Spinoza and Menasseh ben Israel: Facts and Fictions

An examination of what has been claimed about the relationship between the seventeenth-century philosopher Bento (Benedictus) Spinoza and Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi of the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. The article shows that, despite claims by scholars that Menasseh was Spinoza’s teacher and intellectual mentor, in fact there is no evidence for the former claim, and much evidence that the two men were, intellectually, diametrically opposed on certain important substantive questions.