Back to alternative history
Contents
1. Preface
2. Spinoza's World, 1664
3. The Sabbateans
4. The Disputation
5. The Holy Land
6. Marriage
7. Common Prayer
8. America
9. Gottfried and Sophia
10. The Sublime Porte
11. Spinoza's World, 1691
12. Mustafa and the Janissaries
13. Naomi
14. Regime Change
15. Tulips
16. Twilight
17. Spinoza's World, 1712
18. Epilogue
Appendix
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Spinoza in Turkey |
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"As concerning marriage, it is certain that this is in harmony
with reason, if the desire for physical union be not engendered
solely by bodily beauty, but also by the desire to beget children
and to train them up wisely; and moreover, if the love of both,
to wit, of the man and of the woman, is not caused by bodily
beauty only, but also by freedom of soul." -- Spinoza, Ethics,
ch. IV, appendix, XX. |
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Part 6 - Marriage June 1673 to February 1677 |
Baruch Spinoza's wife, like Sabbatai Zevi's, was named Sarah.
[FN1] This may have been the only one of the ironies in his life
that gave him pleasure.
At forty, Spinoza had never thought seriously of marriage. In
the abstract, he considered it a sensible enough arrangement; it
was good for a child to have two parents, and the mutual
caretaking and division of labor that came with married life
seemed eminently reasonable. Sometimes, in an idle moment, he
reflected that it was odd for a man his age to be a bachelor.
Like many men who are complete in themselves, however, he had
never felt any pressing need for a life companion, and certainly
none so pressing as to warrant the trouble of seeking one out.
As such, he was taken aback when Rabbi Joshua ben Israel
Benvenisti proposed that their houses be united. He was not
difficult to persuade, however; although he was supreme in
matters of the intellect, he was unsure of himself in those of
the heart, and ready to listen to Benvenisti's guidance. The
older man had little trouble convincing him that marriage was one
of life's comforts, that a man should have a family, and that it
was particularly unseemly for a rabbi to remain single. After
being assured that Sarah consented to the match, he agreed.
Neither the prospective bridegroom nor the bride-to-be saw much
cause for delay. They were married on September 10, 1673, in the
new Rational synagogue in Balat. Spinoza was not entirely
comfortable with this innovation; most Rational congregations
held their prayer services at meeting halls or even private
homes, and elaborate structures seemed a profligate use of money.
The great merchant families of Constantinople, however, demanded
more, and built a new sanctuary decorated with carvings and
paneled with imported woods.
However, although it was more elaborate than other Spinozan
places of worship, the Rational Synagogue was quite unlike most
other synagogues. There was no women's gallery; instead, the
women's section was on the ground floor, situated an equal
distance from the central dais. Some members had advocated doing
away with the women's section altogether and allowing husbands to
sit with their wives, but that had been judged too much of a
distraction, and they had agreed instead to place the women where
they could take part in the discussion that was necessary to
spiritual growth.
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Next to the platform, a place had also been reserved for a choir. Choral music was unusual in Jewish worship, but it was not
unprecedented; Jews in the Italian cities had introduced music to
their synagogues earlier in the century, and one, Salomone Rossi
of Mantua, had even composed liturgical music in the baroque
style. [FN2] Many refugees from Mantua had settled in Balat
after the expulsion of 1630, and some still remembered the power
that music added to prayer. Not all the other leading families
had been pleased with this idea at first, but the ability of
music to focus the mind had made it quite a rational addition to
religious worship, and the Italians had prevailed.
And so the ceremony was held. Rabbi Benvenisti officiated,
before an assemblage of guests ranging from wealthy merchants and
doctors to working-class clerks and shipyard laborers. With his
new bride at his side and far too much wine in his belly,
Spinoza decided that his life was quite sensibly arranged.
All the logic in the world could not prepare him for what
happened next, however, because he soon came to love Sarah with a
passion far beyond reason. Sarah was not beautiful, but she had
a face made for laughter and merry eyes that shone across the
twenty years that separated them. She also had a fine mind and a
liberal education, and her secure childhood in a close family had
given her a measure of self-confidence rare for a woman of those
times. She had the wit to pierce Spinoza's ego and occasional
bouts of self- righteousness, but the gentle humor to keep it
from stinging.
