zutot �3 (�0�6) �6-39 ZUTOT: Perspectives on Jewish Culture brill.com/zuto brill.com/zuto On the Burial of Spinoza’s Grandfather and Grandmother Yosef Kaplan The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Abstract Spinoza’s grandparents were Portuguese New Christians who continued living part of their time in Antwerp, even after coming to Amsterdam in 1605. They didn’t affiliate with any of the Sephardic congregations. When Henrique Garcês, Spinoza’s grandfather, died in 1619, he was buried outside the fence of the cemetery, and circumcised after death. He was then given his Jewish name Baruch Senior. His wife wanted to be buried next to him, but the parnasim decided to bury her in another place. Spinoza must have heard about this story, and his contempt about the ceremony of circumcision, as expressed in his TTP, was probably influenced by his family experience. Keywords Jewish history – Portuguese Jews – circumcision – Spinoza – Amsterdam – Antwerp Baruch Senior was buried on 13 March 1619 in Ouderkerk, in the cemetery of the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam.1 Among the Portuguese merchants of Antwerp he was known by his original name,2 Henrique Garcês, * The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (EP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 295352. 1 On the history of this cemetery, see L. Hagoort, Het Beth Haim in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. De begraafplaats van de Portugese Joden in Amsterdam 1614–1945 (Hilversum 2005). 2 See I.S. Révah, ‘Pour l’histoire des Marranes à Anvers: recensements de la “Nation Portugaise” de 1571 à 1666’, Revue des études juives 122 (1963) 143. He is mentioned the thirty-fifth place in the list of 5 January 1611, which includes the names of seventy-five members of ‘the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�8750��4-��34��8� on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 27 and this is the name under which he appears, until the very time of his burial, in the few documents of the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam in which he is mentioned.3 He reached Amsterdam in 1605, and on 17 June, along with Maria Nunes, he appeared before the municipal authorities to announce their intention of marrying, as was required by law. He was thirty-seven, a native of Porto, Portugal, and the bride, who was from Ponte de Lima, was twenty-eight.4 They eventually had four children: three sons, Jacob, Joshua, and David, and a daughter, Hannah Deborah.5 Around 1628 this daughter married the widower, Michael d’Espinoza, whose first wife, Rachel, had died on 27 February 1627.6 From the marriage of Michael and Hannah Deborah was born Baruch Spinoza in 1632. Hence, Henrique Garcês and Maria Nunes were his maternal grandparents. 3 4 5 6 Portuguese nation’, who lived in Antwerp. He appears under the name Henriq Garsi. Révah identifies him as Henrique Garcês. The family name Garcês appears in documents connected to the Portuguese in Antwerp as early as the 1530s and 1540s. In 1631 a young and disappointed New Christian, who returned to Italy from Salonika, informed on members of his family who had left the southern Netherlands in order to become Jews, with the help of some of the wealthy merchants of Antwerp. The young man was sent to Bruges, and there he testified before Fra Diego de San Pedro, the father confessor of Emperor Charles V. A young man named Loys Garces appeared in 1540, again before Fra Diego, and described a similar story, and in general he appears to have been the same young man. See A. de Leone Leoni, The Hebrew Portuguese Nations in Antwerp and London at the Time of Charles V and Henry VIII. New Documents and Interpretations (Jersey City, NJ 2011) 19, 143–146; and cf. I. Prins, De vestiging der Marranen in Noord-Nederland in de XVI de eeuw (Amsterdam 1927) 56–57, 76–78; and see also V. Christman, ‘Trade in Tolerance: The Portuguese New Christians of Antwerp, 1530–50’, in T.G. Fehler et al., eds, Religious Diaspora in Early Modern Europe (London 2014) 10; idem, Pragmatic Toleration: The Politics of Religious Heterodoxy in Early Reformation Antwerp 1515–1555 (Rochester, NY 2015) 110–112, 118–119, 200 n. 28, 201 n. 33, 209 n. 81. Livro de Bet Haim do Kahal Kados de Bet Yahacob. Original Text. Introduction, notes and index by W.C. Pieterse (Assen 1970) 26, 31, 39. See Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Doop, Trouw, en Begrafenisregisters [henceforth: SAA DTB], no. 665/414. From the work of H.P. Salomon, Os Primeiros Portugueses de Amesterdão (Braga 1983), on the first Portuguese settlers in Amsterdam, it appears that Henrique Garcês was the son of Francisco Bemtalhado and Violante Gomes from the city of Porto, and the brother of the physician, Manuel Francisco, also from Porto. See Salomon, Os Primeiros Portugueses, 49. Salomon conjectures that he might have been the nephew of a different Henrique Garcês, who emigrated to Peru and translated Petrarch and Os Lusíadas into Spanish. He died in 1596. See M. Gullan-Whur, Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (London 1998) 6. Gullan-Whur did not mention David Senior, who was born in Amsterdam in 1611 and married Ester Rodrigues Portalegre in 1638. See SAA DTB no. 675/15. See Livro de Bet Haim, 65. Rachel was the cousin of her husband Michael, and the daughter of Abraham d’Espinoza; see S. