Have you ever played a musical instrument, or have you recently had to harangue a child to practice theirs?

If the difficult early efforts to produce harmony and rhythm on a musical instrument are part of your experience,

then it will be a little easier

for you to understand the big idea that Leon Cass is wrestling with in the essay that we're discussing

today. His essay is not about music, of course. It's about the prerequisites of freedom,

the capacities of character and will that women and men need in order to enjoy freedom

without descending into disorder. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

My guest today, Dr. Leon Kass, has those capacities of character in mind when he interprets

the biblical text that describes the preparations the

Israelites must undertake before their exodus from Egypt. And that's where music comes in.

The Catholic theologian George Weigel once wrote that anyone can bang away on a piano,

but that is to make noise, not music, and it's a barbaric, not humanistic

expression of freedom. At first, learning to play the piano is a matter of some drudgery,

as we master exercises that seem like a constraint, a burden. But as our mastery grows, we discover

a new, richer dimension of freedom.

We can play the music we like.

We can even create new music on our own.

Freedom, in other words, is a matter of gradually acquiring the capacity to choose the good

and to do what we choose with perfection.

In the rituals and constraints that would in the course of

Jewish tradition eventually become law, Cass hears something much like the musical scales of a novice.

Still in articulate, a novice who does not yet have the ability to produce coherent musical

...