[Avodah] John Locke and Tzedaqa

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 04:44:08PM -0500, David Riceman wrote:
: How would Avraham's bris with Avimelech fit this paradigm? Yaakov's bris 
: with Lavan?

I fail to see the problem. In fact in the latter case, it was clear
from Lavan's reaction with "yigar sahadusa" and invoking the gods of
their ancestors that Lavan understood a beris to be creating a new
unified entity. More unified than Yaaqov's intent.

...
: I guess that you mean King George.  They didn't abandon duty based 
: government, they left it at the state level (my own home state, 
: Massachusetts, still fined people for not attending church until the mid 
: 1800s).

This is drifting off topic, but see what I later wrote contrasting
constitutional law with halalhah. One is about guaranteeing limits, so
that rights aren't abrogated, the other is about mitzvos asei and
mitzvos lo saasei. Which are must like duties, if it were not that
the Torah is a beris rather than a contract. By "duty" I mean an
obligation to the other, and the Torah isn't framed in terms of keeping
other Jews as full "others".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It's nice to be smart,
micha at aishdas.org        but it's smarter to be nice.
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