¹ Rosenzweig, Franz, “Transposed Fronts,” in Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. Franks, Paul W. and Morgan, Michael L. (Indianapolis, 2000), 146–52Google Scholar. See also Gordon, Peter, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley, 2003)Google Scholar, where “Transposed Fronts” serves as point of departure for Gordon's comparative study. On Cohen see Beiser, Frederick C., Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² On the Davos disputation see Friedman, Michael, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago, 2000)Google Scholar; Skidelsky, Edward, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture (Princeton, 2008), 195–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, Peter, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar.

³ Cohen, Hermann, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Kaplan, Simon (New York, 1972)Google Scholar.

⁴ Rosenzweig, “Transposed Fronts,” 152.

⁵ The relationship between Religion of Reason and the rest of Cohen's system is still debated among scholars, most of whom disagree with Rosenzweig. For a summary of the literature see Poma, Andrea, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Albany, 1997), 157–69Google Scholar. For the most recent rejection of Rosenzweig's thesis see Beiser, Hermann Cohen, 363–5.

⁶ See the historically oriented articles in Gibbs, Robert, ed., Hermann Cohen's Ethics (Leiden, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the postwar demise of Neo-Kantianism see Gordon, Peter, “Science, Finitude, and Infinity: Neo-Kantianism and the Birth of Existentialism,” Jewish Social Studies 6/1 (1999), 30–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ See Krois, John Michael, “Cassirer, Neo-Kantianism and Metaphysics,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 97/4 (1992), 437–53Google Scholar; Gordon, Continental Divide; Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer.

⁸ Hermann Cohen, “The Polish Jew,” in Arthur Cohen, ed., The Jew: Essays from Martin Buber's Journal Der Jude, 1916–1928 (University, AL, 1980), 53–60, at 56.

⁹ For this Numerus Clausus and its impact see Nathans, Benjamin, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 2002), 257–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ On this topic see Dmitrieva, Nina A., “Back to Kant or Forward to Enlightenment: The Particularities and Issues of Russian Neo-Kantianism,” Russian Studies in Philosophy 54/5 (2016), 378–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ For Pasternak's relationship with Cohen see his Safe Conduct: An Autobiography, and Other Writings (New York, 1958), 40–73.

¹² On Rubinstein and Cohen see Lektorsky, Vladislav A., “German Philosophy and Russian Humanitarian Thought: Sergei Rubinstein and Gustav Shpet,” Russian Studies in Philosophy 52/1 (2013), 82–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Bakhtin, Kagan, and Cohen see Clark, Katherina and Holquist, Michael, “Les cercles de Bakhtine,” Esprit 91–2 (1984), 120–27Google Scholar; Brandist, Craig, The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics (London, 2002)Google Scholar; Steinby, Liisa, “Hermann Cohen and Bakhtin's Early Aesthetics,” Studies in East European Thought 63 (2011), 227–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ On Gordin see Léon Poliakov and Rene Bernheim, “Gordin, Jacob,” in Fern Seckbach, ed., Encyclopaedia Judaica: Decennial Book, 1973–1982 (Jerusalem, 1982), 268–9; Emmanuel Levinas, “Jacob Gordin,” in Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Seán Hand (Baltimore, 1990), 167–71; Dmitrieva, Nina, “Biographical and Philosophical Landscapes of Jacob Gordin,” RGGU Bulletin 148/5 (2015), 125–40Google Scholar (Russian).

¹⁴ Key members of Vol′fila included the symbolist poets Adrej Bely and Alexander Blok, sociologist R. Ivanov-Razumnik, Kagan, and its secretary, Aaron Steinberg. Through weekly meetings and public discussions, Vol′fila sought to create a new culture in the wake of the revolution. See Marciallis, Nicoletta, “Bakhtin and His Circle,” Russian Literature 41 (1997), 287–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Jacob Gordin, Untersuchungen zur Theorie des unendlichen Urteils (Berlin, 1929). On the Akademie see David Myers, “The Fall and Rise of Jewish Historicism: The Evolution of the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1919–1934),” Hebrew Union College Annual, 1992, 107–44. On the expulsion of Russian intellectuals see Lesley Chamberlain, The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia (London, 2006).

