Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives

Table of Contents

contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction Alan Rosen 1 Part 1. Bible and Talmud 1. Alone with God: Wiesel’s Writings on the Bible Joel Rosenberg 9 2. Wiesel as Interpreter of Biblical Narrative Everett Fox 21 3. Wiesel and Rabbi Akiva Joseph Polak 30 4. Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis Reuven Kimelman 38 Part 2. Hasidism 5. Wiesel in the Context of Neo-­ Hasidism Arthur Green 51 6. Reflections on Wiesel’s Hasidic Tales Steven T. Katz 59 7. Yearning for Sacred Place: Wiesel’s Hasidic Tales and Postwar Hasidism Nehemia Polen 69 8. The Hasidic Spark and the Holocaust Gershon Greenberg 83 Part 3. Belles Lettres 9. Lot’s Wife and “A Plea for the Dead”: Commemoration, Memory, and Shame Nancy Harrowitz 103 10. The Storyteller in History: Shoah Memory and the Idea of the Novel Sara R. Horowitz 113 11. Wiesel’s Post-­ Auschwitz Shema Yisrael Alan L. Berger 127 12. Dreams and Dialogues: Wiesel’s Holocaust Memories Ellen S. Fine 137 13. The Trauma of History in The Gates of the Forest Victoria Aarons 146 14. Victims, Executioners, and the Ethics of Po­ liti­ cal Violence: A Levinasian Reading of Dawn Jonathan Druker 160 Part 4. Testimony 15. Dialectic Living and Thinking: Wiesel as Storyteller and Interpreter of the Shoah Irving Greenberg 173 16. Wiesel’s Aggadic Outcry David Patterson 190 17. Whose Testimony? The Confusion of Fiction with Fact Lawrence L. Langer 201 18. Wiesel’s Testament Oren Baruch Stier 211 19. Améry, Levi, Wiesel: The Futility of Holocaust Testimony Alvin H. Rosenfeld 220 Part 5. Legacies 20. With Shadows and With Song: Learning, Listening, Teaching Alan Rosen 233 21. Teaching through Words, Teaching through Silence: Education after (and about) Auschwitz Reinhold Boschki 243 22. Toward a Methodology of Wonder Ariel Burger 255 vi | Contents 23. Wiesel’s Contribution to a Christian Understanding of Judaism John K. Roth 264 24. Conscience Irwin Cotler 277 Contributors 287 Index 293 Contents | vii ...