Uriel had never been in the habit of thinking of his childhood or his youth. Through much of his adult life he had pretended to be a Catholic. He had been forced to hide his Jewish origins, so he had completely erased his earlier life from his consciousness. As he now turned his thoughts back in time to Oporto, it cost him a great effort to dredge up any fragmentary memories.
Perhaps his own distorted past had caused him to fail to understand why Jews in exile found such comfort in reliving their memories of the Sephardim, the Jewish way of life in Spain. Many seemed to think that only there had life been worth living.
MY GREAT-UNCLE described to us many times how the Spanish Inquisition spread fear, terror, and death everywhere in the Iberian Peninsula. He also told us that the crueler the persecution of the Jews became, the more steadfastly they clung to the faith of their fathers.
He made no secret of the fact that many of them simply broke down in exile in the Netherlands, even though people there were free to live according to their own traditions. Jewish refugees were tormented by the sights and memories that floated through their minds and called to them in their dreams. Some of them simply couldn’t stand living with the knowledge of the loss of the Sephardim.
“Suicide in exile was quite common,” my great-uncle commented. “It was hushed up and overlooked. No one ever discussed it.”
But what could we understand of suicide, the two of us who were only twelve-year-old boys? We couldn’t grasp the concept at all, no matter how hard we tried.
MICHAEL SPINOZA had a neighbor, my great-uncle told us, a God-fearing Jewish father of a family, whose name my great-uncle had unfortunately forgotten. He was in his forties, stiff and nervous, with twisted shoulders, the sort of man who had endured life’s harsh trials and sought consolation in the Holy Scripture. The man spent a whole afternoon playing with his five children, passed out candies among them, and told them a bedtime story. His wife was away, assisting a young relative who was about to give birth. When she returned the next morning, she found that the throats of all her children had been cut. Her husband, soaked in blood, had hanged himself with his own prayer shawl. He left no farewell note.
Bialomba. The name of the strange tree came unbidden into Uriel’s mind.
An ancient Portuguese legend tells how the inedible fruit of the bialomba tree become disconsolate and fall to the ground, where they shrivel and transform themselves into monarch butterflies with a bright yellow crescent moon on their wings. If the wind is blowing, one can carefully lift the butterflies and toss them into the air where they can live and fly away. Otherwise, one leaves them on the ground, and they starve to death. That’s the end of it, and life goes along its merry way. But if one treats the butterflies without respect, tramples them, or destroys them some other way, bad luck is inevitable.
Uriel sought to call forth other scenes and events buried deep inside, but all he could remember of his youth was that act of pure vandalism out in the woods near his native city of Oporto. Heedless and feeling invulnerable, he had trampled to bits the fruit of the bialomba tree and crushed countless butterflies.
THE RABBIS said the order of the world was something incomprehensible to humankind, a mystery known only to God. Uriel had challenged those teachings and advocated a different interpretation. He believed that the world could be measured and weighed, and that it was possible to describe its mysteries. His disclosure of this conviction had caused the council to declare him an apostate.
Now he began to see that the world was incomprehensible and full of secrets, governed by invisible powers that humanity was completely incapable of understanding. If there is order in the cosmos and meaning to creation, they lie beyond human comprehension.
But if we understand nothing and our lives do not depend upon our own free choices but rather are predestined, what is the meaning of any individual life?
His whole life and consciousness, everything, was now directed toward that sole question: What is the meaning of any individual life?
In that instant an avalanche loosed itself inside Uriel. Everything collided within him—his faith and his philosophy, all of the values determining justice and injustice, everything he had developed in protest against both Jewish and Christian dogmas. His own precepts were suddenly meaningless. He discarded them.
God’s ways are incomprehensible to mankind, he now understood. He went to his cramped little library. He caressed the spines of his books. They stood there, each with its message, so many words of wisdom that were now meaningless to him. His own scribblings seemed superficial and of no interest. He was sorry he had bothered to write them.