¹⁶ For Gordin in France see Aslanoff, Cyril, “Jacob Gordin en France: Transfert de savoir ou malentendu culturel?”, Archives juives 38/1 (2005), 43–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Judith Friedlander, Vilna on the Seine: Jewish Intellectuals in France since 1968 (New Haven, 1990), 107–22; Jacob Gordin, Écrits: Le renouveau de la penseé juive en France, ed. Marcel Goldmann (Paris, 1995). On the Paris school see David Banon, L’école de pensée juive de Paris: Le judaïsme revisité sur les bords de Seine (Strasbourg, 2017); Johanna Lehr, La Thora dans la cité: L'émergence d'un nouveau judaiïsme religieux après la Seconde guerre mondiale (Lormont, 2013).

¹⁷ See Beiser, Hermann Cohen, 5, 77–8, 97–8; and full discussion in Mark Kaplowitz, “‘The Gravest Obstacle and Thus a Great Misfortune’: Hermann Cohen's Interpretation of Spinoza” (Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 2010).

¹⁸ On Spinoza's excommunication see Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (New York, 1999).

¹⁹ See Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton, 2012), 35–54; Schwartz, “‘Our Rabbi Baruch’: Spinoza and Radical Jewish Enlightenment,” in Ari Joskowitz and Ethan Katz, eds., Secularism in Question: Jews and Judaism in Modern Times (Philadelphia, 2015), 25–47. Young Cohen was not an exception to this rule—in an 1867 piece on Heine he endorsed a version of Spinoza's “Jewish” pantheism. See Beiser, Hermann Cohen, 42–6.

²⁰ Cohen's first public denunciation of Spinoza occurred in a lecture in 1910, and was discussed in Franz Rosenzweig, “Ein ungerdruckter Vortrag Hermann Cohens über Spinozas Verhältnis zum Judentums,” in Hermann Cohen, Kleinere Schriften (Berlin, 1937), 351–3. Its transcription recently appeared as Cohen, “Spinozas Verhältnis zum Judentum,” in Cohen, Werke XV (Hildesheim, 2009), 347–88. Cohen's change of attitude generated diverse explanations. Rosenzweig and others of his generation saw Cohen's anti-Spinozism as expressing a “return” to Judaism. Later scholars, such as Franz Nauen, argued that Cohen simply did not read Spinoza's Treatise until 1910. Most recently, Beiser argued that while his philosophical break with Spinoza was concurrent with an embrace of Kant, it was Cohen's confrontation with anti-Semitism that led to his public critique of Spinoza. See Franz Rosenzweig, “Einleitung,” in Hermann Cohen, Hermann Cohens jüdische Schriften, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1924), xiii–lxiv. Franz Nauen, “Hermann Cohen's Perceptions of Spinoza: A Reappraisal,” AJS Review 4 (1979), 111–24; Frederick Beiser, “Hermann Cohen's Love/Hate Relationship with Spinoza, 1867–1915,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 25/2 (2018), 101–20.

²¹ See Hermann Cohen, “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum,” in Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1924), 290–372. References will follow Cohen, Spinoza on State and Religion, Judaism and Christianity, trans. Robert Schine (Jerusalem, 2014).

²² Cohen, Spinoza, 49, italics in the original.

²³ Ibid., 27.

²⁴ See Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, in Spinoza, Complete Works, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis, 2002), 383–583, at 443.

²⁵ On Cohen's argument see Steven S. Schwarzschild, “Do Noachites Have to Believe in Revelation? (A Passage in Dispute between Maimonides, Spinoza, Mendelssohn and H. Cohen). A Contribution to a Jewish View of Natural Law: The textual Question,” Jewish Quarterly Review 52/4 (1962), 297–308.

²⁶ Cohen, Spinoza, 43.

²⁷ For extended discussion see Shira Billet, “Between Jewish Law and State Law: Rethinking Hermann Cohen's Critique of Spinoza,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 25/2 (2018), 139–70.

²⁸ On Cohen's first deployment of this concept see Dana Hollander, “Ethical–Political Universality Out of the Sources of Judaism: Reading Hermann Cohen's 1888 Affidavit in and out of Context,” in Aaron Hughes and Elliot Wolfson, eds., New Directions in Jewish Philosophy (Bloomington, 2010), 229–49.

²⁹ Cf. Beiser, “Cohen's Love/Hate Relationship with Spinoza.”

³⁰ Cohen, Spinoza, 49.

³¹ Ibid., 50.

³² Ibid., 58.

