Letters written in response to the paper declared it a futile and ugly performance. Critics railed its author as ill-informed, incompetent in the language of her scholarship, and worse: Ms. In the Yiddish, Moshele has just one role in the narrative. A strange question. But first, a relevant aside: As Wiesel tells it in his memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Un di velt hot geshvign was written years after liberation, while en route to Argentina. It seems there is bound to be a time in every Jewish writers life when she will be quoted by an anti-Semite. Having survived one round of controversy, Naomi Seidmans careful, important piece of work happened upon another. In fact, Gods role in Un di velt is not entirely unlike that in Night. Something went wrong. While it has not always been the case, in the modern world theology has no defense against revisionism. In Night, however, Moche serves a more complex narrative and theological purpose. That it has actually done so is a fact. Yet the responses provided by Holocaust theologians are seldom parsed; rarely examined. a corpse. How had Moche the Beadle escaped? Sinai need not be historical for it to have meaning. The following does not appear in the original book: He had noticed me one day at dusk, while I was praying Why do you pray? he asked me, after a moment. We are implicated even by asking. So too, in fact, can the endless revisionist obsession with Wiesel himself. Elie Wiesels Holocaust theology does not fit neatly into any of Funkensteins categories. what does this line suggest. after the liberation elie almost dies of food poisoning what is ironic about this. To the first: If you traffic in faith, doubt is inevitable. Cet article dcrit les premires phase du processus de formation dun des plus grands imposteurs de notre temps La littrature holocaustique est le plus norme formage de notre poque et Wiesel est son prophte. Yet I did not read it until recently. Support our boisterous band of Buddha-killers by becoming a member with a regular donation to our parent organization, Margins of Faith, Inc., a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Revising Night: Elie Wiesel and the Hazards of Holocaust Theology. For fear of the implications of approaching a witness critically, few have been willing even to make the attempt. Theological critique often becomes a kind of blasphemy, and this is especially true in the case of a doubly sacred survivor-theologian like Wiesel. John Paul II has called Auschwitz the Golgotha of the modern world. Given the choice Jews generally would forego this kind of empathy. Writing in Seidmans defense, Steven Zipperstein, the editor of Jewish Social Studies, in which the article appeared, knew what he was up against. For empathy too can be a kind of revisionism. Regardless, this development marks the birth of the theology that informs all of Wiesels work. It is the difference between an absence felt by a man under duress and one who is trying to rebuild his life. This is Wiesels theology as seen through the dark lens of Un di velt hot geshvign. What did I say to him? With the Holocaust, in other words, God reopened the floodgates. Well aware of the implications of this claim, and perhaps back-peddling the face of the assault she received, Seidman elaborated in a letter to the Forward: To speak differently when you speak in a differently language, is neither hypocritical nor inauthentic; it is merely human, rarely deliberate, and perhaps inevitable.. Below is an example of someones grieving process after losing their beloved dog: 1. Taking on another and equally important role, it is he who initiates Eliezer into the mysteries of Kabbalah. Perhaps Hoffman even borrowed the term, just as AAARGH borrowed Naomi Seidmans scholarship. The opening lines of Un di velt hot geshvign are missing not only from Night but, strangely, from Seidmans comparison of the works. Subscribe to get the latest news from KtB delivered straight to your inbox. The mental mechanisms by which Nazi ideology justified mass murder can be followed step by step.. Seidmans contention is that far from being mere matters of word choice, episodes like the one involving fargvaldikn and coucher avec suggest that the latter book is not merely a translated and edited edition, but rather an entirely different book written for an entirely different audience for entirely different reasons. At the risk of giving attention where attention surely is not due, the leader of this movement seems to be the American revisionist Michael Hoffman. While he considers different responses to this Event in each of his books, throughout his work Wiesel treats the Holocaust first of all as a theological occurrence. The first he names the direct theological response: it is the attempt to salvage a theodicy from the rubble left by the eruption of evil as an apparently autonomous force. On the one hand this may mean religious Zionism: the phoenix Israel born of Diasporas ashes. It is the immediate, obvious absence faced by the victim rather than the reflective, philosophical absence later experienced by the survivor. Please copy and paste TWO quotes from chapter three are significant to YOU and explain (in a sentence or two) why you chose each of them. KtB is much more than an online magazine. Thus the revisionists ostensible reason for republishing Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage is the implication, as they read it, that its subject, their nemesis, is a fraud. To speak of questions and gates here is portentous, foreshadowing the gates of the camps and the questions to God the camps will raise. The original opening has in effect been replaced by French Catholic intellectual Francois Mauriacs problematic christological introduction: And I [Mauriac], who believes that God is love, what answer could I give my young questioner [Wiesel], whose dark eyes still held the reflection of that angelic sadness which had appeared one day upon the face of the hanged child? One who has is Naomi Seidman, a professor of Jewish Culture at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. The SS fled and the resistance took charge. Please check your entries and try again. You will find the true answers only within yourself., There are a thousand and one gates leading into the orchard of mystical truth. Why do I live? Let me be clear, Seidman writes. Or, in fact, is the solution a greater willingness to speak? The easy answer is shocking and simple: it disappears. Ontological Event, in fact, is shorthand Wiesel favors. At times, in fact, it reads as a