Ray of Truth

Memory Presents the Past

“The meaning of what actually happens and appears while it is happening is revealed when it has disappeared; remembrance, by which you make present to your mind what actually is absent and past, reveals the meaning in the form of a story.” H. Arendt

Love of The Jews

I am not moved by any “love” of this sort, and for two reasons: I have never in my life “loved” any people or collective – neither the German people, nor the French, nor the American, nor the working class or any-thing of that sort. I indeed love ‘only’ my friends and the only kind […]

I and the Other

“The alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible only if the other is other with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure, to serve as entry into the relation, to be the same not relatively but absolutely. A term can remain absolutely at the point of […]

Facts can Be Lost

“Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories – even the most wildly specula-tive ones – produced by the human mind; they occur in the field of the ever-changing affairs of men, in whose flux there is nothing more perma-nent than the admi-ttedly relative perma-nence of the human mind’s structure. Once […]

The Jew is a Text

“If Jews in exile found a homeland in the text, it was because it was not a, but the text, the Tora, the wri-tten record of the divine covenant, locating Jews in time and space… and making them a people, despite their dispersion, who shared a constitu-tion and a culture.” Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of […]

Born-But For Inspiration

“Not for the fretful cares of everyday life, Not for the pursuit of profit, not for warfare Are we born-but for inspiration, For sweet sounds and for prayers.” A. S. Pushkin’s

The Scandal

Like the Hebrew word that it translates, “scandal” means, not one of those ordinary obstacles that we avoid easily after we run into it the first time, but a paradoxical obstacle that is almost impo-ssible to avoid: the more this obstacle, or scan-dal, repels us, the more it attracts. R. Girard I See Satan

My Authoritarian Manner

“I had to deal with difficult situations, and I made my decisions abruptly and by myself. My authoritarian and quick manner of mak-ing decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultra-conservative.” Pope Francis

Salesians elect Maltese priest Fabio Attard as Don Bosco’s 11th successor

Pope Francis does not accept Cardinal Koch’s resignation: could continue at least until anniversary of Council of Nicea