Thought
Freedman’s thought centers on the ongoing struggle of the Jewish people to live a life of Derech Eretz and moral example in the Land of Israel, and to contribute to the wellbeing of mankind as a whole. Central to this vision is the idea of “Creation in Service of God.” Drawing on a fundamental insight of Rabbi Joseph Dov Baer Soloveitchik he sees the Jewish people and mankind as having their essence in being creators who help complete the divine creation. This idea has a further elaboration in a subsequent work of thought “In the Service of God.” There he contends that it is primarily through our actions and decisions in everyday life that the mass of mankind is involved in the divine creation.
Another major dimension of his thought focuses on his meditations on the human condition and future. These are at the heart of his most comprehensive philosophical work, the still-in-process “Thoughts.”
Freedman has also written in other genres, including “thought-stories,” philosophical and religious meditations, essays, novellas, and a variety of autobiographical forms.
Read more about this topic: Shalom Freedman
Famous quotes containing the word thought:
“One who was my companion in my two previous excursions to these woods, tells me that ... he found himself dining one day on moose-meat, mud turtle, trout, and beaver, and he thought that there were few places in the world where these dishes could easily be brought together on one table.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul?—A thought too bold,—a dream too wild.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)