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge 1999) 27–41, and esp. 31–32. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 28 kaplan When they had reported their intention to marry to the Amsterdam municipality, twenty-seven years before the birth of their famous grandson, they were accompanied by the bride’s parents, Duarte Fernandes and his wife Isabel Nunes. Duarte Fernandes, Spinoza’s great-grandfather, was also born in Porto in 1541, and in 1599 he arrived in Amsterdam with his wife, with their only daughter, and apparently, with six of their sons.7 It appears that he was Henrique Garcês’s uncle, his mother’s brother.8 Fernandes, who took the Jewish name Joshua Habilho, was a very active international trader and a prominent leader of Portuguese Jewry in Amsterdam in its embryonic stages.9 He was one of the founders of Neveh Shalom, the second Portuguese congregation in the city. In 1612 he joined a group of Portuguese Jews who wished to build a synagogue in Amsterdam for the first time, but this initiative was nipped in the bud, blocked by Calvinist opponents.10 In 1615 he was among the founders of the Santa Companhia de dotar orphas e donzellas, a confraternity which provided dowries for poor and orphaned girls.11 His active involvement in the Jewish life of the city did not prevent him from maintaining close and secret ties with the Spanish authorities in Brussels. He traveled to Antwerp frequently and was a prominent member of a group of Portuguese Jewish and New Christian merchants who conveyed sensitive information to the Spanish, serving the strategic and economic interests of the Spanish crown, both before and after the armistice between the Dutch Republic and Spain in 1609–1621.12 Along with 7 8 9 10 11 12 See Salomon, Os Primeiros Portugueses, 17, 18, 19, 21, 37, 38, 39, 49; W.C. Pieterse, Daniel Levi de Barrios als geschiedschrijver van de Portugees-Israelietische Gemeente te Amsterdam in zijn ‘Triumpho del Govierno Popular’ (Amsterdam 1968) 45, 56. This detail is revealed in the testimony of Paulo Garcês, Henrique’s younger brother, before the Inquisition tribunal in Lisbon in 1620. See n. 28 below. On him see E.M. Koen, ‘Duarte Fernandes, koopman van de Portugese natie te Amsterdam’, Studia Rosenthaliana 2 (1968) 178–192; D.M. Swetchinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (London/Portland/Oregon 2000) 108, 112. E.M. Koen, ‘Waar en voor wie werd de synagogue van 1612 gebouwd?’, Maandblad Amstelodamum 57 (1970) 209–212. On this confraternity see I.S. Révah, ‘Le Premier Règlement imprimé de la “Santa Companhia de Dotar Orfans e Donzelas Pobres” ’, Boletim Internacional de Bibliografia Luso-Brasileira 4 (1963) 650–691; M. Bodian, ‘The Portuguese Dowry Societies in Venice and Amsterdam: A Case Study in Communal Differentiation within the Marrano Diaspora, Italia 6 (1987) 30–61; T. Levie Bernfeld, Dowries and Dotar: An Unbroken Chain of 400 Years (Amsterdam 2015). On his connections with the Spanish authorities in Brussels, see J.I. Israel, Diasporas Within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 29 about a quarter of the Portuguese Jewish merchants of Amsterdam, he left for Hamburg in 1620 where he died in 1623.13 As noted, Henrique Garcês married in Amsterdam in 1605, but his marriage did not lead him to settle permanently in the city. Even after he established a family, he continued to travel to Antwerp and also lived there intermittently; his wife accompanied him on at least some of his trips. From the extant documents it appears that his sojourns in the southern Netherlands were coordinated with Duarte Fernandes and served the commercial interests of his wealthy fatherin-law. Some information about the activities of Henrique Garcês in those years has been brought to light by the fascinating research of Mercedes GarcíaArenal and Gerard Wiegers. They described a lawsuit brought against Garcês in Brussels in 1610 by Isaac Pallache, the nephew of Samuel Pallache, who served as the commercial and diplomatic agent of Muley Zaydan, the sultan of Morocco.14 Isaac Pallache, a man of mercurial temperament (he converted to Calvinism in 1633, but was suspected of still remaining affiliated with Judaism afterward),15 accused Garcês before the authorities in Brussels of stealing jewels, which supposedly had been entrusted to him by Joseph Pallache, Isaac’s