Is a Talmudic Sensibility the Key to Interpreting Spinoza?

One of the perennial questions asked by scholars of the great 17th-century philosopher Benedict Spinoza is what, and how much, to make of the Jewish upbringing he thoroughly rejected. Yitzhak Melamed, a philosophy professor who has similarly distanced himself from his ultra-Orthodox upbringing, has written a forceful reinterpretation of Spinoza’s thought that seeks to overturn much 20th-century scholarship on the subject. His special target is the late Harry Austryn Wolfson, himself a “talmudic prodigy turned unbeliever,” who discerned a talmudic mind at work in Spinoza’s thought processes. In his review of Melamed’s book, Michah Gottlieb wonders if the two former yeshiva students turned scholars have something in common (free registration required):