Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/24

xviii Samuel de Casseres. Michael had also lost three other children, and only two of his six children, namely, Benedict and a daughter, Rebekah (born of the first marriage), survived him when he died shortly afterwards, in 1654.

The childhood of Spinoza was no doubt happy enough. Until he was five he would be entirely under his mother's care, as was the Jewish custom. Then his school-life would begin, with its quaint introductory ceremonial. The ceremony connected with the little boy s entrance into school-life was probably one of the last, and happiest, of the poor mother's experiences. It was performed partly in school and partly in the Synagogue, of which his father was Warden at the time. According to traditional custom, three cakes of fine flour and honey were baked for the boy by a young maiden, and fruit was provided in profusion. One of his father's learned friends would carry him in his arms to the Synagogue, where he would be placed on the reading-dais while the Ten Commandments were read from the Scroll of the Law. Then he would be taken to school to receive his first lesson in Hebrew. Some simple Hebrew verses would be smeared on a slate with honey, and little Baruch would repeat the Hebrew letters, and eat the honey and other dainty things, so that the words of the Law might be sweet to his lips. And then into his mother's arms!

Unfortunately his mother died when Baruch was barely six years old, and, for the next three years or so, he was left to the care of his stepsister, Rebekah, who may not have been more than twelve years of age herself. To judge by subsequent events, there was probably not much love lost between Rebekah and Baruch. For, when their father died in 1654, she did her utmost to prevent Benedict from receiving his share of the inheritance, and he went to law, though he let her keep nearly everything after he had won the lawsuit. At his death also her conduct was not