The Spinoza Problem (2 page)

In Delft, seventy kilometers south, another artist begins his ascent. The twenty-five-year-old Johannes Vermeer takes a final look at his new painting,
The Procuress
. He scans from right to left. First, the prostitute in a gloriously yellow jacket. Good. Good. The yellow gleams like polished sunlight. And the group of men surrounding her. Excellent—each could easily stroll off the canvas and begin a conversation. He bends closer to catch the tiny but
piercing gaze of the leering young man with the foppish hat. Vermeer nods to his miniature self. Greatly pleased, he signs his name with a flourish in the lower right corner.

Back in Amsterdam at Breestraat No. 57, only two blocks from the auction preparations at Rembrandt’s home, a twenty-three-year-old merchant (born only a few days earlier than Vermeer, whom he would admire but never meet) prepares to close his import-export shop. He appears too delicate and beautiful to be a shopkeeper. His features are perfect, his olive skin unblemished, his dark eyes large, and soulful.

He takes a last look around: many shelves are as empty as his pockets. Pirates intercepted his last shipment from Bahia, and there is no coffee, sugar, or cocoa. For a generation, the Spinoza family operated a prosperous import-export wholesale business, but now the brothers Spinoza—Gabriel and Bento—are reduced to running a small retail shop. Inhaling the dusty air, Bento Spinoza identifies, with resignation, the fetid rat droppings accompanying the odor of dried figs, raisins, candied ginger, almonds, and chickpeas and the fumes of acrid Spanish wine. He walks outside and commences his daily duel with the rusted padlock on the shop door. An unfamiliar voice speaking in stilted Portuguese startles him.

“Are you Bento Spinoza?”

Spinoza turns to face two strangers, young weary men who seem to have traveled far. One is tall, with a massive, burly head that hangs forward as though it were too heavy to be held erect. His clothes are of good quality but soiled and wrinkled. The other, dressed in tattered peasant’s clothes, stands behind his companion. He has long, matted hair, dark eyes, a strong chin and forceful nose. He holds himself stiffly. Only his eyes move, darting like frightened tadpoles.

Spinoza offers a wary nod.

“I am Jacob Mendoza,” says the taller of the two. “We must see you. We must talk to you. This is my cousin, Franco Benitez, whom I’ve just brought from Portugal. My cousin,” Jacob clasps Franco’s shoulder, “is in crisis.”

“Yes,” Spinoza answers. “And?”

“In severe crisis.”

“Yes. And why seek me?”

“We’ve been told that you’re the one to render help. Perhaps the only one.”

“Help?”

“Franco has lost his faith. He doubts everything. All religious ritual. Prayer. Even the presence of God. He is frightened all the time. He doesn’t sleep. He talks of killing himself.”

“And who has misled you by sending you here? I am only a merchant who operates a small business. And not very profitably, as you see.” Spinoza points at the dusty window through which the half-empty shelves are visible. “Rabbi Mortera is our spiritual leader. You must go to him.”

“We arrived yesterday, and this morning we set out to do exactly that. But our landlord, a distant cousin, advised against it. ‘Franco needs a helper, not a judge,’ he said. He told us that Rabbi Mortera is severe with doubters, that he believes all Jews in Portugal who converted to Christianity face eternal damnation, even if they were forced to choose between conversion and death. ‘Rabbi Mortera,’ he said, ‘will only make Franco feel worse. Go see Bento Spinoza. He is wise in such matters.’”

“What talk is this? I am but a merchant—”

“He claims that if you had not been forced into business because of the death of your older brother and your father, you would have been the next great rabbi of Amsterdam.”

“I must go. I have a meeting I must attend.”

“You’re going to the Sabbath service at the synagogue? Yes? We too. I am taking Franco, for he must return to his faith. Can we walk with you?”

“No, I go to another kind of meeting.”

“What other kind?” says Jacob, but then immediately reverses himself. “Sorry. It’s not my affair. Can we meet tomorrow? Would you be willing to help us on the Sabbath? It is permitted, since it is a mitzvah. We need you. My cousin is in danger.”

“Strange.” Spinoza shakes his head. “Never have I heard such a request. I’m sorry, but you are mistaken. I can offer nothing.”

