Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam

This guide to the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam traces the 1656 excommunication of Baruch Spinoza, then a twenty-three-year-old son of a merchant in this Sephardic congregation, whose opinions the community condemned before he had published a word or become known as a philosopher. It follows the synagogue built nineteen years later, still lit by a thousand candles with no electricity ever wired in, through the Inquisition and Nazi occupation. Listen for how the congregation has treated the ban ever since.