Work · Portrait of the Banned · Freedom and Unity

"The Last Pages from the Diary of Uriel Acosta"

The banned man writes the diary of a banned man: freedom of conscience versus the unity of the people

AZR, upon whom the rabbis of Safed pronounced a ban (nidui) following his story "On the Ruinations of the Halukkah" (see "The Safed Ban Affair"), chose to write the imagined final diary of Uriel Acosta, the most famous banned Jewish heretic of 17th-century Amsterdam. Yet AZR does not write a simple manifesto of free thought: he bends Acosta through his own doctrine of unity — the tragedy lies between the conscience of the individual and solidarity with a suffering people. Primary source, AZR Literary work (fiction, not documentation)

A A Banned Man Writes a Banned Man

Uriel Acosta (1585–1640), a former converso who returned to Judaism, rose up against the rabbinic tradition, was excommunicated twice by the Amsterdam community, finally submitted to a humiliating ceremony of penance, and took his own life. AZR imagines the last pages of his diary. He opens with the loneliness of the banned:

"About a month has passed since they proclaimed the ban upon me, and I sit solitary, shut up in the house, for I fear to walk abroad by day, lest the unruly boys stone me." AZR, "The Last Pages from the Diary of Uriel Acosta" (Collected Writings, vol. 2, Jubilee Committee, 5694/1934), Ben-Yehuda read/21436.

In his fury at the "slaves of habit," at "a commandment of men learned by rote, by which they are drawn like a bull, an ox drawing in the yoke," he scorns especially the enlightened who choose servitude out of flattery to the crowd, and his hypocritical brother Yosef, who became the chief of his accusers.

B Loneliness and Longing

But hatred is not the whole story. AZR's Acosta is torn between contempt for society and a deep need for it — here the voice of AZR, the man "between the worlds," is already audible:

"I hate them and I also fear them, lest they stone me; and yet my heart is drawn after them like water… Human society is as necessary to a person as air for breathing." Ibid.

C Love Against Conscience

One night Acosta rescues a dying old man, the synagogue beadle, and falls in love with his daughter, Hadassah. But the father sets a condition:

"Better for us death than to accept a favor from a man banned from the congregation of Israel… Let him strive to have the rabbis lift the ban from him, and then I will receive him with love." Ibid.

And here is the rupture: between the fire of truth and the fire of love. Acosta knows that to grovel means to lie — "Shall I ask them to forgive me, in their grace, a sin I did not commit?… It is not you who were right; rather, you have condemned the righteous!" — and yet:

"The fire of love for the beloved Hadassah — this fire will quench the fire of the war of opinions that has burned in me all along. I must now have the ban removed from me… come what may!" Ibid.

D The Turn: The People's Suffering and Unity

Here AZR Rewrites Acosta

On his way to the rabbi to ask forgiveness, Acosta enters the study house and hears a preacher describing the calamities of Israel in every land — expulsion, Inquisition, the stake. The preacher also attacks those who "bring out an evil report of our people and our faith to our Christian neighbors in pamphlets and books" — that is, Acosta himself. And instead of rebelling, Acosta unites:

"Then my soul suddenly yearned to be one of my people and to bear together with them the yoke of exile; and a spirit suddenly drew me to unite even with the banning rabbis, who are themselves sons of a people drawn out and plucked bare." Ibid.

And when he confesses before the rabbi, "in truth I was at that moment full of remorse, that I had come to stir up strife in Israel at an hour when they need unity and peace." This is precisely AZR's doctrine — the unity of the nation against the "divisions" (see "We Are All Jews" and "AZR, Gordon, and the Joy of Labor"). The historical Acosta was a martyr of free thought; AZR's Acosta breaks (also) out of love of the people and mutual responsibility.

E The Ban, the Remorse, and the End

The rabbi diagnoses the root sin sharply, as if probing his conscience:

"Behold, the beginning of your sin is pride. You grew proud of your intellect and said in your heart: I am wiser than all the sages of Israel… And now, as you come to repent, you must first remove the pride from your heart entirely." Ibid. And Acosta in his heart: "One may deviate for the sake of the ways of peace, I thought to myself."

But the ceremony of penance crushes him: public confession, lashes while stripped bare, and lying upon the threshold of the synagogue while the congregation steps over him. And here the break is not over the zealots but over himself:

"In the presence of the whole congregation I confessed… my sin — that I had spoken the truth!… And I, in my own eyes, was despised and loathsome! What use to me is the honor that others grant me, if I cannot honor myself?" Ibid. And at the last: "I deserve death, and I am indeed going to die… Farewell, Hadassah… you are pure as the very heavens, and I — filth and refuse…"

A personal resonance: AZR himself was banned in Safed by zealot rabbis (over "On the Ruinations of the Halukkah"; see "The Safed Ban Affair"). A banned man writing the diary of a banned man — but from his own singular stance: not a swaggering defense of free thought against the rabbis, but a bipolar tragedy of conscience versus unity. Acosta is close to his heart (the truth, the loneliness, the persecuted genius), but AZR, unlike Acosta, chose both worlds together (see "AZR and Brenner, the Brenner Affair," "AZR and Rav Kook"). Fiction, not testimony See its heroic twin: "Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees" — the individual who prevails.