³³ Ibid., 49, italics in the original.

³⁴ See Rosenzweig, “Ein ungerdruckter”; Beiser, “Cohen's Love/Hate Relationship with Spinoza.”

³⁵ See David Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza: A Study of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (Leiden, 2011).

³⁶ For responses to Cohen see Schwartz, The First Modern Jew, 137–42. On Strauss's early years see Eugene R. Sheppard, Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile (Waltham, MA, 2006).

³⁷ Leo Strauss, “Cohens Analyse der Bibel-Wissenschaft Spinozas,” Der Jude 8/5–6, (1924), 295–314. References will follow Strauss, “Cohen's Analysis of Spinoza's Bible Science,” in Leo Strauss: The Early Writings (1921–1932), trans. and ed. Michael Zank (New York, 2002), 140–61. Der Jude was associated with cultural Zionism and its readership included many German Jewish intellectuals. See Arthur Cohen, “Introduction,” in Cohen, The Jew, 3–16.

³⁸ Strauss, “Cohen's Analysis,” 143.

³⁹ Ibid., 152.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 157. Strauss implicitly confronted Cohen's antinationalistic views of Judaism with a political Zionist position for which Judaism is primarily a political rather than a religious entity. On Strauss's Zionism see Jerry Muller, “Leo Strauss: The Political Philosopher as a Young Zionist,” Jewish Social Studies 17/1 (2010), 88–115. For a comparison of Strauss, Cohen, and Carl Schmitt on Spinoza, politics, and Judaism see Michael Rosenthal, “Spinoza and the Crisis of Liberalism in Weimar Germany,” Hebraic Political Studies 3/1 (2008), 94–112.

⁴¹ Strauss, “Cohen's Analysis,” 157.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 159.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 159–60. Strauss, I suggest, drew on Rosenzweig's then recent characterization of Jewish thought as “apologetic,” being a secondary reflection on Jewish lived experience. Rosenzweig also discussed “good” and “bad” apologetics, and for Strauss, Cohen's was certainly of the latter type. See Franz Rosenzweig, “Apologetic Thinking,” in Rosenzweig, Philosophical and Theological Writings, 95–108. On Strauss and Rosenzweig see Samuel Moyn, “From Experience to Law: Leo Strauss and the Weimar Crisis of the Philosophy of Religion,” History of European Ideas 33/2 (2007), 174–94.

⁴⁶ Strauss, “Cohen's Analysis,” 161.

⁴⁷ Thirty years later Strauss did address, and reject, Cohen's discussion of the Noachide. See Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York, 1965), 18–28.

⁴⁸ Strauss's review concluded by commending Cohen for challenging the image of Spinoza “drawn by German romanticism and copied by Jewish romanticism.” Strauss, “Cohen's Analysis,” 161.

⁴⁹ See Myers, “The Fall and Rise of Jewish Historicism.” On Strauss's Akademie hiring see Michael Zank's note in Strauss, Early Writings, 139.

⁵⁰ Leo Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas theologisch-politischem Traktat (Berlin, 1930). Reference will follow Strauss, Spinoza's Critique.

⁵¹ In this, Strauss paved the way for the central thesis in Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (New York, 2001).

⁵² See Strauss, Spinoza's Critique, 144–6, 204–7.

⁵³ Compare Leora Batnitzky, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation (Cambridge, 2006), 95–104; Benjamin Lazier, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton, 2008), 88–92; and Strauss's 1960s statement to that effect in Strauss, Spinoza's Critique, 19.

⁵⁴ See Gordin, Écrits, 331. Sheppard, Leo Strauss, 33.

⁵⁵ These contributions included entries on Halevi, Crescas, and Caspi. On Gordin's Maimonides project see Levinas, “Jacob Gordin,” 169–70.

⁵⁶ For examples see Leo Strauss's Philosophy and Law (Philadelphia, 1987), originally published in 1935.

⁵⁷ Strauss and Gordin remained informed of each other's work during the 1930s through their shared friends, such as Jacob Klein and Alexander Kojève. See Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss–Kojève Correspondence, ed. Victor Gourevitch and Michael S. Roth (Chicago, 2013), 226, 230.

⁵⁸ Gordin, “Benedictus ou maledictus (Le cas Spinoza),” Cahiers juifs 14 (1935), 104–15. I will refer to this article as “The Spinoza Case,” since this became the central title in the republication in 1954 and afterward. On the Cahiers juifs see Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906–1939 (New York, 1979), 188–91. In the rest of this article, unless otherwise noted, translations from French and Hebrew are my own.