He seated himself at the table once again. Before him lay the document from the Jewish council, a loaded pistol, a couple of sheets of paper, a small pot of ink, and a steel nib. He dipped the pen in the ink, tapped away a couple of drops, and wrote, “What would my life have been if I hadn’t trampled the bialomba fruit?”
Then he placed the mouth of the pistol barrel against the exact spot on his temple where Bento’s rock had gashed him. He took a deep breath and with his index finger he pressed the trigger.
ON THE SAME NIGHT that Uriel Spinoza committed suicide, an unusually large comet appeared in the heavens. There were alarmed rumors that the comet’s tail would brush the earth. A Catholic priest, most probably under the influence of alcohol, predicted that the Jews would disappear and that the sin-filled city of Amsterdam would be flattened. He had received that message from the archangel Gabriel. Another priest, this one in Eindhoven under the patronage of Prince Frederik Hendrik of Orange, glimpsed the plan of creation in his tea leaves and foresaw that the Antichrist would come riding astride the comet. People everywhere spoke with fear and trembling of the imminent destruction of the world.
MANY PEOPLE had gathered that evening in Michael Spinoza’s house to observe the comet. There was a profound sense of unease in the air. The master of the house assured his guests that the end of the world was not nigh and there was no cause for panic. He explained that his relative the Cabalist Moishe de Espinosa, blessed be his memory, had observed the same comet in Granada in the year 1325 and calculated that it would return 315 years later, missing the earth by a wide margin.
His reassuring words did not convince everyone. Many were openly skeptical.
As night fell, a servant entered in a panic, crying that he’d seen the comet from an upstairs window. Everyone rushed to the second floor.
BENTO WAS PETRIFIED, certain that the comet would utterly demolish his family’s house. He glared at his little brother Isak, who was playing on the floor. Giving in to a sudden impulse, for no reason at all he viciously kicked his little brother. He thought they were unobserved, but their father had come back to fetch his spectacles. Standing in the doorway behind Bento, he saw exactly what happened.
Michael Spinoza’s face contorted. He lunged forward, grabbed the boy’s arm, and hauled him into his study. He berated Bento and made him stand in the corner. One of the Jewish council members burst panic-striken into the room.
“A terrible thing has happened,” he exclaimed, scarcely able to speak. “They’ve found your half brother, Uriel, dead in his house. There was blood everywhere and he has a huge gaping hole in his head.”
Bento’s face turned fiery red. His heart pounded furiously and he fled from the study in tears. He thought he had killed Uncle Uriel.
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Mijnheer Spinoza,” the newcomer said, lowering his voice. “It was completely thoughtless of me to let your son hear of this. I have no idea what possessed me, but I thought you had to be informed at once. Especially because of the council’s decision. Even so, I should have been more discreet. Bento is a sensitive little boy.”
THE YEARS PASSED and the comet was long gone, but whenever Michael Spinoza remembered that evening, he sank into melancholy, brooding upon the fact that Bento was living in Rijnsburg.
The comet’s long tail had lit up the heavens over Amsterdam. That fascinating but men
acing apparition panicked the population. Some were afraid that Europe would be consumed and laid waste; others fell to their knees in prayer; still others felt exalted by the sight of God’s gleaming glory. The comet passed close to the earth, left nothing behind, and went its peaceful way onward through the universe, just as Moishe de Espinosa had predicted 315 years earlier.
Michael Spinoza’s strongest memory from that night was the strange, sudden, and inexplicable change in Bento’s personality. The boy seemed utterly transformed. His father couldn’t help but think that perhaps the comet was responsible. From one day to the next an unruly and usually mean-spirited boy became the sweetest and most considerate young man one could ever imagine.
BENTO NEEDED no more encouragement in his studies, for he became a model pupil and the pride of his school. Those who met him were astonished. At the age of eleven he could recite the Torah and the Gemara both forward and backward. He knew everything about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, almost as if he had been their close companion from time immemorial.
