One of my very favourite organizations, the Hildebrand Project, has just released this little book titled The Personalism of John Paul II.
I read it today and here’s the brief review I wrote of it on Amazon: Continue reading “Book: The Personalism of John Paul II”
Today is the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, which is a feast day the Church initiated in by Pope Pius XII in 1955 as a counter-celebration to the communists’ May Day. Continue reading “What to celebrate?”
On this date in 1977, Shimon Peres became the 8th Prime Minister of Israel. As Shmuel Rosner wrote in this New York Times article, “Mr. Peres began his life in Vishneva, a village on the border of modern-day Poland and Belarus. When he left for Palestine in 1934, under his original name, Shimon Persky, his grandfather told him, ‘Be a Jew, forever!’ The grandfather, along with much of his family, perished in the Holocaust.” Continue reading ““Be a Jew, forever!””
Today my friend and I had a socially distanced picnic on the front lawn of the church behind my house because this is something that is still permitted and it’s worthwhile to relish the opportunities we do have amidst the circumscription of our freedom. Continue reading “Relishing freedom”
What a silly, inverted question. And what could possibly make me ask it?
The answer is this anecdote at the end of Aharon Appelfeld’s memoir Table for One: Under the Light of Jerusalem: Continue reading “Does your city inhabit you?”
Every now and again someone will ask me how my parents and brother are doing in Calgary amidst the pandemic and I laugh to myself because my parents have been thoroughly home-based for more than thirty years.
Continue reading “My parents have been #StayingHome for 30+ years”
“Most Jews throughout history have not been free, whether from murderous regimes or famines or pandemics. What we have been is devoted to the idea that we deserve to be.” – Alana Newhouse
This article from which I quoted above is one of my favourites I’ve read recently. In it, Alana Newhouse reflects: “The Passover Seder centers on the experience of being thrust out of our homes, but these days we feel trapped inside of them. The story involves miraculous plagues that saved us; today we pray for the end of one. There’s the commandment to clean our homes of all non-Passover food, which we just spent innumerable hours and dollars hoarding.” Continue reading “We keep celebrating”