⁵⁹ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 105.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Gordin (ibid.) contrasted a mystical reading of Spinozism with its “official” view in the USSR as dialectical, or “naturalist,” materialism. On Spinoza's centrality in Russian Marxist debates during the early twentieth century see George Kline, Spinoza in Soviet Philosophy: A Series of Essays (London, 1952).

⁶² Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 109.

⁶³ Ibid., 106.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Henri Bergson, “L'intuition philosophique,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 19/6 (1911), 809–27.

⁶⁷ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,”105.

⁶⁸ Ibid., 107.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 106.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 107.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² Notably, Gordin ignored Bergson's derivation of Spinoza's intuition from the Ethics in “L'intuition philosophique,” 814.

⁷³ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 107; and Jacob Gordin, “Actualité de Maïmonide,” Cahiers juifs 10 (1934), 6–18.

⁷⁴ Gordin's contemporary, Harry Wolfson, similarly viewed Spinoza as counterscholastic thinker. See Harry Wolfson, “What Is New in Spinoza,” in Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning, vol. 2 (New York, 1969), 331–52.

⁷⁵ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 107, italics in the original.

⁷⁶ For a recent discussion see Yitzhak Melmamed, “Acosmism or Weak Individuals? Hegel, Spinoza, and the Reality of the Finite,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 48 (2010), 77–92.

⁷⁷ See Kaplowitz, “The Gravest Obstacle,” 107–218.

⁷⁸ See Cohen, Religion of Reason, 236–68. On Cohen's messianic idea and philosophy of history see Steven Schwarzschild, “The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen,” Hebrew Union College Annual 27 (1956), 417–38; Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, 235–55.

⁷⁹ On French spiritualism and Bergson see Gary Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2001), 49–83. A testament and study of the interwar interest in Pascal is Dorothy Eastwood, The Revival of Pascal (Oxford, 1936).

⁸⁰ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 109.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Ibid., 115.

⁸³ It seems Gordin saw his analysis here as his main contribution to scholarship on the Treatise. In ibid., 108 n. 5, Gordin described Cohen as having confronted the “legend” of Spinoza. He then mentioned Strauss's 1930 book as the first to note the “doctrinarian” context of the Treatise, which, Gordin implied, was now fully treated by himself.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 110.

⁸⁵ While I cannot pursue this topic here, Gordin's association of Spinoza with Gnosticism partakes in a broader interwar discourse, explored in Lazier, God Interrupted.

⁸⁶ On Wolzogen and Spinoza see Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 205–9.

⁸⁷ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 114.

⁸⁸ Ibid. Gordin's quotes were accompanied by reference to the scholarly Latin and French versions of the Treatise. For these quotes in English see Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 547, 425 respectively.

⁸⁹ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 114.

⁹⁰ Ibid.

⁹¹ Ibid., 115.

⁹² For existentialism in interwar Europe see Edward Barring, “Anxiety in Translation: Naming Existentialism before Sartre,” History of European Ideas 41/4 (2015), 470–88.

⁹³ Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” 107.

⁹⁴ On Gordin's diasporism see Robert Gamzon, “Le garin des E.I.F a Sede Elaou,” Noar, 8 March 1951, 4. For Cohen's see “A Debate on Zionism and Messianism (Summer 1916),” in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Judah Reinharz, eds, The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (New York, 1995), 571–7. While this debate with Buber occurred after Cohen authored Spinoza on State and Religion, the arguments he deployed against Zionism resembled his earlier contentions with Spinoza. Cf. Beiser, Hermann Cohen, 311–17.

⁹⁵ On the Zionist appropriation of Spinoza see Schwartz, The First Modern Jew, 113–54. On Spinoza's “Zionist” speculation see Ze'ev Harvey, “Spinoza's Counterfactual Zionism,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 62 (2013), 235–44.

⁹⁶ On this event see Schwartz, The First Modern Jew, 114–17.

⁹⁷ It is worth noting Gordin's acquaintance with Cohen's Zionist and Spinozist student Jacob Klatzkin, who was chief editor of the German Encyclopaedia Judaica to which Gordin contributed multiple entries. On Klatzkin see Moshe Sole and Samuel Scheps, “Klatzkin, Jacob,” in Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum, eds., Encyclopaedia Judaica (Detroit, 2007), 213–14.