father and Samuel’s brother. In addition, he claimed that Garcês had collaborated with the sultan of Morocco, showing disloyalty to the Christian faith and to the king of Spain.16 He also reported on his visits to Holland and his ties with the Jews of Amsterdam, including his uncle Samuel Pallache, and he accused the Portuguese residents of Antwerp of disloyalty to the Catholic religion, of opportunism, and of willingness to join their coreligionists in Amsterdam.17 Isaac Pallache reported that Garcês’s wife, Maria Nunes, was born in Lisbon, was baptized at the age of eight days, but her parents took her to Venice with 13 14 15 16 17 2002) 81, 87, 93, 95, 161, 196–197, 205–208; idem, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic world 1606–1661 (Oxford 1982) 16. M. Studemund-Halévy, Biographisches Lexikon der Hamburger Sefarden (Hamburg 2000) 458–459. On the Pallache family see M. García-Arenal and G. Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Morroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe, (Baltimore/London 1999). The Spanish edition is expanded and includes appendices with documents in Spanish. See M. García-Arenal and G. Wiegers, Un hombre en tres mundos. Samuel Pallache, un judío marroquí en la Europa protestante y en la católica (Madrid 2006). García-Arenal and Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds, 121, 123–125. On the trial see ibid., 64–71. Below we will quote from the expanded Spanish edition (above n. 15), 109–114 and Appendices xii and xiii, 223–228. García-Arenal and Wiegers, Un hombre en tres mundos, 110. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 30 kaplan them, and there they all adopted the Jewish religion.18 João Mendes Henriques, Garcês’s nephew, also one of the Portuguese residents of Antwerp at that time, defended him against Pallache’s accusations.19 He sought to refute Pallache’s charge of betrayal against Garcês and presented him as a ‘Catholic Christian man’, who was not to be suspected of collaboration with Jews or Berbers, because they would not place their trust in him.20 In the course of the trial, Garcês was forced to admit that he had been to Amsterdam and met Samuel Pallache, the Jewish ambassador of the Sultan of Morocco, but he had done it solely out of curiosity and courtesy.21 At a certain stage, when it was clear to him that his accusers knew about a letter he had sent to Samuel Pallache, whom he had addressed under the false name of ‘Manuel Díaz’, Garcês began to show signs of confusion. Upon recovering his wits, he explained to his accusers that he had disguised the addressee of his letter under a false name in order to conceal his connections with the Jews.22 As for the claim that he had stolen the jewels, according to him, they had been given to him by his father-in-law, Duarte Fernandes, so that he could sell them in Antwerp, but when he was unable to do so, he had returned them to Amsterdam.23 Henrique Garcês seems to have emerged unscathed from the lawsuit against him. He continued to live in Antwerp, as we know from his inclusion among the seventy-five members of the Portuguese nation who gathered on 18 19 20 21 22 23 Ibid., ‘Afirma que Garces está casado con una mujer (la hija de Duarte Fernández) que fue nacida en Lisboa y bautizada a los ocho días y luego se marchó con sus padres a Venecia donde tomaron todos profesión y nombre de judíos’. He appears on the list of members of the Portuguese nation in Antwerp of 1611, mentioned in n. 3 above. And see Révah, ‘Pour l’histoire de Marranes à Anvers’, 142: no. 55: Johan Mendes Henriques. García-Arenal and Wiegers, Un hombre en tres mundos, 111: ‘los dichos judíos e ynfieles Bárbaros no le uviesen querido fiar en negocio de tanta importancia como se pretende a un hombre católico y cristiano como es el dicho Henrique Garcés’. Ibid., 227: ‘que no auria visto al dicho Embaxador, sino por curiosidad como muchos otros, y que venido de camino con el dicho Samuel d’Amsterdam hasta La Haya, le auia prometido mandarle nuebas de su buena llegada en Anueres, de que dezia mas que susodicha carta escrita a él [. . .] no contenia que términos de cortesía y otros semejantes’. Ibid., 226: ‘Y confessaua el dicho Henrique Garcez, que la carta escrita por el yntitulada a Emanuel Dias fue a Samuel Pallache y que hablo en aquella d’algun particular [. . .] dixo auerlo hecho tan solamente, porque era y es judyo, y por no ser a tanto conoscido, que tenia alguna comunicación con el, bien que sobre el dicho interrogatorio s’altero mucho, mudando de color’. Ibid., 111. