LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Baruch Spinoza: Excommunication
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"Echoes of the [Sabbatian] movement penetrated even the cloistered seclusion of Baruch Spinoza's study. Since his excommunication in 1656, Spinoza had had no contacts whatever with the Jewish Community, but one of his correspondents, Henry Oldenburg, a native of Bremen in Germany, who lived in London where he had become secretary of the Royal Society, showed great interest in the Sabbatian movement. Many letters are extant in which Oldenburg inquires of friends and acquaintences regarding the movement that had arisen among the Jews. Oldenburg was interested mainly in the political aspect of the possibility of a restoration of the Jews. Early in December, 1665, immediately after arrival of the first sensational reports, he wrote to Spinoza: 'As for politics, there is a rumor everywhere here concerning the return of the Jews, who have been dispersed for more than two thousand years, to their native country. Only a few here believe in this, yet there are many hoping for it. May it please you to communicate to a friend what you have heard regarding this matter and what you think of it. . .Unfortunately, Spinoza's reply to Oldenburg is lost, though elsewhere he expressed his opinion that a restoration of temporal rule by the Jews should by no means be considered an impossibility.
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Spinoza's intellectual reorientation... came at a cost . His increasingly unorthodox views and, perhaps, laxity in his observance of the Jewish law strained his relations with the community. Tensions became so great that, in 1656, the elders of the synagogue undertook proceedings to excommunicate him. Without providing details, the writ of excommunication accuses him of 'abominable heresies' and ‘monstrous deeds’. It then levels a series of curses against him and prohibits others from communicating with him, doing business with him, reading anything he might write, or even coming into close proximity with him. Spinoza may still have been a Jew, but he was now an outcast.
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The most significant observation of Goldstein is that Spinoza expressed the insight that in order to progress in one's appreciation of the non-physical aspects of the world, one needs to get beyond the constraints imposed by one's personal identity. Although axiomatic in the East it is extremely rare in the West. Another more recent example is Wittgenstein. This insight seems only to come to people in the aftermath of a traumatic experience - in Spinoza's case surely the experience of the excommunication. Because most of our own identity is unconscious it is very difficult to dismantle it without outside help, but it does seem to be the case that a Jewish identity, perhaps because it is so specifically defined in its external aspects, is easier to get beyond than many others. The other important achievement of Spinoza was to write to Descartes pointing out that Descartes' position did not logically imply dualism.
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