AMSTERDAM (JTA) – More than 350 years after this city’s Portuguese Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and banned his writings for eternity, the philosopher’s books are for sale at the ...

More than 350 years after this city’s Portuguese Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza and banned his writings for eternity, the philosopher’s books are for sale at the souvenir shop of the ...

What is Spinoza’s Philosophy? Ian Buruma’s 2024 “Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah,” a significant addition to Jewish studies, is published by Yale University Press. This book is a comprehensive introduction ...

Bertrand Russell declared the 17th century lens grinder Baruch Spinoza to be “the noblest and most loveable of the great philosophers.” To judge from several recent books, he’s not alone in that ...

In the beginning was Uriel da Costa. Then came Baruch Spinoza. A mercurial recusant born in 1585 in Porto, Portugal, da Costa was a Catholic scion of prosperous Portuguese crypto-Jewish Conversos who ...

40 pages into Ian Buruma’s fascinating biography of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, some very modern language leaps from the page. “When people are banished from their community,” Buruma ...

Rejected by his Jewish community in Amsterdam, Baruch Spinoza was living alone in a small village outside The Hague in Holland and earning his living by grinding lenses when he wrote one of the most ...

At the heart of Baruch Spinoza's philosophy is a challenge to the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the relationship between God and the world. While the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures ...

Around our house, Irvin D. Yalom is a familiar name, and for more than one reason. I first heard about Yalom, author of “Love’s Executioner,” from my wife, Ann, who explained where he fits in the ...