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 31 5 January 1611, to choose their consuls.24 Nor did his connections with the Pallache family suffer, as Isaac Pallache, who had sued him in Brussels, quarreled with the rest of his family as well and was shunned by them.25 Most likely Henrique Garcês continued to be involved in the business of his father-in-law, Duarte Fernandes, in the following years. Retroactive evidence of this can be found in an affidavit he signed before a notary in Amsterdam on 11 June 1617, more than a year after Samuel Pallache’s death. Other Portuguese Jewish merchants also signed this document, chief among them being Duarte Fernandes, confirming the loss of Samuel Pallache’s property a short time after his arrival in Holland in 1608, because pirates robbed the cargo of a ship he had chartered. This affidavit was intended to clear Pallache’s name and those of his relatives against accusations of corruption that had been raised against them at that time.26 The business connections between Garcês’s and Samuel Pallache’s families are described in an unexpected source, the testimony given by Paulo Garcês, Henrique’s brother. Paulo appeared before the Inquisition in Lisbon of his own free will and on his own initiative in April 1620 and professed his desire to be taken into the bosom of the Catholic church. He was born in Porto but was many years younger than Henrique. His testimony before the tribunal in Lisbon reveals that his mother had sent him to Amsterdam when he was six years old, and there he grew up in the home of his uncle, Duarte Fernandes. It appears that he reached Amsterdam before his brother Henrique and was circumcised shortly after his arrival by Rabbi Joseph Pardo, taking the name of Abraham. He received a Jewish education in the community school, where he studied with Rabbi Joseph Cohen. Because of his command of Dutch, his uncle Duarte Fernandes placed him as an assistant and translator for Samuel Pallache. At the age of twelve, he accompanied Pallache on journeys to Safi, Mogador, and Agadir, and it appears that he had also been to Hamburg and London, apparently in the service of his wealthy uncle.27 Unlike his brother Abraham (Paulo), it appears that Henrique never quite fit in with the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, for he did not join either of the two congregations that were active in the city at the time. There is explicit 24 25 26 27 See n. 3 above. On his activity as an importer of sugar see H. Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen (1567–1648). Zur Geschichte einer Minderheit (Wiesbaden 1977) 162. García-Arenal and Wiegers, Un hombre en tres mundos, 112. See E.M. Koen, ‘Notarial Records Relating to the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam up to 1639’, Studia Rosenthaliana 11 (1977) 95, no. 1184. My presentation of this material is based on the summary of his testimony in Lisbon, as cited in García-Arenal and Wiegers, Un hombre en tres mundos, 112–114. The file is in Lisbon, in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, no. 3292. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 32 kaplan evidence of this in the register of the cemetery that served the Beth Yaacov and Neveh Shalom congregations. In the financial records for 1616 it is written that Manuel Mendes Cardozo and Henrique Garcês together paid fifty-two guilders for their families; most probably each of them paid half the sum. According to the bylaws, every Portuguese Jew who arrived in the city had to make a special payment for the right to be buried in the cemetery.28 In the register it is explicitly stated that the sum was demanded from them by ‘the administrators of the two congregations, because they do not belong to either of them’.29 Garcês’s status was exceptional: on the one hand, he felt the need to assure himself a burial in the cemetery of his fellow Jews, but on the other hand he did not see fit to join any of the congregations in the city. He preferred living on the margins of Portuguese Jewry, to move freely on the route between Antwerp and Amsterdam, and to spend extended periods of time in the southern Netherlands under Spanish rule, in the guise of a Catholic. When Henrique Garcês passed away, about three years after paying the cemetery dues, he was indeed buried there. But his burial was not at all routine. In the cemetery register it appears that not only had he lived on the margins of the Portuguese community, but he also remained uncircumcised! From the register we learn that ‘on March 13, [1619], Baruk Senjori, also known as Henrique Graces (sic) (was buried next to the uncircumcised son of Lobato), and he was circumcised after his death’.30 At that time in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Western Sephardic communities, there were quite a few Portuguese immigrants who arrived from Spain and Portugal and were in no rush to adopt Judaism. Some of them had strong Christian convictions and refused to part from the religion they had grown up in, and some of them feared that circumcision would make it hard for them to travel to the Iberian peninsula, for fear that they might fall into the