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"Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals -German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists- have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day."--Jacket.

Jewish philosophy. --- Jewish learning and scholarship --- Jews --- Philosophy, Jewish --- Philosophy, Israeli --- Identity, Jewish --- Jewish identity --- Jewishness --- Jewish law --- Jewish nationalism --- Learning and scholarship --- History. --- Intellectual life. --- Identity. --- Philosophy --- Ethnic identity --- Race identity --- Legal status, laws, etc. --- Intellectual life --- Spinoza, Benedictus de, --- Influence. --- Jewish philosophy --- History --- Identity --- Ispīnūzā, --- Spinoza, Baruch, --- Espinoza, Baruch d', --- Sbīnūzā, --- Espinosa, Baruch de, --- De Spinoza, Benedictus, --- Shpinozah, --- Shpinozah, Barukh, --- Spinoza, Benedict de, --- Spinoza, Barukh, --- Spinoza, Baruch de, --- Spinoza, Benoît de, --- ספינאזא, ברוך דע --- ספינאזא, ברוך, --- שפימוזה, ברוך --- שפינאזא, בענעדיקט --- שפינאזא, ברוך --- שפינאזע, ברוך --- שפינוזא, בנדיקטוס --- שפינוזהת ברוך, --- שפינוזה, ברוך --- שפינוזה, ברוך די, --- שפינוזה, ברוך, --- שפינוזה, ב. --- سبينوزا، بندكتس --- de Spinoza, Benedictus --- Baruch Spinoza. --- Berthold Auerbach. --- Der Shpinozist. --- Di familye mushkat. --- East European Haskalah. --- German thought. --- Hebrew Enlightenment. --- Isaac Bashevis Singer. --- Jewish Spinoza. --- Jewish Spinozist. --- Jewish beliefs. --- Jewish identity. --- Jewish intellectuals. --- Jewish modernity. --- Jewish movements. --- Jewish nationalism. --- Jewish origins. --- Jewish thought. --- Jewish writers. --- Jewishness. --- Judaism. --- Moses Mendelssohn. --- Salomon Rubin. --- Sephardic Jews. --- Spinoza appropriations. --- Spinoza themes. --- Spinoza. --- The Family Moskat. --- The Spinoza of Market Street. --- Western philosophy. --- Yiddish cultures. --- Yiddish literature. --- Yosef Klausner. --- Zionism. --- Zionist Spinoza. --- contextualists. --- early Reform Judaism. --- historical fiction. --- historical novels. --- maskil. --- modern Jewish culture. --- modern Jewish history. --- modern Jewish identity. --- modern secular Jews. --- mythmaking. --- national identity. --- presentists. --- radical Jewish modernity. --- reformist Jewish modernity. --- religious change. --- secular Jew. --- secular Jewish culture. --- secular Judaism. --- secularization. --- Spinoza, Benedictus de --- Spinoza, Baruch --- Spinoza, Benedict de