Article
The Future of Creativity in Jewish Law and Thought (1993)
We Jews are a very creative people. About 8 weeks ago, the week before Pesach, I was in Beijing, China, at a "cultural exchange," the first in history, between fifteen Chinese scholars and nine Jews. It was a marvelous, mind blowing event. And in the private talks we had after the formal lectures were delivered, one of the Chinese scholars asked, "We Chinese know very little about you Jews. Tell me; other than the three greatest Jews whom all of us know about, who are the heroes of Jewish history?״ We asked him, "Who are the three greatest Jews whom everyone knows about?" He shrugged his shoulders and said, "obviously, Marx, Einstein, and Kissinger." We all laughed, and the perplexed Chinese did not know why. Later on I concluded that we ought not to have laughed. If you asked a typical American Jew, he would say: "Marx, Einstein, and Freud." The point is that all three, all four actually—Marx, Einstein, Freud, and Kissinger—were highly creative people. (Certainly that was so subjectively, even though objectively at least one of them was highly destructive.) That is my theme—Creativity. And I shall focus tonight not on general creativity, not on Jews who were creative for the rest of mankind, but specifically on Jewish spiritual, intellectual, and religious creativity. This is so very appropriate for the tenth Yahrzeit of the memory of that dearly beloved Jamie a"h. I do remember him as a brilliant student in Camp Morasha. He was an extraordinary young man. I also know that when he was much younger, really a little boy, he would walk around with the New York Times, and while everyone else was involved with childish pranks and activities, he would be reading either the editorial page or the stock market page. I'm told by members of the family that when he was even younger than that he published a little newspaper that went to the family in which he discussed politics. He certainly was a very creative young man. We have been told that the Book of Ruth was prominent i…
