Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives

4. Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis

4 Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis Reuven Kimelman Elie Wiesel is our generation’s teller of tales. He uses stories to keep alive Jewish memory. His retellings of tales are frequently better known than the origi­ nal. More hasidic tales are probably known through his retelling than any since Martin Buber. Similarly, his recounting of biblical and talmudic narratives has done much to make them not only known but tellable. This essay focuses on his retelling of talmudic lore in his book Wise Men and Their Tales.1 There, he relates how much he was enamored of the intricacies of the Talmud, dazzled by the workings of its dialectics, flabbergasted by its ruthless honesty, piqued by its arcane tales, amazed at its pious yet flawed characters , and astonished at its incessant questioning. Identifying with its nonfinality, he is taken in by its open-­ endedness as well as taken aback by its strangeness. For him, the Talmud is the spine of Judaism, without which we would have gone limp long ago. It is what kept Jews upright, walking tall through­ out their lachrymose history. Without it, the spiritual reality would have succumbed to the material one. Although Wiesel is a teller of tales, not a composer of footnotes, he manages to shed light on a whole slew of rabbinic personalities. Scholars frequently seek to situate the rabbis in their his­ tori­ cal reality; others frequently extract them from their his­ tori­ cal particularity to make them relevant. Wiesel seeks a balance. He provides his­ tori­ cal background as a way of gaining insight into the inner life by focusing on the specific dilemmas of each rabbi. His notes are less footnotes than personal notes of meaning. In fact, it is precisely Wiesel’s obsession with meaning that drives him to ferret out the meaning of some of the most arcane talmudic biographical tidbits. He opens, in the chapter “Talmudic Sketches,” by addressing the issue of the meaning of Talmud study. He says: “To study Talmud is to study values and principles inherent in study, the illuminated horizons pushed back by study. It also means to study the art of studying. And study implies memory. One studies in order to remember. Without memory, study is futile” (278). As of­ten is the case, Wiesel focuses on the is38 Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis | 39 sue of memory, without which there is no meaning. Wiesel applies the biblical command to study Torah day and night to the study of the Talmud. For him, “Study is . . . a remedy for evil, just as prayer is a remedy for misfortune.” What is rare in his essay on the value of Talmud study is the focus on study as a remedy for evil. It evokes the talmudic comment that if one cannot overcome his evil impulse, drag it to the academy. As is his wont, Wiesel explains one passage in the Talmud by alluding to another without informing the reader. Thus he accepts the talmudic comparison of study and prayer only to up the ante, claiming, “With prayer we may move God to intervene in human affairs, but not in scholarly debates. There the scholar’s word is mightier than heaven’s” (278). This, of course, alludes to the famous debate between Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi­ Eleazar. They argued back and forth over the purity of the oven of Achnai. In that episode , the voice from heaven that sided with Rabbi Eleazar was overruled by the majority that sided with Rabbi Joshua. These comments reveal the multidimensionality of the book. It reads like a simple telling of talmudic tales, but in fact its cogency relies on Wiesel’s ability to adduce one talmudic passage to explain the other. The vastness and subtlety of Wiesel’s erudition is easily missed. Struck by the variegated nature of the Talmud, he says: A masterwork unequaled in Jewish memory, the two and a half million words of the Talmud cover all aspects of human endeavor: literature and jurisprudence, medicine and geometry, geography and medicine, parables and fables, problems relating to the in­ di­ vidual in society, questions concerning attitudes toward the stranger, meditations on the meaning of life, psychological analyses and cultural con­flicts: “Turn the pages,” says one sage, “turn them well, for everything is in them.” ­ (278–279) What makes his description so captivating is his capacity to personalize. Referring to this complex literature as “the song of my childhood,” he provides a piquant biographical...