⁹⁸ David Ben-Gurion, “Netaken Ha-Meuvat,” Davar, 25 Dec. 1953, 3. For full English rendering see Ben-Gurion, “Let Us Rectify the Injustice,” in Daniel Schwartz, ed., Spinoza's Challenge to Jewish Thought: Writings on His Life, Philosophy, and Legacy (Waltham, MA, 2019), 119–25.

⁹⁹ Ben-Gurion, “Netaken.”

¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² See Schwartz, The First Modern Jew, 147–53; Yehoshua Manoah, “A Bit of Introspection,” in Schwartz, Spinoza's Challenge, 238–43.

¹⁰³ Jacob Gordin, “Le cas Spinoza,” Evidences 42 (1954), 20–27.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 20. On Poliakov see Annete Wieviorka, “Poliakov, Léon,” Encyclopædia Universalis, at www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/leon-poliakov, accessed 23 July 2018.

¹⁰⁵ See Léon Poliakov, L'auberge des musiciens: Mémoires (Paris, 1981), 147. On the CDJC see Renée Poznanski, “La création du centre de documentation juive contemporaine en France (avril 1943),” Vingtième siècle 63 (1999), 51–63. On Gordin's work at the CDJC see Johanna Lehr, De l’école au maquis: La résistance juive en France (Paris, 2014), 160.

¹⁰⁶ Léon poliakov, Bréviaire de la haine (le IIIe Reich et les juifs) (Paris, 1951), dedication page. Quotes will follow Poliakov, Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe (Syracuse, 1954).

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 302–3.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 306.

¹⁰⁹ Léon Poliakov, Histoire de l'antisémitisme, vol. 1, Du Christ aux juifs de cour (Paris, 1955). I will reference Poliakov, History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 1 (New York, 1965).

¹¹⁰ Poliakov, History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 1, ix.

¹¹¹ Ibid., x.

¹¹² Ibid.

¹¹³ Ibid.

¹¹⁴ Poliakov, History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 2 (New York, 1973), first page.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., 266–78, referencing Gordin in ibid., 270.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., 277.

¹¹⁷ Even as late as 1994, Poliakov still found it crucial to assert, while discussing Spinoza, that despite Ben-Gurion's efforts, the historic ban on Spinoza remains intact. See Léon Poliakov, L'impossible choix: Histoire des crises d'identité juive (Paris, 1994), 43.

¹¹⁸ See the debate on “Spinoza and Us” in consecutive volumes of Trait d'union, April 1954 to Jan. 1956. In this debate, the piece by Levinas, to be discussed below, seems to have been the concluding word. Following Evidences, Gordin's article was also reprinted in the Morrocan-based La voix des communautés, 1 Dec. 1954, 1, 3, 7.

¹¹⁹ Emmanuel Levinas, “Le cas Spinoza,” Trait d'union 34–5 (1955–6), 17–19. Citation will follow Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” in Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 106–10. Prior treatments of this article in the context of Levinas's broader engagement with Spinoza include Dan Arbib, “Les deux voies de Spinoza: L'interprétation levinassienne de l’Éthique et du Traité théologico-politique,” Revue de l'histoire des religions 229/2 (2012), 275–300; Hent de Vries, “Levinas, Spinoza, and the Theologico-political Meaning of Scripture,” in Hent de Vries and L. E. Sullivan, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-secular World (New York, 2006), 232–48. Unlike Arbib, who suggests that Levinas here merely represented Gordin, I take Levinas's own voice and his channeling of Gordin as complementary.

¹²⁰ Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” 106. In French, “Israelites” is synonymous with “Jews.”

¹²¹ Ibid., 107.

¹²² Ibid.,108.

¹²³ Ibid.

¹²⁴ Ibid.

¹²⁵ See Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 398–9, 431. On Spinoza's Christology see, for example, Carlos Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy (Cambridge, 2012), 213–81.

¹²⁶ Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” 108.

¹²⁷ Ibid., 109.

¹²⁸ Ibid.

¹²⁹ Ibid.

¹³⁰ Ibid., 110.