hands of the Inquisition, and their lives would be in danger.31 We cannot know for certain what the motives were for Henrique Garcês’s decisions, since many members of his family lived openly as Jews in Amsterdam at that time. 28 29 30 31 Livro de Bet Haim (see above, n. 4) 5, article 7. Ibid., 26: ‘Florins sinquenta que val a finta da caza de Manuel Mendes Cardozo, de Henrrique Garces que foram fintados por os administradores de ambas kejlot por não serem de nenhũ’. See also ibid, 31. Ibid., 93: ‘Em 13 de Março se enterrou Baruk Senjori pro outro nome Henriqe Graces ( junto ao filho incircunciso do Lobato) ao coal circuncidarão despois de morto’. Y. Kaplan, ‘Wayward New Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity’, Jewish History 8 (1994) 27–41; idem, ‘Attitudes towards Circumcision among Early Modern Western Sephardim’, in J. Hacker, Y. Kaplan and B. Kedar, eds, From Sages to Savants. Studies Presented to Avraham Grossman [Heb.] (Jerusalem 2009) 355–392. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 33 Not only his wealthy uncle and father-in-law, Duarte Fernandes, and the members of his household were circumcised and lived as Jews in every respect, but also his younger brother, Paulo Garcês, mentioned above, was circumcised and had grown up in Amsterdam fully as a Jew. In Henrique’s case, were business considerations the only decisive factor? Did he travel to the southern Netherlands solely for commercial purposes, fearing circumcision lest he become entangled with the Spanish authorities and risk his life? Herman P. Salomon, in his detailed and meticulous research on the first Portuguese immigrants to Amsterdam, presents testimony from 1642, in the trial of Francisco d’Orta, in the Inquisition tribunal in Lisbon, according to which Henrique Garcês ‘converted to belief in the Law of Moses only when he was dying’ (‘quando morreu se reduziu a ter crença na lei de Moises’).32 Are we to take this statement literally, as reliable testimony that Henrique Garcês decided only on his deathbed to die as a Jew, and not until then did he decide to adopt Judaism? Did he do it under the influence of the Jewish belief he absorbed from his Jewish surroundings, that uncircumcised people were doomed to excision (karet) from the Jewish people and had no part in the world to come? In his sermon on the pericope Beshalah (Exod. 13:17ff.), which was given less than two months before Garcês’s death, Rabbi Saul Levi Mortera, who was then serving in the Beth Yaacov congregation, had spoken about the importance of circumcision and warned against those who delayed it: ‘One who is able to be circumcised and is not circumcised is guilty every passing moment of a new punishment of karet, making for infinite punishment, and he cannot be saved’.33 Did the rabbi’s words reach his ears? Was he in the synagogue when Mortera gave the sermon? The circumcision of dying men was common among marranos who wished to adhere to the Jewish religion before they died. Among the cryptojews in Bordeaux in the seventeenth century, for example, a circumciser named Manuel Peres da Mota was hired to circumcise dying men.34 But Henrique Garcês was not circumcised while dying. In the register it states explicitly that he was circumcised after his death. This was an irregular procedure, opposed in 32 33 34 Salomon, Os primeiros portugueses (see above, n. 5) 49, n. 68; d’Orta’s trial is preserved in Lisbon: Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, no. 10 312. See M. Saperstein, Exile in Amsterdam: Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons to a Congregation of ‘New Jews’ (Cincinnati, OH 2005) 299–301; his English translation of the quotation from this sermon appears on p. 300 there. The subject remained on the agenda of the community of Amsterdam, and Rabbi Mortera preached about it again in 1626, and also in 1650. See Saperstein, ibid., 300, n. 121. See G. Nahon, Juifs et judaïsme à Bordeaux (Pampelune 2003) 53. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 34 kaplan the congregations of former marranos, and in certain Sephardic communities it was even forbidden explicitly.35 While he was living in Amsterdam, was Henrique Garcês permitted to attend synagogue by the heads of the Amsterdam community, even though he was uncircumcised? He most probably was.36 Seeing that the parnasim of the Beth Israel congregation (the third Portuguese synagogue to be established in Amsterdam, after a split in the Beth Yaacov congregation)37 decided to forbid uncircumcised men from entering the synagogue on 16 Ab 5380 (15 August 1620), we may surmise that until then they were allowed to do so.38 Of the three congregations that were active in the city then, only the registers of the Beth Israel congregation are extant, but it seems likely that in a matter of such importance the other two congregations acted similarly and