Baruch Spinoza was an externally quiet but internally disturbed youth who in 1656 was summoned before the elders of the synagogue on the charge of heresy. Was it true , they asked him, that he had said to his friends that God might have a body--the world of matter; that angels might be hallucinations; that the soul might be merely life; and that the Old Testament said nothing of immortality? Spinoza was offered an annuity of $500 if he would retract his views and exhibit loyalty to his synagogue and his faith. He refused the offer and on July 27, 1656, he was excommunicated. Leon Van Vloten has given us the formula for the "Cherem" visited upon Spinoza:
With the judgment of the angels and the sentence of the saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse and cast out Baruch de Espinoza, the whole of the sacred community assenting, in presence of the sacred books with the six hundred-and-thirteen precepts written therein, pronouncing against him the malediction wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law. Let him be accursed by day, and accursed by night; let him be accursed in his lying down, and accursed in his rising up; accursed in going out and accursed in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the curses written in the Book of Law, and blot out his name from under the sky; may the Lord sever him from evil from all the tribes of Israel, weight him with all the malediction of the firmament contained in the Book of Law; and may all ye who are obedient to the Lord your God be saved this day.
Hereby then are all admonished that none hold converse with him by word of mouth, none hold communication with him by writing; that no one do him any service, no one abide under the same roof with him, no one approach him within four cubits length of him, and no one read any document dictated by him, or written by his hand.
But fate has written that Spinoza would belong to the World.
2 comments:
Does Judaism still do "cherem"? I never heard of it before.
Cherem (pronounced with the guttural CH, like CHannukah, not "ch" as in "cherries") would not have much effect these days, except, perhaps in the chasid movement -- where I believe they use it on very rare occasions.
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