Franco, who had been staring at the ground as Jacob spoke, now lifts his eyes and utters his first words: “I ask for little, for only a few words with you. Do you refuse a fellow Jew? It is your duty to a traveler. I had to flee Portugal just as your father and your family had to flee, to escape the Inquisition.”

“But what can I—”

“My father was burned at the stake just a year ago. His crime? They found pages of the Torah buried in the soil behind our home. My father’s
brother, Jacob’s father, was murdered soon after. I have a question. Consider this world where a son smells the odor of his father’s burning flesh. Where is the God that created this kind of world? Why does He permit such things? Do you blame me for asking that?” Franco looks deeply into Spinoza’s eyes for several moments and then continues. “Surely a man named ‘blessed’—Bento in Portuguese and Baruch in Hebrew—will not refuse to speak to me?”

Spinoza nods solemnly. “I will speak to you, Franco. Tomorrow midday?”

“At the synagogue?” Franco asks.

“No, here. Meet me here at the shop. It will be open.”

“The shop? Open?” Jacob interjects. “But the Sabbath?”

“My younger brother, Gabriel, represents the Spinoza family at the synagogue.”

“But the holy Torah,” Jacob insists, ignoring Franco’s tugging at his sleeve, “states God’s wish that we not work on the Sabbath, that we must spend that holy day offering prayers to Him and performing mitzvahs.”

Spinoza turns and speaks gently, as a teacher to a young student, “Tell me, Jacob, do you believe that God is all powerful?”

Jacob nods.

“That God is perfect? Complete unto Himself.”

Again Jacob agrees.

“Then surely you would agree that, by definition, a perfect and complete being has no needs, no insufficiencies, no wants, no wishes. Is that not so?”

Jacob thinks, hesitates, and then nods warily. Spinoza notes the beginnings of a smile on Franco’s lips.

“Then,” Spinoza continues, “I submit that God has no wishes about
how
, or even
if
, we glorify Him. Allow me, then, Jacob, to love God in my own fashion.”

Franco’s eyes widen. He turns toward Jacob as though to say, “You see, you see? This is the man I seek.”

Upon the bench fidgets the sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg, who is uncertain why he has been summoned to the headmaster’s office. Alfred’s torso is wiry, his eyes grey-blue, his Teutonic face well-proportioned; a lock of chestnut hair hangs in just the desired angle over his forehead. No dark circles surround his eyes—they will come later. He holds his chin high. Perhaps he is defiant, but his fists, clenching and relaxing, signal apprehension.

He looks like everyone and no one. He is a near-man with a whole life ahead of him. In eight years he will travel from Reval to Munich and become a prolific anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic journalist. In nine years he will hear a stirring speech at a meeting of the German Workers’ Party by a new prospect, a veteran of World War I named Adolf Hitler, and Alfred will join the party shortly after Hitler. In twenty years he will lay down his pen and grin triumphantly as he finishes the last page of his book,
The Myth of the Twentieth Century.
Destined to become a million-copy best seller, it will provide much of the ideological foundation of the Nazi party and offer a justification for the destruction of European Jews. In thirty years his troops will storm into a small Dutch museum in Rijnsburg and confiscate Spinoza’s personal library of one hundred and fifty-one volumes. And in thirty-six years his dark-circled eyes will appear bewildered and he will shake his head no when asked by the American hangman at Nuremberg, “Do you have any last words?”

Young Alfred hears the echoing sound of approaching footsteps in the corridor, and spotting Herr Schäfer, his advisor and German teacher, he bolts to his feet to greet him. Herr Schäfer merely frowns and shakes his head slowly as he passes and opens the headmaster’s door. But just before entering, he hesitates, turns back to Alfred, and in a not unkind voice whispers, “Rosenberg, you disappointed me, all of us, with your poor judgment in your speech last night. This poor judgment is not erased by having being elected class representative. Even so, I continue to believe you are not without promise. You graduate in only a few weeks. Don’t be a fool now.”

Last night’s election speech!
Oh, so
that’s
it
. Alfred hits the side of his head with his palm.
Of course—
that
is why I am ordered here
. Though almost all forty members of his senior class had been there—mostly Baltic Germans with a sprinkling of Russians, Estonians, Poles, and Jews—Alfred had pointedly directed his campaign comments entirely to the German majority and stirred their spirits by speaking of their mission as keepers of the noble German culture. “Keep our race pure,” he had told them. “Do not weaken it by forgetting our noble traditions, by accepting inferior ideas, by mixing with inferior races.” Perhaps he should have stopped there. But he got carried away. Perhaps he had gone too far.

