ABSTRACT
In the teaching of the Rabbis it was customary to identify torah with wisdom as the highest goal of man’s intellectual strivings. The study of the torah if carried far enough would lead to the attainment of wisdom; and conversely the Jew who desired to attain wisdom would seek it through the medium of the study of the torah. This idea was accepted by practically all Jews, up to the middle of the eighteenth century. There might be differences of opinion as to the precise part of the torah literature in which wisdom was to be found, whether the Bible, or the Talmud, or the Zohar. But that the secret was contained in one or other of these was never denied. The one man who did openly deny it, Baruch Spinoza, was unable to remain within the community.
