Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives

Introduction

introduction Alan Rosen Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, a talmudic sage traditionally celebrated as the author of the Zohar, the central book of Jewish mysticism, was himself a refugee, forced to flee from the Romans and hide with his son for years in a cave. Their emergence from the cave came in stages, the first beset by fury, which only with time yielded to empathy. It is this modulated response to profound suffering that, in Elie Wiesel’s view, qualified Rabbi Shimon to be deemed the fountainhead of Jewish mystical life. “Therein lay Rabbi Shimon’s greatness,” augurs Wiesel. “He had to go beyond suffering—­ the last year [in the cave] was probably the hardest—­in order to rediscover compassion and understanding .”1 With this analy­ sis Wiesel surely attempts to enter the his­ tori­ cal context of persecution that defined Rabbi Shimon’s life and milieu. But he also reclaims for his own persecuted generation of Holocaust survivors the talmudic sage’s experience of oppression and the wisdom that steered a path through it. In Wiesel’s universe of his­ tori­ cal study, the Jewish past gives direction to the Jewish present (and future), while the Jewish present—­ particularly the lengthy shadows cast by the Holocaust—­ orients our approach to the past, dictates the questions we ask of it, and shows our profound relationship to those who inhabited it. This lifeline strung from the Jewish present to past and back again, an under­ appreciated facet of Wiesel’s work, is one of the features of this volume. Indeed, a volume dealing with the full breadth of Wiesel’s writing is late in coming; no such collection has appeared in English in over twenty years. During this period, Wiesel has produced dozens of books, and has continued to treat important themes in both fiction and nonfiction. Moreover, his writing on traditional Jewish texts, which during these years has developed far beyond what it was hitherto, has received almost no serious commentary or criticism. The essays in this volume aim to remedy the gap on both accounts. While not covering every facet of Wiesel’s oeuvre and career, they do address most, ranging from earliest writings to those that have only recently appeared. Published almost thirty-five years after the first essay collections to deal with his work, this volume aims to update and expand what has been done previously. But the goal is not only to add to what came before. This volume comes with a new set of premises, the nature of which is visible in the organization and sequence of the essays, as well as in the section headings that guide the reader through them. Wiesel has been associated primarily, one might say almost exclusively, with the Holocaust. The association is understandable, given his formidable achievement in this area: as a survivor, as a witness, as a key fig­ ure in setting forth the vocabulary that shapes any discussion of the event and its implications. But that achievement has meant that his 1 2 | Alan Rosen other likewise estimable contributions have been overshadowed and underplayed. This lack of balance has increased as Wiesel’s career has unfolded—­ a career that has been built painstakingly on what came before, but that along the way has shifted the proportions nonetheless. The breadth and focus of his writing clearly has its impetus from his place of origins and from his family. Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania, in 1928 to Shlomo and Sara, the former a community-­ active shop owner, the latter the daughter of a Viznitzer Hasid. The only boy in a family of four children, Wiesel received a traditional cheder and yeshiva education of an East­ ern European Jew, but also studied the violin, played chess, and learned modern Hebrew. The family continued normal life until spring of 1944, when the Nazis occupied Hungary. The Wiesels and the other Sighet Jews were soon imprisoned in a ghetto, and then summarily deported to Auschwitz , where his mother and youngest sister were murdered. His father later perished in Buchenwald. Elie and his two older sisters survived the war. Based in postwar France, Wiesel, an orphan and refugee, at first returned to a life of study and prayer similar to that of his life in Sighet. But he soon struck out in a different direction, studying French language, literature, and philosophy, taking up journalism , which became his pathway to the world of letters, and traveling extensively. His first book was published in...