Stories of his keen intelligence spread even to the Jewish communities beyond Amsterdam. Everyone assumed he was destined to become a great rabbi.
One day something occurred that redirected his path and transformed his young life.
MICHAEL SPINOZA OWNED one of the largest private libraries of the city. After searching it for weeks, Bento finally located the manuscripts of Uriel Spinoza where they had been carefully hidden behind other books.
He read through those writings in secret, more reverent and attentive even than when he studied the Torah. Even though his uncle Uriel had written in a style more scrupulously logical and brilliant than any he had encountered, at first Bento could not understand any of it. But he didn’t give up; he felt an urgent duty to read further. He was haunted by the belief that he had killed his uncle. Guilt lay heavy upon his soul, and nightmares had tormented him for years. Against the background of that terrible event, Bento counted it a sacred obligation to study the blasphemer’s manuscripts in depth, so as to discover who he had been and what he had thought. It was no burden to study what his uncle had written.
Bento read through it all several times over, line by line, neglecting nothing. Concentrating fiercely, he pondered even the least important details, trying to make out the underlying message. He found it difficult to follow Uriel’s thoughts, not because he was slow or lazy but because they followed a logic quite different from that shared by the familiar texts of Judaism. Despite that, Bento saw immediately the purity of his uncle’s motives in undertaking his work. Bento’s only frustration was one he would never share: the fact that Uriel had been so unforthcoming about his own life.
The essays contained assertions that almost took Bento’s breath away.
On one page of Concerning the Mortality of the Human Soul stood the assertion that following a death, for three days the soul contemplates the pathetic corpse it previously inhabited, now a miserable cadaver beginning to rot, then abandons that body and dissolves into thin air.
In the essay “Propositions Opposing Tradition” Uriel questioned whether God really gave Moses and the Jewish people their law on the slopes of Mount Sinai.
Almost everything of substance in those manuscripts—the bold thoughts and the breathtaking audacity of the logic—directly conflicted with Jewish folk wisdom and everything Bento had learned at home and at the Ets Haim School of Talmudic Studies. Sometimes he recoiled from the texts in disgust; other times he became alarmed and found it scandalous that Uriel was pushing his logic beyond all reasonable limits so as to undermine the authority of Jewish teachings.
After months of intensive study Bento began to feel that he’d had enough. He had tired of the qualities that had initially impressed him the most—the purity and inimitable elegance of Uriel’s language—mostly because he could find the blasphemer’s opinions were almost without exception completely contrary to his own. But one day, after all his strenuous efforts to synthesize the tens of thousands of lines Uriel had written out in his isolation, the young man’s attention fixed upon a single sentence. It took his breath away: The most important thing is not having correct and truthful views but rather daring to think for oneself, to challenge ancient tenets of faith, and to stand up for one’s convictions.
For a moment Bento’s head spun. He read that sentence over at least a hundred times. He repeated the words aloud: “… challenge ancient tenets of faith, and to stand up for one’s convictions …”
In that instant he saw his calling, He would devote his life to finding his own way, to elaborating his own thoughts and communicating truths. Even if he was still too young to know what he wanted to write about.
BENTO READ the Torah with new eyes, not knowing how far astray he was being led by Uriel’s invisible hand. He read and made notes as if possessed. His eyes gleamed and his notes became more and more challenging and critical.
He realized that Uriel had precisely identified a vital shortcoming of the Holy Scripture: the books of Moses failed to provide any evidence to substantiate a number of central theses.
Bento tried a different approach. Perhaps no general truth existed at all. Perhaps the world existed only in thirty-six historical accounts. Everyone at the rabbinical seminar noticed the change in Bento and wondered what had happened. He was often distracted, increasingly introverted, and frequently lost in daydreams. People began to think he might be possessed by an evil spirit, a dybbuk. They whispered that the ghost of the dead blasphemer Uriel Spinoza must have taken up residence in young Bento.