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Before long, Spinoza's associates noticed a change in him. His
mind was as sharp as ever and his vision as penetrating, but it
seemed that his bitterness over being excommunicated had receded,
and that he was more alert to the pleasures of the material
world. As befits a person in transition, he wrote no major
works during this time, although he continued to translate the
Jewish poets of al-Andalus and to collect the works of Solomon
ibn Gabirol [FN2] from the dusty prayer-books and letters where
they were hidden.
One pamphlet published toward the end of 1674 did occasion some
comment. Entitled Against Dogma, it was an expansion of his
earlier advocacy of freedom of thought, arguing that even true
ideas should not become received wisdom and stifle discussion.
Even the truth should be open to debate, because people cannot
be fully convinced of it if it is not proven, and because
critical testing may reveal that what is believed true is
actually not. At one point, Spinoza appeared to go so far as to
criticize his own followers, writing that ideas should not
simply be accepted as having been "proven by Reason" without
critical examination. This was likely an early indication of
Spinoza's growing discomfort with the way his own teachings were
being treated as dogmatic by many Rational Jews.
The work that shook the Rational movement most during this time,
however, was written not by Spinoza but by Sarah. In October
1675, she published a slim volume entitled Reflections on the
Female Sex, by a humble Member thereof, which stated that the
mental and intellectual faculties of women were as capable as
those of men. Unlike her husband's, Sarah's attitude toward proof
was distinctly empirical; she made out her case by describing
women in both ancient Jewish history and contemporary Europe who
excelled in statecraft, medicine and scholarship. She concluded
that, although women could not hope to match men in feats of
strength and their maternal instincts naturally inclined them to
the "caring professions" such as medicine, they were fully
capable of performing jobs that required mental faculties and
control of passions. It was thus incumbent upon the state to
provide women with the same liberal education that men received,
in order that their neighbors not be deprived of their talents.
"Consider how many more of the sick might be healed," she wrote,
"especially women, whose complaints a female physician is
uniquely suited to understand..."
In any other time and place, Sarah's treatise might have been
ignored, as other similar works had been. Constantinople in
1675, though, was a place where settled wisdom had been turned on
its head for more than a decade, and her ideas found a hearing.
Not everyone agreed with them by any means - some, in fact,
grumbled that Sarah would never have written such a book had she
still been living in her father's house, and that her authorship
of it was proof of Spinoza's pernicious influence. Nor did
Sarah's citation of Rashi's daughters and the judge Deborah
convince the congrega- tion that women should participate equally
in religious life. Within a year, however, a wealthy Mendes
matron had opened a girls' primary school, and Sarah's
announcement that she would study medicine was treated as simply
eccentric rather than unthinkable. Some Rational Jews deserted
the movement in protest, as some did whenever Spinoza did
something controversial, but they were balanced - and more than
balanced - by those who came over from the other side.
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Spinoza watched all this happen with characteristic serenity.
Only one thing marred his happiness during this time - Sarah's
failure to conceive a child. Her doctors had told her she was
fertile, and could provide no reason why she had not conceived
after more than two years of marriage. By the beginning of 1676,
Spinoza had become convinced that he was to blame - that he had
waited too long to marry, and drained himself of his capacity to
give life. In his despair, he learned that, just as reason was
no match for passion, it was also not proof against desire. He
prayed for a child, with a fervency he had not known since his
youth in Amsterdam.
And in the summer of 1676, Sarah told him that she had become
pregnant. If this was an answer to Spinoza's prayers, then it
was a very ambiguous one, because the manner of her child's birth
prevented her from ever conceiving again. But that mattered
little to her husband; all he really wanted was one person to
carry on his legacy.
Their daughter was born on February 21, 1677. She was
named Naomi, and she would become the Rational movement's
greatest hymnist and poet. And other things.
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[FN1] Sarah is the first non-historical character in this
timeline, although the lives of many of the historical characters
have taken different paths.
[FN2] In the previous episode, I incorrectly referred to him as
Samuel ibn Gabirol.
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