The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom Read Free Book Online Page A

Gabriel, both quickly receding from him.
    Glancing at Gabriel’s puffy, pallid face, Bento broke the silence. “You slept poorly again, Gabriel? I felt you thrashing about.”
    “Yes, again. Bento, how can I sleep? Nothing is good now. What’s to be done? What’s to be done? I hate the trouble between us. Here, this morning, I dress for the Sabbath. The sun shines for the first time this week, there is some blue sky above, and I should feel joy, like everyone else, like our neighbors on every side. Instead, because of my own brother—forgive me, Bento, but I will burst if I do not speak. Because of you my life is miserable. There is no joy in going to my own synagogue to join my own people to pray to my own God.”
    “I am grieved to know that, Gabriel. I yearn for your happiness.”
    “Words are one thing. Actions are another.”
    “What actions?”
    “What actions?” exclaimed Gabriel. “And to think that for so long, for my whole life, I used to believe you knew everything. To someone else asking such a question, I’d say, ‘You’re joking,’ but I know you never joke. Yet surely you know what actions I mean.”
    Bento sighed.

    “Well, let’s start with the action of rejecting Jewish customs, and rejecting even the community. And then the action of dishonoring the Sabbath. And turning away from the synagogue and donating practically nothing this year—those are the kinds of actions I mean.”
    Gabriel looked at Bento, who remained silent.
    “I’ll give you more actions, Bento. Only last night the action of saying no to Sabbath dinner at Sarah’s home. You know I’m going to marry Sarah, yet you will not link the two families by joining us for the Sabbath. Can you imagine how it feels for me? For our sister, Rebekah? What excuse can we offer? Can we say that our brother prefers Latin lessons with his Jesuit?”
    “Gabriel, it is better for everyone’s digestion that I do not come. You know that. You know that Sarah’s father is superstitious.”
    “Superstitious?”
    “I mean extreme-orthodox. You’ve seen how my presence incites him into religious disputation. You’ve seen how any response I offer merely sows more discord and more pain for you and for Rebekah. My absence serves the cause of peace—of that I have no doubt. My absence equals peace for you and for Rebekah. More and more I think of that equation.”
    Gabriel shook his head, “Bento, remember when I was a child, I sometimes got scared because I imagined the world disappeared when I closed my eyes? You corrected my thinking. You reassured me about reality and the eternal laws of Nature. Yet now you make the same mistake. You imagine that discord about Bento Spinoza vanishes when he is not present to witness it?
    “Last night was painful,” Gabriel continued. “Sarah’s father began the meal by talking about you. Once again he was furious that you bypassed our local Jewish court and turned your lawsuit over to the Dutch civil court. No one else in memory, he said, has ever insulted the rabbinical court in that fashion. It’s almost basis for an excommunication. Is that what you want? A cherem ? Bento, our father is dead; our older brother is dead. You’re the head of the family. Yet you insult us all by turning to the Dutch court. And your timing! Could you at least have waited till after the wedding?”
    “Gabriel, I have explained again and again, but you have not heard me. Listen again, so that you may know all the facts. And, above all, please try to understand that I take my responsibility to you and Rebekah seriously.
Consider my dilemma. Our father, blessed be he, was generous. But he erred in judgment when he guaranteed a note held by that greedy usurer, Duarte Rodriguez, for the grieving widow Henriques. Her husband, Pedro, had been a mere acquaintance of our father, not even a relative nor, as far as I know, a close friend. None of us have ever met him or her, and it is a mystery why our father undertook to