The Church has a blessing for beer and a saint who may have invented windsurfing. So of course there’s a patron saint for swimmers. His story is better than you’d expect.

There is a scene in Fiddler on the Roof where someone asks the Rabbi whether there is a proper blessing for the Tsar. The Rabbi thinks for a moment and says: “Of course. May God bless and keep the Tsar—far away from us.” The joke works because everyone already knows the premise: in Jewish tradition, as in Catholic tradition, there is a blessing for virtually everything.

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