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Baruch Spinoza: Philosophies
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[T]he Platonic spirit of Spinoza may have been transferred to him by way of kabbalah. Maimonides is Aristotelean, and Jewish philosophy, to the extent that it was anything, was Aristotelean following him. In the 17th century, what they're rebelling against is Aristotle. But Plato is very much in the air in kabbalah. It's much more a mathematic model. You understand something by grasping the abstractions that it realizes.
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Spinoza is generally seen by Jews as outside the religion and as therefore posing no threat to the religion. That is why nowadays religious Jews usually view the whole Spinoza question in a detached way and even feel proud of Spinoza's influence on world philosophy--one of "us" extending such a great influence on "them." In a Hasidic tale, a Rebbe was told by one of his follows that, in Spinoza's view, there is no basic difference between humans and animals. The Rebbe replied: in that case, why have animals never produced a Spinoza?
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Goldstein sees Spinoza as a man who absolutely refused to compromise his philosophical belief that the truth has to be hunted down, despite the consequences and prohibitions against such a hunt. He was uninterested in the negative consequences that might be visited on successful hunters, who managed, even for a moment, to touch truth.
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This is the heart of Spinoza's case for toleration, for freedom of philosophizing and freedom of religious expression. By reducing the central message of Scripture — and the essential content of piety — to a simple moral maxim, one that is free of any superfluous speculative doctrines or ceremonial practices; and by freeing Scripture of the burden of having to communicate specific philosophical truths or of prescribing (or proscribing) a multitude of required behaviors, he has demonstrated both that philosophy is independent from religion and that the liberty of each individual to interpret religion as he wishes can be upheld without any detriment to piety.
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From time to time attempts have been made to reclaim Spinoza for Judaism. If this means that Spinoza was a Jew and an admirable person who did not deserve to have been placed under the ban, many Jews would go along with it. But if it means that Spinoza's philosophy is compatible with Judaism, Spinoza himself would have rejected any such claim.
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