¹³¹ Levinas's case against Ben-Gurion may have been more personal. In his article, Levinas mentions an anonymous Israeli diplomat visiting Paris who rejected a copy of the Talmud (in Yiddish translation) in favor of the Treatise. This clearly symbolized, for Levinas, preference for Spinoza over the rabbis. A similar account by Elie Wiesel suggest that this diplomat was Ben-Gurion himself. See Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (Toronto, 1995), 305. Beyond Ben-Gurion, Levinas had a complex and evolving relationship with the state of Israel, which included criticism as well as staunch support. For a recent interpretation see Annabel Herzog, “Levinas's Ethics, Politics, and Zionism,” in Michael Morgan, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Levinas (New York, 2018), 475–92.

¹³² Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, 1990), 116.

¹³³ On Cohen's misgivings see Kaplowitz, “The Gravest Obstacle.” For Gordin's see Jacob Gordin, “Gott, in der Philosophie der Neuzeit,” in Ismar Elbogen and Jacob Klatzkin, eds., Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 7 (Berlin, 1931), 590–96. On Levinas's see Richard Cohen, Out of Control: Confrontations between Spinoza and Levinas (New York, 2016).

¹³⁴ Levinas further developed his thesis on Spinoza's Talmudic ignorance in “Have You Reread Baruch,” in Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 111–18; and Levinas, “Spinoza's Background,” in Levinas, Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures (Bloomington, 1994), 168–73.

¹³⁵ This link opens new directions for discussing the relationship between Cohen and Levinas. For example, attention to Gordin's mediating role may contribute to the comparative reading of these thinkers on Spinoza in Batnitzky, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas, 80–85.

¹³⁶ In this sense, the case of Cohen's French reception partakes in the wider reception history of German philosophy in twentieth-century France, in which immigrants from Russia played a key role. On this topic see Geroulanos, Stefanos, “Russian Exiles, New Scientific Movements, and Phenomenology: A History of Philosophical Immigrations in 1930s France,” New German Critique 113 (2011), 89–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ethan Kleinberg, Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927–1961 (Ithaca, 2005), 8–9.

¹³⁷ On Deleuze see Ronald Bogue, “Gilles Deleuze,” in Lawrence D. Krizman, ed., The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought (New York, 2006), 492–7. On 1960s French Spinozism see Simon Duffy, “French and Italian Spinozism,” in Rosi Braidotti and Alan D. Schrift, eds., After Poststructuralism: Transitions and Transformations (New York, 2010), 149–68; and Knox Peden, Spinoza contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze (Stanford, 2014). Peden's study presents a broader framework to look at anti-Spinozist tenets in French thought, as well as in Levinas. At the same time, further research is needed to assess the relationship between the localized Ben-Gurion–Gordin debate and 1960s French Spinozism. Notably, the republication of Gordin's article coincided with the lead-up to this significant wave of French Spinozism, in which French Jewish scholars, certainly aware of Gordin's piece, such as Sylvain Zac, Robert Mizrahi, and Israël Salvator Révah, took an active, if sometimes overlooked, part. Additionally, an older scholar of Spinoza and Judaism at CNRS, Henri Sérouya, published a rebuttal to Gordin in the pages of the interdisciplinary Revue de synthèse. See Sérouya, Henri, “Encore le cas Spinoza,” Revue de synthèse 35 (1955), 261–7Google Scholar.

¹³⁸ Slavoj Žižek, Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences (New York, 2004), 33.

¹³⁹ Concerning Derrida, a most pertinent essay is Montag, Warren, “Immanence, Transcendence and the Trace: Derrida between Levinas and Spinoza,” Bamidbar: Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy 1/2 (2011), 26–44Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁰ A discussion of attitudes for and against Spinoza in twentieth-century Jewish thought is beyond the scope of this article. As far as theology is concerned, suffice it to note that figures such as the prominent religious Zionist thinker Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook, as well as Martin Buber, viewed Spinoza's metaphysical monism as affirmatively Jewish. See Martin Buber, “Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi, and the Baal-Shem,” in Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism (New York, 1960), 89–112; and an excerpt from Kook's Jaffa notebooks in Schwartz, Spinoza's Challenge, 205–6.

¹⁴¹ On this question regarding Spinoza see Nadler, Steven, “The Jewish Spinoza,” Journal of the History of Ideas 70/3 (2009), 491–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For recent treatment of Heidegger's philosophy in relation to political views he professed see Mitchell, Andrew and Trawny, Peter, eds., Heidegger's Black Notebooks: Responses to Anti-Semitism (New York, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.