Netherlands ... they therefore must enjoy, possess, and profit by the condi-
tions, rights, and advantages provided by the Treaties of Peace and
Navigation.” This decree placed Jewish and Christian merchants on a nearly
equal footing.
For some crypto-Jews, the return to normative Judaism was difficult.
Crypto-Jews, while living ostensibly as Catholics, recognized religious rituals
as superficial. They and their families had observed them without regard to
their meaning, in some cases for multiple generations. The character of crypto-
Judaism was based almost entirely on an inner feeling of being Jewish, not on
an array of rules and rituals. Having embraced Catholicism only superficially,
if at all, they had no desire to replace one set of empty rituals with another.
Moreover, they saw no reason to live in an even minimally insular or separate
Jewish community.
Not surprisingly, clashes occurred between former crypto-Jews and the
Jewish community of Amsterdam, including three well-known cases: Uriel
da Costa, Juan de Prado, and Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza. Uriel da Costa
(1585–1640) was born in Oporto, Portugal, into a family that had been
converted to Catholicism several generations earlier. As a young man, he
was restive in the Christian faith. He persuaded his family to move to
Amsterdam, where they returned to Judaism. In 1624, he began to embrace
rationalistic, anticlerical doctrines and to criticize Rabbinic Judaism. He
was tried by the Jewish community, and then imprisoned and excommuni-
cated. In 1633, he recanted, but soon resumed his heretical behavior and
was again excommunicated. In 1640, he recanted for a second time, but this
time he was subjected to public humiliation. Rather than endure further
trouble, he committed suicide. His inner angst is known to us through an
autobiographical sketch that was published posthumously in 1687,
Exemplar humanae vitae:
I had not been [in Amsterdam] long before I observed that the customs
and ordinances of the modern Jews were quite different from those com-
manded by Moses. Now if the law was to be observed according to the
letter ... the Jewish interpreters are not justified in adding interpreta-
tions. Quite the contrary. This provoked me to oppose them openly.Less dramatic but no less illustrative was the case of Juan de Prado
(1615–70). Born into a family of crypto-Jews in Spain, he eventually moved
to Amsterdam and returned to Judaism. Soon afterward, though, he
embraced deism, denied revelation, and rejected the authority of the Talmud
and core Jewish beliefs, such as concepts of chosenness and resurrection dur-
ing the Messianic Age. In 1656, he was excommunicated, but recanted. In
1657, he was excommunicated again. This time, he moved to Antwerp and
converted to Christianity.
140 The age of enlightenment and emancipation, 1750–1880