adopted the identical decision at about that time. Two years later the three congregations in the city required Francisco López Capadosse and his sons to be circumcised within a month, or be banned.39 It is reasonable to assume that at that time the Sephardic leadership in Amsterdam had decided to be stricter in their policy toward those who refused to be circumcised. Could it be that the negative repercussions aroused by Henrique Garcês’s posthumous circumcision motivated this decision? Henrique Garcês received his Jewish name, Baruch, after his death, and the family name of Senior, which some of his relatives had taken before him. He was buried next to a boy of twelve who had died uncircumcised40 in the fifth row, in grave number thirty-four.41 From what is written in a different register 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 See Kaplan, ‘Attitudes towards Circumcision’, 384–386. See ibid., 356–363, on various attitudes toward this subject in the Sephardic communities in the seventeenth century. On this split and its consequences see H.P. Salomon, ‘La vrai excommunication de Spinoza’, in H. Bots and M. Kerkhof, eds, Forum Litterarum. Miscellânea de estudos literários linguísticos e históricos oferecida a J.J. van den Beselaar (Amsterdam 1984) 181–199. See SAA PA 334, no. 10 (above, n. 5), in the archives of the Portuguese community, Livro de Ascamot do Kahal Kados Bet Israel, fol. 60. In the aforementioned archive, see no. 13, Livro dos termos da Ymposta, fol. 1r. And see Kaplan, ‘Attitudes towards Circumcision’, 356. Livro de Bet Haim (see above, n. 4), 91, 93; cf. D. Henriques de Castro, Keur van Grafsteenen op de Nederl.-Portug.-Israël. Begraafplaats te Ouderkerk aan den Amstel (Leiden 1883) 22. He mistakenly wrote that the son of Lobato was circumcised after his death, but his reading of the text in the cemetery register is erroneous. See Livro de Bet Haim (see above, n. 4), 135. On the later list the son of Lobato does not appear, and in his place, in grave number 33, is written: ‘os ossos de Salamão Oeb’ (the bones of Salomon Oeb). They were brought to Ouderkerk on 28 December 1622 from the zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 35 of the same cemetery, relating to the years 1639–1648, we infer that Baruch Senior was buried outside the fence (‘fica [posta aparte] da cerca do Bethaim’).42 Nearly twenty years after that, on 6 Nissan, 5400 (29 March 1640), the board of the united community, Talmud Tora, considered the request of Baruch Senior’s widow, Miriam Senior, to be buried next to her late husband, in the same row, in grave number thirty-five. Miriam Senior was none other than Maria Nunes from Ponte de Lima, who had married Henrique Garcês thirty-five years previously. Now she was sixty-three. The board’s decision, in response to her request, was quite surprising: the parnasim did agree, ostensibly, to honor the widow’s request, and they demanded payment of five guilders, which her son, Joshua Senior paid. But they refused to give her confirmation in writing, so that it could serve as grounds for a suit.43 On 24 November 1647, the widow, Miriam Senior died, but as it turned out, the parnasim did not honor her request. She was not buried next to her husband, but in an entirely different place: in row twenty-seven, grave number twenty-four. From the number of donors to charity at the time of her burial (a total of twenty-two), we may conclude that a large group attended the funeral. Among them were two of her three sons (David and Joshua), and several representatives of her father Duarte Fernandes’s family.44 It is noteworthy that the man who made the largest contribution was Miriam’s son-in-law, Michael Espinoza, who had been married to her daughter, Hannah Deborah, who died 42 43 44 cemetery in Groet, near Alkmaar, which had been the community’s first cemetery since 1607. See ibid., 103. On the cemetery in Groet see the introduction by W.C. Pieterse, in Livro de Bet Haim, XII–XIII. This is the second register of the cemetery, covering the years 1639–1648: Livro de BetHaim do Kahal Kados de Talmud Tora. Comessado em Pesah do Anno de 5399. Het begrafenisregister van de Portugees-Israëlietische gemeente Talmud Torah te Amsterdam 1639–1648. Introduction, text and index by L. Hagoort in cooperation with W.Chr. Pieterse (Amsterdam [s.d.]) 23. Ibid.: ‘Os senores do Maamad a petição da senora donna Miriam Senior, veuva do senor Baruch Senior Garçez que aja gloria, conçederão liçença a dita señora verbalmente (sem querese dar despacho por escrito, por que nunca se possa trazer em consequencia) que se lhe dexe reservado para dita señora o lugar no. 35 que está na quinta carreyra, ao lado do dito señor seu marido que el Dio aja, o qual fica [posta aparte] da cerca do Bethaim, com condição que a dita senhora pague logo ao administrador de Bethaim cinco florins que logo cobrey de mão de seu filho Josua Senior, de que lhe dey quitação, e o dito lugar está notado no libro das carreyras, na carreyra quinta a no. 35 por aviso’. Ibid., 176: ‘En 24 de Novembro [5407] levo el Dio para si Mariam Senior he foi sepultada na careira 27 na sepulture 24’. Her sons Joshua and David donated twelve guilders each to charity, similarly Baruch Gabilho (Habilho) and Joshua Gabilho each donated six guilders. In addition another eighteen donors are mentioned, each of whom gave six guilders. