Everything about Uriel Da Costa totally explained
Uriel da Costa (c.
1585 – April
1640) or
Uriel Acosta (from the
Latin form of his
Portuguese surname,
Costa, or
da Costa) was a
philosopher and
skeptic from
Portugal.
Life
Da Costa was born in
Porto with the name
Gabriel da Costa. He hailed from a
converso family that had
converted from
Judaism to
Catholicism in order to avoid the civil
persecutions of Jews. A member of a devoutly
religious family, his father had been a Catholic
priest who was well-versed in
Canon law.
Da Costa also occupied an ecclesiastical office. While a student of canon law, he began to read the
Bible and contemplate it seriously. He was aware that his family had Jewish origins, and in the course of his studies, he began to consider a return to Judaism. After his father died, he began to very carefully reveal his newfound sentiments to his family. Ultimately, in 1617, the whole family decided to return to Judaism; they fled Portugal for
Amsterdam, which would soon become a thriving center of the
Sephardic diaspora.
However, upon arriving in
the Netherlands, Da Costa very quickly became disenchanted with the kind of Judaism he saw in practice there. He came to believe that the
rabbinic leadership was too consumed by
ritualism and
legalistic posturing. In 1624 he published a
book titled
An Examination of the Traditions of the Pharisees which questioned the fundamental idea of the
immortality of the soul. Da Costa believed that this wasn't an idea deeply rooted in biblical Judaism, but rather had been formulated primarily by the Rabbis. The work further pointed out the discrepancies between biblical Judaism and
Rabbinic Judaism; he declared the latter to be an accumulation of mechanical
ceremonies and practices. In his view, it was thoroughly devoid of
spiritual and philosophical concepts.
The book became very controversial and was burned publicly. Da Costa was called before the rabbinic leadership of Amsterdam for uttering
blasphemous views against Judaism and
Christianity. He was fined a significant sum and
excommunicated.
He ultimately fled Amsterdam for
Hamburg,
Germany (also a prominent Sephardic center), where he was ostracized from the local Jewish community. He didn't understand
German, which further compounded his difficulties. Left with no place to turn, in 1633 he returned to Amsterdam and sought a reconciliation with the community. He claimed that he'd go back to being
"an ape amongst the apes"; he'd follow the traditions and practices, but with little real conviction.
However, he soon again began to express
rationalistic and skeptical views; he expressed doubts whether biblical law was divinely sanctioned or whether it was simply written down by
Moses. He came to the conclusion that all
religion was a
human invention. Ultimately he came to reject formalized, ritualized religion. In his view, religion was to be based only on
natural law;
God had no use for empty ceremony. In many ways his beliefs were
Deistic; he believed that God resides in
nature, which is full of
peace and harmony, whereas organized religion is marked by blood,
violence, and strife.
Eventually da Costa came across two Christians who expressed to him their desire to convert to Judaism. In accordance with his views, he dissuaded them from doing so. For the communal leadership of Amsterdam, this was the final straw. He was thus again excommunicated. For seven years he lived in virtual isolation, shunned by his family and loved ones. Ultimately, the loneliness was too much for him to handle, and he again returned to
Holland and recanted.
As a punishment for his
heretical views he was publicly given thirty-nine
lashes at the Portuguese
synagogue in Amsterdam. He was then forced to lie on the floor while the
congregation trampled over him. This left him so demoralized and depressed that he was unable to live with himself. After writing his autobiography,
Exemplar Humanae Vitae (1640), in which he wrote about his experience as a victim of
intolerance, he set out to end the lives of both his cousin and himself. Seeing his relative approach one day, he grabbed a pistol and pulled the trigger. It misfired. Then he reached for another, turned it on himself, and fired, dying, they said, a terrible death.
Ultimately there are many ways to view Uriel da Costa. He has been seen as a crusader of free thought and an early precursor of modern
biblical criticism. Internally to Judaism, he was seen by many as both a troublemaking
heretic and
martyr against the intolerance of the
Orthodox Jewish establishment. He has also been seen as a precursor to
Baruch Spinoza.
Da Costa is also indicative of the difficulty that many
Marranos faced upon their arrival in an organized Jewish community. As a
Crypto-Jew in
Iberia, he read the Bible and was impressed by it. Yet upon confronting an organized Rabbinic community, he wasn't equally impressed by the established ritual and religious doctrine of Rabbinical Judaism, such as the
Oral Law. As da Costa himself pointed out, traditional
Pharisee and Rabbinic doctrine had been contested in the past by the
Sadducees and the
Karaites.
Writings
- Propostas contra a tradição (Portuguese for Propositions against tradition), ca. 1616.
- Exame das tradições farisaicas ((Portuguese for Examination of Pharisaic traditions, 1623. Here, da Costa argues that the human soul isn't immortal.
- Exemplar humanae vitae (Latin for Example of a human life), 1640.
Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta
The
German writer
Karl Gutzkow (
1811–
1878), in 1846, in the midst of the
liberal milieu that led to the
Revolutions of 1848 wrote a play about his life, entitled simply
Uriel Acosta. This would later become the first classic play to be translated into
Yiddish, and would long be a standard of
Yiddish theater. The first translation into Yiddish was by
Osip Mikhailovich Lerner, who staged the play at the
Mariinski Theater in
Odessa,
Ukraine (then part of
Imperial Russia) in 1881, shortly after the
assassination of
Tsar Alexander II.
Abraham Goldfaden rapidly followed with a rival production, an
operetta, at Odessa's
Remesleni Club, and
Israel Rosenberg promptly followed with his own translation for a production in
Łódź (modern-day
Poland). Rosenberg's production starred
Jacob Adler in the title role; the play would remain a signature piece in Adler's repertoire to the end of his stage career, the first of the several roles through which he developed the persona that he referred to as "the Grand Jew".
Hermann Jellinek (brother of
Adolf Jellinek) also wrote a book entitled
Uriel Acosta.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Uriel Da Costa'.
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