Tony and Abigail Higgins, who celebrate their 50th anniversary on Oct. 24, would like to give rather than receive. They want to help restore the Mayhew Chapel on Christiantown Road, the place where they were married in 1964.

Today the weight of history is more apparent than ever at the Mayhew Chapel, with its moss-covered roof, peeling white paint and crumbling ceiling. New efforts are underway to restore the chapel, clear out the underbrush in the burial ground and take inventory of the ancient fieldstones that mark the graves.

I am just back from troubled Israel. There, an ultra-Orthodox Jew of the Haredi sect spat on an eight-year-old girl he deemed immodestly dressed and other ultra-orthodox members of that sect were insisting that women sit at the back of public buses. A settlement illegally built by ultra-orthodox Zionists on the Palestinian West Bank was demolished by Israeli Army soldiers. And the Israeli government, fearful of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, was hinting at making a pre-emptive strike against that country.