![]() “We are looking forward to welcoming you.” “We do hope that you will decide to pursue your plans to come to Amsterdam to do your work as requested,” Minco and Schrijver wrote in the letter. Serfaty’s decision has been overturned, they wrote, and Melamed is welcome to visit the synagogue and its library. “I therefore deny your request and declare you persona non grata in the Portuguese Synagogue complex.”īut Serfaty acted without approval from the board of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, a city-funded institution that runs the Jewish Museum of Amsterdam and the non-religious components of the synagogue, according to Minco and Schrijver, the head of the board of directors of the synagogue and the head of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, respectively. You have devoted your life to the study of Spinoza’s banned works and the development of his ideas,” Serfaty wrote. The ban “remains in force and cannot be rescinded. ![]() Rabbi Joseph Serfaty last week rejected Melamed’s request in a letter that the scholar posted on Facebook. ![]() Melamed sought access to the synagogue to make a documentary about Spinoza, whom the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicated in 1656 for writings that it deemed heretic. “We regret that a perfectly normal request to visit the premises of the Portuguese Synagogue has led to an international uproar,” Michael Minco and Emile Schrijver wrote on Tuesday to the scholar, Yitzhak Melamed, a professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. ![]() AMSTERDAM ( JTA) - An organization responsible for Amsterdam’s historic Portuguese Synagogue has apologized to a scholar whom a resident rabbi last week declared persona non grata due to a centuries-old edict against the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. ![]()
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