19 Jan
Uriel da Costa: A Jewish Tragedy for the Ages
California — Whenever I read the Lubavitcher website, it seems as if we are reliving history. The Lubavitcher lynching of Shmuley Boteach reminds me of how the 17th century Dutch Jewish community treated one of its heretical spirits and his name was Uriel da Costa (1585-1640).
Uriel was born in Portugal to a family of conversos (people who were forcibly converted to Catholicism) in the 16th century. After studying at Coimbra, he became interested in Judaism. His family fled Portugal and settled in Amsterdam, where he had hoped the Jewish community would welcome his return.
Or, so he hoped . . .
Uriel found the practices of rabbinic Judaism too rigid and mechanical as well as at odds with the ethical message of Tanakh. In 1624, he published one of his controversial books, Examination of the Traditions of the Pharisees Compared with the Written Law, which created shockwaves throughout the Amsterdam Jewish and Christian community.
Dutch officials burned Uriel’s controversial book, and he was fined for undermining the foundations of religious faith. Although the Dutch people were reasonably tolerant toward the Jews, the Jewish community feared Uriel might endanger their welfare, so the Jewish community decided to excommunicate Uriel da Costa. Using him as a scapegoat meant the Jews of Amsterdam could remain in safety.
Uriel was expendable.
Although Uriel felt strong about his religious principles, he finally decided to acquiesce to the Orthodox Jewish authorities of his time. If his readmission meant that he would, “become an ape, to live among apes,” he would do so, “Monkey see, monkey do.”
* Shades of Nancy Sinatra!
However, Uriel soon became disillusioned with Mosaic Law altogether, and felt that all religions were “human inventions.” By 1640, the Jewish community decided to discipline Uriel. They gave him 39 lashes in the synagogue. They placed a large door over him, and the Jewish community literally walked over him, treating him as though he was dead.
Little did the community realize that he would soon be.
After he returned home, he wrote his autobiography and committed suicide.
Uriel da Costa is a tragic story about how the Jewish community alienated one of its rebellious spirits. Young Benedict de Spinoza made sure that when he wrote his famous philosophical works, he instructed his followers to publish them posthumously.
Had there been a JTS or a Hebrew Union College in Amsterdam, both of these men would have found a home for their idiosyncratic ideas of theology. Unfortunately, they lived in a rather draconian period of Jewish history, a time when people preferred to burn books and ideas, rather than confront them with better ideas.
When I read about the Chabad reactions to Shmuley Boteach’s controversial, Kosher Jesus, I shudder to think what the Jews of Crown Heights would do if they were living in the 17th century. Although they cannot “walk over him,” as they literally did with Uriel da Costa, they are verbally dismembering him before the entire Jewish and Christian world to watch in disbelief.
Shmuley Boteach deserves a better fate than Uriel da Costa.
Posted by admin on 19.01.12 at 9:26 am
Dear Yidel,
Nobody has ever called me a “liberal” before . . . Ha!
The vast majority of Haredim support their cohorts extremist behavior and relatively few have condemned it. Get your self a Jastrow, look up, Sthika k’ho’da’ah dame-your silence and the silence of your Meshichist friends indicates approval.
My problem is not with the Shulchan Aruch, it is with people like you who misinterpret the Shulchan Aruch. You remind me of someone who confuses the recipe for a meal with the actual meal itself. You can starve to death eating a cookbook. All texts need to be critically reinterpreted and that does not make one an Apikurus. In fact, I would like to know what you mean by that term. I realize you probably can’t understand some of these sophisticated concepts. The frum world has a real problem, and you would much rather stick your head in the ground, or in some other dark cavernous place that doesn’t get much sunshine.
BTW, on the Ethiopian Jew story, Rabbi Schnersohn was the only prominent rabbinic leader to openly discourage the rescue effort. Schnersohn could not touch the bootstraps of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, or even R. Ovadia Yosef — Nobody outside of Chabad considers the Rebbe the Gadol of his generation.
Re/ the Kfar Chabad confiscation, the administration confiscated books on biblical archaeology that were written by Orthodox scholars. You and your ilk behave like true troglodytes.
Re/ NT, I have read the NT in Greek, and many modern Jewish (Orthodox, I might add) do not share Rabbi Shochet’s point of view. While I am not crazy about Boteach’s cover or title, the book does not really provide any new groundbreaking ideas that have not been mentioned before.
Wishing you the blessings of the Czar,
RMLS
Posted by admin on 19.01.12 at 9:26 am
We no longer accept Haredi trolls or Meshichas trolls from chabad.
We are troll free!