel_,
_The Conciliator_ (E.H. Lindo, 1841, etc.).
SPINOZA.
Graetz.--V, 4.
J. Freudenthal.--_History of Spinozism_, _J.Q.R._, VIII, p. 17.
HEBREW DRAMAS.
Karpeles.--_Jewish Literature and other Essays_, p. 229.
Abrahams.--_Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_, ch. 14.
Graetz,--V, pp, 112 [119], 234 [247].