Re: OFF: law and freedom

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

The meaning of it is, that Law--capital-L Law, Jewish law--is *not* the 
opposite of freedom.  (And perhaps some analogous statement can be made to a 
degree, about secular law, but w/ an *awful* lot of qualifiers...and I'm not 
going there.)  Rather, wisely understood and applied, it can *enable* 
freedom.

Before the Torah, we weren't free to do Shabbes--however one does 
Shabbes--because we didn't know from Shabbes!

Without the Torah, we wouldn't be free to be Jewish--cause we wouldn't know 
what that means.  It wouldn't have any content.  (Just as a Jewish child 
raised w/ zero Jewish content is *less* free rather than freer; (s)he's not 
really free, in any meaningful sense, to be a Jew. (S)he's constrained--less 
free--on account of ignorance).

And so there wouldn't be any Jewish music.

And so there wouldn't be this List.

Or this exchange.

--Robert Cohen


>Brian Dichter wrote:
>
> >
> > "When Law came into the world, freedom came into the world." --Talmud
> >
>
>What is the meaning of this?  That each thing, by the act of its creation, 
>brings
>its opposite into being, as a cookie-cutter leaves an uncookie in the sheet 
>of
>dough?
>
>--
>Owen Davidson
>Amherst  Mass
>Repair, Construction and Design of Musical Instruments



>

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