His reverie is interrupted by the opening of the massive ten-foot-high door and Headmaster Epstein’s booming voice, “
Herr Rosenberg, bitte, herein
.”

Alfred enters to see his headmaster and his German teacher seated at one end of a long, dark, heavy wood table. Alfred always feels small in the presence of Headmaster Epstein, over six feet tall, whose stately bearing, piercing eyes, and heavy, well-tailored beard embody his authority.

Headmaster Epstein motions to Alfred to sit in a chair at the end of the table. It is noticeably smaller than the two tall-backed chairs at the other end. The headmaster wastes no time getting to the point. “So, Rosenberg, I’m of Jewish ancestry, am I? And my wife, too, is Jewish, is she? And Jews are an inferior race and should not teach Germans? And, I gather, certainly not be elevated to headmaster?”

No response. Alfred exhales, tries to shrink further into his chair, and hangs his head.

“Rosenberg, do I state your position correctly?”

“Sir . . . uh, sir, I spoke too hastily. I meant these remarks only in a general way. It was an election speech, and I spoke that way because that is what
they wanted to hear.” Out of the corner of his eye, Alfred sees Herr Schäfer slump in his chair, take off his glasses, and rub his eyes.

“Oh, I see. You spoke in a general way? But now here I am before you, not in general but in particular.”

“Sir, I say only what all Germans think. That we must preserve our race and our culture.”

“And as for me and the Jews?”

Alfred silently hangs his head again. He wants to gaze out the window, midway down the table, but looks up apprehensively at the headmaster.

“Yes, of course you can’t answer. Perhaps it will loosen your tongue if I tell you that my lineage and that of my wife are pure German, and our ancestors came to the Baltics in the fourteenth century. What’s more, we are devout Lutherans.”

Alfred nods slowly.

“And yet you called me and my wife Jews,” the headmaster continues.

“I did not say that. I only said there were rumors—”

“Rumors you were glad to spread, to your own personal advantage in the election. And tell me, Rosenberg, the rumors are grounded in what facts? Or are they suspended in thin air?”

“Facts?” Alfred shakes his head. “Uh. Perhaps your name?”

“So, Epstein is a Jewish name? All Epsteins are Jews, is that it? Or 50 percent? Or just some? Or perhaps only one in a thousand? What have your scholarly investigations shown you?”

No answer. Alfred shakes his head.

“You mean that despite your education in science and philosophy in our school you never think about how you know what you know. Isn’t that one of the major lessons of the Enlightenment? Have we failed you? Or you, us?”

Alfred looks dumbfounded. Herr Epstein drums his fingers on the long table, then continues.

“And your name, Rosenberg? Is your name a Jewish name also?”

“I’m sure it is not.”

“I’m not so sure. Let me give you some facts about names. In the course of the Enlightenment in Germany . . .” Headmaster Epstein pauses and then barks, “Rosenberg, do you know when and what the Enlightenment was?”

Glancing at Herr Schäfer and with a prayer in his voice, Alfred answers meekly, “Eighteenth century and . . . and it was the age . . . the age of reason and science?”

“Yes, correct. Good. Herr Schäfer’s instruction has not been entirely lost on you. Late in that century, measures were passed in Germany to transform Jews into German citizens, and they were compelled to choose and pay for German names. If they refused to pay, then they might receive ridiculous names, such as Schmutzfinger or Drecklecker. Most of the Jews agreed to pay for a prettier or more elegant name, perhaps a flower—like Rosenblum—or names associated with nature in some way, like Greenbaum. Even more popular were the names of noble castles. For example, the castle of Epstein had noble connotations and belonged to a great family of the Holy Roman Empire, and its name was often selected by Jews living in its vicinity in the eighteenth century. Some Jews paid lesser sums for traditional Jewish names like Levy or Cohen.

“Now your name, Rosenberg, is a very old name also. But for over a hundred years it has had a new life. It has become a common Jewish name in the Fatherland, and I assure you that if, or when, you make the trip to the Fatherland, you will see glances and smirks, and you will hear rumors about Jewish ancestors in your bloodline. Tell me, Rosenberg, when that happens, how will you answer them?”