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This essay seeks to reconsider the relation of the universal-rational ethos of Spinoza’s thought to the Jewish tradition and culture in which he was raised and socially situated. In particular, I seek to engage with two previous portrayals—specifically, those of Isaac Deutscher and Yirmiyahu Yovel—that present Spinoza’s universalism as arising from his break from or transcendence of Judaism, where the latter is cast primarily (along with Christianity) as a historical-particular and therefore non-universal tradition. In seeking a potential source of Spinoza’s orientation, Yovel points Marrano culture, as a sub-group that was already alienated from both mainstream Judaism and mainstream Christianity. By contrast, I argue that there are key elements of pre-Spinoza Jewish-rabbinic conceptuality and material culture that already enact a profoundly universalist ethos, specifically in contrast to more parochialist or particularist ethical dynamics prevalent in the culture of Christendom at the time. We will see, furthermore, that the Marrano dynamics that Yovel fruitfully highlights in fact have much in common with dynamics that were already in place in non-Marrano Jewish tradition and culture. As such, we will see that Spinoza’s thought can be understood not only as manifesting a Marrano-like dynamic in the context of rational-philosophical discourse, but also as preserving a not dissimilar Jewish-rabbinic dynamic at the same time. This, in turn, will point to new possibilities for tracing this latter dynamic through the subsequent history of modern philosophy and modern Jewish thought.

This essay examines the concept of shelilat hagalut (negation of exile/Diaspora) and argues that in many ways, the political and structural changes entailed in the granting of citizenship to Jews in modern Western nation-states can be viewed as already constituting a negation of galut well before the emergence of Zionism. Through comparison to traditional rabbinic conceptions of Jewish communal-national status, we will see that the modern insistence upon national identification with a geographically bounded nation-state constituted a direct undermining of previous theopolitical conceptions of Israel as a geographically unbounded \"nation in exile.\" In light of this reframing, the usage in contemporary discourse of \"center\" and \"Diaspora\" is shown largely to constitute a false binary that generates unproductive and interminable dispute between \"diasporists\" and classical Zionist \"centralists.\" By contrast, clarifying the ways in which ideologies of European emancipation and of Zionism have both been complicit in negating galut can aid in producing better understandings of the relation between past and present Jewish culture and conceptuality, and in enabling more fruitful intellectual efforts to engage presently unresolved conflicts in the spheres of Jewish politics, culture, and identity.

[...]Daniel Weiss examines the concept of shelilat hagalut (negation of exile/Diaspora) and argues that, even before the rise of Zionism, the political changes entailed by the granting of modern state citizenship to Jews can be seen as negating the geographic universalism affirmed by previous Jewish understandings of national-communal identity, and that modern forms of \"diasporism\" may be just as complicit in negating galut as are more \"center-focused\" Jewish frameworks.

Kenneth McGee describes the important role that the financial aid office plays in the achievement of institutional enrollment management goals and provides examples that can assist financial aid offices in supporting those goals.