When his teachers asked what was going on, he answered with counterquestions:
“Does God really have no body?”
“Is the soul immortal?”
“Does an infant who dies two days after birth have a soul?”
“Does divine Providence rule the world in the best possible way?”
The school’s chief rabbi, the venerable Talmudic scholar Morteira, took the young man aside in a shadowed corner of the school yard, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said in a quiet voice, “Bento, what are you trying to do? We don’t recognize you anymore. You’re behaving in an extremely peculiar manner. This is creating consternation and confusion for everyone in this community. And your questions! They’re extremely dangerous. No Jew can give himself over to wild musings like those in your head. Spiteful tongues are wagging. This could turn out very badly for you. If your comments should reach the wrong ears, we could all be in danger. Have I made myself sufficiently clear?”
But the questions kept presenting themselves, and Bento was not the sort to keep his mouth shut. Finally he assembled his notes and composed a powerful appeal for spiritual freedom. His text caused a huge outcry in Amsterdam’s leading Jewish circles, and other tracts followed.
THE JEWISH COUNCIL was determined to silence Bento’s questioning of fundamental truth. They summoned him to a hearing in the hope that he would recant and denounce his own writings. To everyone’s astonishment, however, he acknowledged that he was guilty of all charges. He even seemed to take pride in the fact. Every member of the Jewish council revered Michael Spinoza and none of them denied that Bento had a brilliant intellect, but they felt themselves duty-bound to see that justice was done.
“We are not condemning your son for what he has said and written, dear friend,” the president of the council told his predecessor, Michael Spinoza. “He was extremely thoughtless, and we can attribute that to his youth. But what has been done cannot be undone. We are exiling him so as to keep him from repeating his mistakes and to prevent others from following his example. This is the same reasoning we followed in the case of your half brother, Uriel, as you will certainly recall.”
I’M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND why the members of the Jewish council labeled Bento an apostate and drove him out of the community of the faithful.
It’s easy for us today to think of those council members as foolish old men who made ridiculous decisions. But Bento’s theses could certainly have affe
cted people’s thinking, created confusion, and disrupted relations within the Jewish community. The council feared most of all that the mayor of Amsterdam might react to Bento’s criticism of religion. The Dutch were citizens of a modern state ruled by energetic businessmen who embraced the liberal ideas of the time, practiced religious tolerance, and accepted Jews—but only so long as the Jews didn’t go around questioning everything, the way Bento did.
More than anything else, the old men of the council found it impossible to ignore the young man’s challenges to the Torah. The faithful simply could not abide his denial that the Jewish people were the Chosen People, bound by Mosaic law. The general view on that particular subject was that Bento had gone beyond all permissible limits.
Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca read out the text:
In accordance with the judgment of the angels and the pronouncements of the Holy Ones, we banish, curse, exile, and excommunicate Bento Spinoza. With the assent of Holy God and in accordance with the blessed collection of the Torah’s holy books and the 613 prohibitions inscribed therein, we pronounce upon him the curse Joshua made upon Jericho and Elisha placed upon the wicked young men, the curse proclaimed in the law.
May he be cursed by day and cursed by night, cursed as he lies in his bed and cursed as he rises, cursed when he walks abroad and cursed when he comes back. May the Lord never forgive him and may God’s wrath be apportioned to that man and come over him to cast upon him the weight of all the curses written down in the Book of the Law.
And the Lord will erase his name under the heavens and the Lord will cast him forth from all the lineage of Israel to his destruction, with all the judgments of the firmament, as it is written in the law. And may all ye who are the servants of God forever remain unharmed!
Take into account these commandments: no one shall have any oral or written communication with him, no one shall offer him any service whatsoever, no one shall live under the same roof with him, no one shall approach him any closer than the span of five ells, and no one shall read anything written or produced by him.
The Elixir of Immortality Page 27
