What Spinoza got right – and wrong
From our UK edition
The scrupulously maintained traditions of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London, where I worship, still forbid the rabbi from pronouncing the name ‘Spinoza’ from the pulpit. London, as the sister Jewish community of Amsterdam, inherited the same customs, and in both congregations, Baruch Spinoza continues to be regarded with a lingering sense of abhorrence on account of the herem, or excommunication, pronounced against him in 1656. In secularist philosophy, that excommunication has acquired an almost mythical status. Along with the trial of Galileo and the excesses of the Inquisition, it is often seen as one of the great episodes in the battle to emancipate western thought from religious obscurantism and intolerance.
