Aphorisms by Shalom Freedman
Posted on September 28, 2008
Filed Under Aphorisms |
Shalom Freedman has loved aphorisms all his life, and cites some auspicious sources of inspiration in the Jewish wisdom tradition. “The one book which is aphoristic in flavor which struck me earliest on is Pirke Avot (Ethics of the Fathers),” he says. “Also, I return and read again and again in Ecclesiastes (’Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.’)” He is the author of Life as Creation: A Jewish Way of Thinking about the World (Jason Aronson Inc., 1993). His more recent aphoristic inspirations include Lincoln, Kafka, and Borges. “Aphorisms in their density connect in my mind with a certain kind of poetry,” Mr. Freedman says. “Getting there firstest with the mostest meaning.” Here are some of Mr. Freedman’s firstests with the mostests:
‘Virtual’ immortality is now guaranteed to all of us. But no one really knows for how long.
There are just so many things a person can effectively do at one time, probably no more than one.
Atheists are usually not content with denying the existence of God. They feel compelled to prove how much they hate Him.
The purposeless pleasure of endless play is the pointless paradise of meaningless mankind.
The infinite future is more frightening than the finite past.
We are so small we are not even noise for most of the universe.
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4 Responses to “Aphorisms by Shalom Freedman”
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Some books pull you along like a powerful engine. Ohters you have to get out of from time to time and push uphill yourself.
addendum question re: atheists
and godess worshippers?
Goddess. excuse me
My belief and experience is not anthromorphizable, However I love reading in sacred texts by opening pages in bookstores I have worked in - the most memorable was opening Gershom Scholem’s edition of the Book of Zohar in our row of books by that author at Posman’s on University Place in NYC in 1998 - I have told Buddhist friends my favorite definition of compassion was found in the Book of Zohar at this time:
Compassion is the balance between judgement and love.
We moderns would probably call that the balance between reason and empathy. Now that is a lifelong goal worth contemplating and putting into practice simply in itself.
Just one more addendum in defense of atheists who politically fight separation of church and state and monotheistic Christianity, so that Jewish and Islamic citizens have the liberty to send their children to public schools or go into courts and all kinds of public spaces and not have to be surrounded by this as a monoculture in the US and other European countries. Their fight is extraordinarily valuable to freedom of belief and faith, and it sometimes takes this strong a stance politically to benefit others, of all kinds of faiths all over the globe. Brave indeed.