Life As Creation: A Jewish Way of Thinking About the World

by Shalom Freedman

Overview

Life as Creation: A Jewish Way of Thinking about the World is a collection of aphorisms centered around the biblical concept of creation. It is a collection of provocative thoughts centered on themes such as Creation and Chosenness, Ultimate Limitations in Human Creative Powers, and Creation as Making One's Own Life in Freedom. It is a meditation intended to help the reader understand the purpose of life as a creative being.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461662457
Publisher:	Aronson, Jason Inc.
Publication date:	06/01/1993
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	139
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Shalom (Seymour) Freedman is a Jewish writer who has worked for many years in Israel.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Prayer as Preface
An Additional Word to the Reader

I Mankind in Creation
1. An Essential Quality of Mankind Is the Capacity for Creation
2. Making Goodness Predominant in Creation
3. Creation and Chosenness
4. The Chosenness of Peoples in Creation: Secondary Chosenness
5. Chosenness in Creation and Human Remembrance
6. Moral and Cultural Creation and Historical Redemption
7. Creation as Ongoing Process of Mankind as a Whole
8. Ultimate Limitations in Human Creative Powers
9. Further Limitations in the Creation of Mankind: The Creature in the Middle
10. Creation and the Overall Development of Mankind
II Jewish Creation
11. The Jews and Religious Creation
12. The Jews' Re-Creation of Themselves in History
13. The Jewish Conception of the Relation between Generations
14. Jewish People as People of Creation
15. Certain Characteristics of Jewish Creation and Creators
16. Jewish Creation: Interaction with and Learning from Other Peoples
17. Jewish Creation and Hatred of Jews
18. Jewish Creation and the Ongoing Struggle for Survival
19. Creation and the State of Israel
20. Jewish Creation and Human Redemption

III God and Creation
21. God's Justice and the World-to-Come
22. The Need for God
23. God's Providence
24. Creation and Obedience to God
25. Consciousness and Creation
26. The Mind of God
27. The Mind of God: A Comparison of Divine and Human Methods of Creation
28. Creating Greater Goodness
29. God and the Mysteries of Creation
30. Creation and the Day of Rest

IV Creation and the Everyday Moral Life
31. Life and Sacred Text that Must be Read Over and Over
32. Creation as Making One's Own Life in Freedom
33. To Create Our Own Destiny
34. Creation and Everyday Life
35. Choosing Good and Sanctifying Everyday Life
36. Creation and Family Life
37. Creation and Everyday Work Life
38. Creation Gives Meaning to Life
39. The Working of the Creative Process in Everyday Life
40. The Individual's Re-creation of His Own Moral Character in Everyday Life

V. Creation and the Life of the Mind
41. Interpreting, Understanding, and Re-creating Reality
42. History as a Struggle for Control of the Consciousness of Mankind
43. Knowing Everything and Creating a True Picture of the World
44. The Place of Contradiction in Any Understanding We Have of Ultimate Reality
45. Making a True Picture of the World through Recreation of Various "Times"
46. Re-creating the Lives of Others
47. To Know Oneself
48. The Creation of an Ideal Self
49. A Kind of Ideal Creator: The In-Between Man
50. Creation and the Hidden Powers of the Self

VI Literary Creation
51. Creation in Life and/or Literature
52. The Writer's Immortalization of Those He Loves through Literature
53. Creation and the Striving of the Creator for His Own Immortalization
54. Love and Creation
55. Frustrations of Creation
56. Rejection and the Fortunate Failure
57. Loneliness, Suffering, and Creation
58. Striving for Greatness in Creation
59. Creation and Literary Greatness
60. The Ideal Literary Creation: Tanach