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 36 kaplan in 1638.45 By the time of the funeral Michael was already married for the third time, to Esther de Espinosa from Lisbon.46 It is quite likely that Baruch, as a boy of sixteen, accompanied his father to his grandmother’s funeral. It is also likely that the widow of Baruch Senior had a strong connection with her grandson, who bore the name of her late husband and had lost his mother at the age of six. We may assume that Baruch visited the cemetery in Ouderkerk quite often. Not only did his mother die when he was a child, but Isaac, his eldest brother, died in 1649, and his sister Miriam also died when he was young, in 1651.47 His stepmother Esther died in October 1653, and his father Michael died five months later, in March 1654.48 Quite probably, during his visits to the cemetery, he lingered near the grave of his namesake ‘grandpa Baruch’ from time to time. He also must have inquired into the reasons why he was buried outside the fence, far from the other members of his family. At some stage he must have heard the story of his grandfather’s posthumous circumcision, and this certainly made an impression on him. The insult to ‘grandpa Baruch’, whose grave was placed beyond the fence, probably disturbed the grandson, Baruch, perhaps arousing sorrow and bitterness. When he cut himself off from the Jewish community after his excommunication in 1656 and articulated his criticism of Judaism, he also found a way of expressing his contempt for the ceremony of circumcision, which the leaders of the community imposed on his dead grandfather. In the third chapter of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which is one of the most polemical chapters in the entire work, Spinoza opposed the idea that the Jews were the chosen people, making a severe reckoning with the members of his former community.49 Countering the idea that the Jewish people exists despite the hatred of other nations, which especially nourished the pride of the marranos who had returned to Judaism and were proud of their success in surviving and remaining Jews despite persecutions, Spinoza argued: ‘That they are preserved largely through the hatred of other nations 45 46 47 48 49 See Nadler, Spinoza (see above n. 7), 46. See SAA DTB no. 676/35. The marriage was registered at the municipality on 11 April 1641. Esther died on 24 October 1653. See Nadler, Spinoza, 80, 85–86. Ibid., 85–86, 118. On this chapter see the incisive analysis by Y.H. Yerushalmi, ‘Spinoza on the Survival of the Jews’, in the collection of his articles The Faith of the Fallen Jews, edited by D.N. Myers and A. Kaye (Waltham, MA 2014) 213–244 [English translation of a lecture in Hebrew, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, 3 May 1977]. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 37 is demonstrated by historical fact’.50 Spinoza lashed out at the Jewish people and argued bluntly that the Jews had not survived despite the hatred against them, but actually because of that hatred. Moreover, he attributed the roots of that hatred to the Jews themselves, because they maintain such different customs and ceremonies from all the other nations: ‘since they have separated themselves from other nations to such a degree as to incur the hatred of all, and this not only through external rites alien to the rites of other nations but also through the mark of circumcision, which they most religiously observe’.51 The strange and different customs of the Jews, by which they differentiate themselves from all the other nations, arouses everyone’s hatred. To deny any uniqueness of the Jews and refute the argument that they were the most ancient nation of all, he compared their circumcision, with subdued irony, to a custom of the Chinese people, who can boast of being more ancient than the Jews: The Chinese afford us an outstanding example of such a possibility. They, too, religiously observe the custom of the pigtail which sets them apart from all other people, and they have preserved themselves as a separate people for so many thousands of years that they surpass all other nations in antiquity.52 Moreover, Spinoza doubted the possibility that the Jews would ever be able to establish their kingdom once again: Indeed, were it not that the fundaments of their religion effeminate their spirits, I would