Elie Wiesel

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Wiesel's multifaceted contributions as writer, teacher, and thinker

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Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel, best known for his writings on the Holocaust, is also the accomplished author of novels, essays, tales, and plays as well as portraits of seminal figures in Jewish life and experience. In this volume, leading scholars in the fields of Biblical, Rabbinic, Hasidic, Holocaust, and literary studies offer fascinating and innovative analyses of Wiesel's texts as well as illuminating commentaries on his considerable influence as a teacher and as a moral voice for human rights. By exploring the varied aspects of Wiesel's multifaceted career—his texts on the Bible, the Talmud, and Hasidism as well as his literary works, his teaching, and his testimony—this thought-provoking volume adds depth to our understanding of the impact of this important man of letters and towering international figure.

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

Sujets

• Jewish Studies
• Jewish
• Philosophie et théologie
• Jews
• General officer
• Judaism
• Religion
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 17 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253008121
• Langue: English

Extrait

ELIE WIESEL
Jewish, Literary, and Moral Perspectives
Edited by Steven T. Katz and Alan Rosen
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2013 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elie Wiesel : Jewish, literary, and moral perspectives / edited by Steven T. Katz and Alan Rosen.
        pages cm. — (Jewish literature and culture)    Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00805-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-00812-1 (electronic book) 1. Wiesel, Elie, 1928—Criticism and interpretation.
I. Katz, Steven T., [date] editor. II. Rosen, Alan, [date] editor.
PQ2683.I32Z6635    2013
813'.54—dc23
2012045973
1 2 3 4 5  18 17 16 15 14 13
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Alan Rosen
Part 1. Bible and Talmud
1. Alone with God: Wiesel's Writings on the Bible
Joel Rosenberg
2. Wiesel as Interpreter of Biblical Narrative
Everett Fox
3. Wiesel and Rabbi Akiva
Joseph Polak
4. Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis
Reuven Kimelman
Part 2. Hasidism
5. Wiesel in the Context of Neo-Hasidism
Arthur Green
6. Reflections on Wiesel's Hasidic Tales
Steven T. Katz
7. Yearning for Sacred Place: Wiesel's Hasidic Tales and Postwar Hasidism
Nehemia Polen
8. The Hasidic Spark and the Holocaust
Gershon Greenberg
Part 3. Belles Lettres
9. Lot's Wife and “A Plea for the Dead”: Commemoration, Memory, and Shame
Nancy Harrowitz
10. The Storyteller in History: Shoah Memory and the Idea of the Novel
Sara R. Horowitz
11. Wiesel's Post-Auschwitz Shema Yisrael
Alan L. Berger
12. Dreams and Dialogues: Wiesel's Holocaust Memories
Ellen S. Fine
13. The Trauma of History in The Gates of the Forest
Victoria Aarons
14. Victims, Executioners, and the Ethics of Political Violence: A Levinasian Reading of Dawn
Jonathan Druker
Part 4. Testimony
15. Dialectic Living and Thinking: Wiesel as Storyteller and Interpreter of the Shoah
Irving Greenberg
16. Wiesel's Aggadic Outcry
David Patterson
17. Whose Testimony? The Confusion of Fiction with Fact
Lawrence L. Langer
18. Wiesel's Testament
Oren Baruch Stier
19. Améry, Levi, Wiesel: The Futility of Holocaust Testimony
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Part 5. Legacies
20. With Shadows and With Song: Learning, Listening, Teaching
Alan Rosen
21. Teaching through Words, Teaching through Silence: Education after (and about) Auschwitz
Reinhold Boschki
22. Toward a Methodology of Wonder
Ariel Burger
23. Wiesel's Contribution to a Christian Understanding of Judaism
John K. Roth
24. Conscience
Irwin Cotler
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HE EDITORS OF THIS VOLUME owe a debt of gratitude to a number of individuals and institutions who made this work possible. First and foremost, we wish to thank the Mike and Shirley Grossman Conference Fund, which supplied much of the financial support for the original conference on which this volume is based. Mike Grossman was a supporter of all good things, and his concern to facilitate Jewish scholarship was palpable. Second, our thanks go to the staff of the Hillel House at Boston University and its wonderful director, Rabbi Joseph Polak, and to the staff of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University for their enormous efforts to see that every aspect of the original conference was a success. Third, we are deeply indebted to Pagiel Czoka, the former administrator of the Wiesel Center, who was unstinting in her support for both the original conference and the publication of this volume.
In addition, Alan Rosen would like to thank several colleagues and friends whose counsel was vital to the preparation of the volume: Yisrael Cohen, Adele Reinhartz, Florent Brayard, Ruth Clements Rosen, and Rabbis Joseph Polak and Nehemia Polen. Indiana University Press editor and director Janet Rabinowitch has been steadfast in her encouragement and has continuously provided thoughtful and detailed guidance.
INTRODUCTION
Alan Rosen
R ABBI S HIMON BAR Y OHAI , 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 analysis Wiesel surely attempts to enter the historical 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 historical 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 underappreciated 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 figure in setting forth the vocabulary that shapes any discussion of the event and its implications. But that achievement has meant that his 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 Eastern 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 beca