Author: Mark J. Chmiel

Today’s One-Liner (#137)

If we search for God and we are good to human beings, we are doing more or less our job. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell

Getting Free

Olga Katunal [was]  a political activist who eventually left the Communist party and returned to Judaism via German philosophy. …[She] made more radical choices when she abandoned Trotsky for Moses in the interwar years. –Judith…

Today’s One-Liner (#135)

The dire state of the Palestinian movement today suggests that there is an inverse relationship between the use of terror and the achievement of freedom. –Susie Linfield, The Return of the Progressive Atrocity

Freeing up the Imagination

Not too long ago, I heard a tape of the memorial service held at Stanford University Chapel at the death of Eric Voegelin. On the tape, Professor William Havard, I think, remarked that Voegelin read…

Today’s One-Liner (#134)

I was crushed, overwhelmed by having to face what the nation of Goethe, Schiller, and Kant was capable of. –Rachmil Bryks, May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych, trans. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

Today’s One-Liner (#132)

We must collect all kinds of sayings and proverbs. –Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939-1945 , edited  by David Stromberg

Today’s One-Liner (#131)

If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous. –Rene Girard, Maxim #90, in All Desire Is a Desire for Being: Essential Writings, edited by Cynthia L. Haven