There had been two kinds of spectacle in the Amsterdam Sephardi synagogue within ten years: the herem laid on Baruch Spinoza, and the dancing on the 9th of Ab with rabbis Aboab and Sarphati clapping their hands. Each of those scenes led forward towards the future of Jews in the modern world. Those highways out of Amsterdam diverged about as widely as they could: one leading to the rejection of legalistic observance, the historicisation of Bible and Talmud, a synagogue car-park kind of Judaism, an ecumenical tiqqun of interfaith bonding; the other leading deep into the heart of the mystery, an
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