absolutely believe that they will one day, given an occasion—for human affairs are changeable—have their state established again, and God will choose them anew.53 50 51 52 53 Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Gebhardt Edition 1925), translated by S. Shirley, with an introduction by B.S. Gregory (Leiden 1989) 99. Ibid. Ibid., 100. I have quoted here from W.Z. Harvey’s version of this fragment (based on all the extant English translations: R. Willis [London 1862], Elwes [London 1883], Shirley [Leiden 1989], M.D. Yaffe [Newburyport 2004] and M. Silverthorne and J. Israel [Cambridge 2007]). See also Harvey’s excellent article ‘Spinoza’s Counterfactual Zionism’, Iyyun 62 (July 2013) 235–244, and see esp. 236–237. On Spinoza’s arguments about the probability of the reestablishment of the Jewish state vis-à-vis the Jewish medieval philosophical tradition, see S. Pines, ‘The Probability of the Reestablishment of the Jewish State according to Joseph ibn Kaspi and Spinoza’ [Heb.], Iyyun 14 (1963) 289–317. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 38 kaplan The expressions, ‘discourage manliness’, in Samuel Shirley’s translation, or ‘weaken their courage’, in Michael Silverthorne’s and Jonathan Israel’s version, fail to transmit the exact meaning of the Latin original: ‘imo nisi fundamenta suae religionis eorum animos effoeminarent’, by which Spinoza states explicitly that under the influence of their customs, their spirits had become effeminate.54 For this reason they lack the vitality necessary to reestablish their state. In contrast to the Jews’ weakness, he praised the heroism of the Chinese: ‘They have not always maintained their independence, but they did regain it after losing it, and will no doubt recover it again when the spirit of the Tartars becomes enfeebled by reason of luxurious living and sloth’.55 In this context, Spinoza’s choice of circumcision in particular when discussing the foundations of their religion, which made their spirits effeminate, is of particular interest. Spinoza relied greatly on Maimonides (and also argued against him frequently), hence it is likely that here he was referring to the Guide of the Perplexed, part III, ch. 49, which explains the reasons for this commandment. In Maimonides’ opinion: Similarly with regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible (. . .) The fact that circumcision weakens the faculty of sexual excitement and sometimes perhaps diminishes the pleasure is indubitable. For if at birth this member has been made to bleed and has had its covering taken away from it, it must indubitably be weakened (. . .)56 54 55 56 See above note 53. On this see Harvey, ‘Spinoza’s Counterfactual Zionism’, 236, 239–244, where he takes note of the awkward Latin in this sentence, arguing that it reveals Spinoza’s hesitations on the subject. Harvey convincingly refutes the ‘Zionist reading of the nisi clause’ by scholars who brought this passage as evidence of Spinoza’s conviction that the Jews would indeed reestablish their state in the future. On the idea of the effeminating nature of Judaism in a work by the fourteenth-century Rabbi Isaac Polgar, see S. Pines, ‘Spinoza’s Tractatus-Theologico Politicus and the Jewish Philosophical tradition’, in I. Twersky and B. Septimus, eds, Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA 1987) 505–506. Spinoza, Tractatus, 100. Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Shlomo Pines, with an Introductory Essay by Leo Strauss (Chicago and London 1963) vol. II, part III, ch. 49, p. 609. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39 on the burial of spinoza ’ s grandfather and grandmother 39 Thus, in Spinoza’s opinion, more than any other commandment, circumcision explains the weakness of the Jews and their loss of vigor as a people. The invidious comparison between their weakness and the vitality that characterizes the Chinese, and between the Jewish covenant of circumcision (and the price it exacts of their masculinity) and the Chinese pigtail, which maintains their identity without emasculating them, accentuates the sarcastic tone of his words. Scholarship on Spinoza has noted that in advancing these arguments about the different customs of the Jews, which separate them from the gentiles, he depended on classical sources.57 However, it would not be preposterous to assume that the insult to his grandfather, who was buried beyond the fence of the cemetery, because he had not been circumcised during his lifetime (and thus retained his full virility until his death!) also played some role in the attitudes of the philosopher who chose to live beyond the fence of Judaism. 57 C. Wirszubski, ‘Spinoza’s Debt to Tacitus’, Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. II (Jerusalem 1955) 176–186; Yerushalmi, ‘Spinoza on the Survival of the Jews’, 220. zutot 13 (2016) 26-39