Dr. Samuel Rodrigues Pereira, Chief Rabbi of the Amsterdam Sephardic community, made it clear today that he saw no reason why the excommunication decree passed on Baruch Spinoza, the famed Dutch Jewish philosopher, 300 years ago, should be revoked.
A lifting of the excommunication of Spinoza was proposed recently by David Ben Gurion, former Premier of Israel, but Dr. Pereira said today he saw no reason for such an action. Spinoza’s ideas, he said, were completely “non-Jewish.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