clear rebuke of the religious response to suffering. It may well be that God alone can give meaning to six million, but one by one theology is meanings thief. Such a change could easily be accounted for by nostalgia, or by the fact that by the time the second book was written the author, working as he did between one book and the next as a foreign correspondent, had seen far more of the world. By comparing Wiesels Night to its earlier draft, Un di velt hot geshvign (And the world remained silent) published in Yiddish in 1956, Seidman undertook the first genuine criticism of the much revered book, shedding light on its journey from a bare-bones accounting of events to the existentialist memoir that for many has come to typify the Holocaust. The editors of AAARGH apparently disregarded this clarification. According to Seidman, Wiesels first book should be considered as part of the larger genre of Yiddish Holocaust memoirs, which often modeled themselves on the local chronicle (pinkes) or memorial book (yizker-bukh) in which catalogs of names, addresses, and occupations served as form and motivation., Though it is largely a work of history, however, the earlier book does allow God his place. What was regarded as illusion in one book becomes deepest truth in another. Learn Test Match Created by delgadovivian1 Terms in this set (4) How much longer was Elie in the camp after his father died? If Auschwitz is granted the same status, is it not at risk of sharing this implication? Do you think the concert really happened? Every human being has his own gate. In the Yiddish, though, this is a different sort of absence. Rightly so: original, challenging, and crucial to reaching an understanding of Wiesel and the development of his thought, Seidmans paper is a careful and important piece of work. Some of these are arguably matters of perception. Is the solution, then, silence as is so often suggested? By the time he put pen to paper, perhaps making notes in Buchenwald, Wiesel certainly would have read the former, and, a curious young man, a budding intellectual, very likely the latter. You must first pass the basic subjects within your own understanding. And that seems precisely what Wiesel, at thirty, did in rewriting his first book. Yet what is theology if not a kind of revisionism? At a time when it has become commonplace for revisionists to snarl that the Holocaust is a religion and Wiesel its prophet, what are we to do with a theological Auschwitz? As Night makes clear, Wiesels unique brand of mysticism is crucial to understanding his theology. In making the Holocaust primarily a matter of theological concern, does Elie Wiesel, witness to the world, court a benign sort of revisionism? Active Themes One day the SS are late for roll callwhich never happens. Seidmans brand of Holocaust revisionism is more deadly than Holocaust denial, one of the letters said, it is a corrosive poison that destroys from within. Even to research Holocaust theology, apparently, is to court revisionism or, at least, to appear to do so. Name one "job" the author had at Buna. According to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I wrote to testify, to stop the dead from dying, to justify my own survival., Yet as he explains in the final pages of the book itself written earlier, closer to the event and so perhaps more reliably the composition of Un di velt actually began far sooner, sooner even than seems imaginable. It's hard enough to complete such a march at the best of times, but it's even worse when you are being starved to death and infected. What was the prisoners first concern after liberation? Its no surprise, then, that unlike Night, it is difficult to read the earlier book as theology. That is the true dialogue. This is not surprising, as the exact nature of his theology has been seldom addressed. I was writing my account of the concentration camp years in Yiddish. In the last months of 1996, the young Yiddish literary scholar published a paper greeted by some as heresy, by others as the long-awaited slaying of a sacred cow. Returning to Sighet months after deportation, he is found sitting by the synagogue door: He told his story and that of his companions. I spent most of the voyage in my cabin working. In the form of this past-tense creed not we believe, but we believed the young Wiesel refutes religion as a whole; in its content, he refutes Judaism particularly; in its details, Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, a mainstay of his later work, specifically. A fairly typical quote: The Holocaust has become a media religion, the last truly believed religion in the otherwise agnostic West. Theological critique often becomes a kind of blasphemy, and this is especially true in the case of a doubly sacred survivor-theologian like Wiesel. He is only slightly less critical of the other options. Not surprisingly, this is a surface take on Seidmans reading of Wiesel. Also patched and salvaged from the wreck of Un di velt is Kabbalah, which in Night is not maligned but rather sought out as the height of knowledge. Like Wiesel himself, Moche and Moshele are privy to awful truths the world does not want to hear. This is not surprising, as the exact nature of his theology has been seldom addressed. and more. Moche serves this purpose also in Night. Who is to say whether it was the theologian or the writer in Wiesel who could not resist the symmetry of it? He is transferred to the children's block. 3 moths The day after the alert, what happened when the camp resistance movement acted? It is similarly true that, like Moses, Wiesel has served as mediator of an ineffable Event. 2. It deals also, however, with the historical development of Wiesels theology. In the translation of Moshele, who is only witness, into Moche, who is witness and sage, Wiesel has created a mouthpiece for his theology. Describe the evacuation. Eliezer remains at Buchenwald until April 11. In both God is wholly and substantially absent. I can live my life and be a good, productive citizen without accepting a single iota of Jewish theology about their Shoah. If Jews want to believe it, fine. What stops him from carrying out this idea?2. Employed at the time by a Jewish cultural organization, moving in Yiddishist and Judaic Studies circles, I had heard about the paper and its mixed reception when it first was published. On the one side we find survivors, clergy, scholars and the simply concerned engaged, whether they realize it or not, in a theology of destruction, taking measure of a darkness so vast it nearly looks like God. It will be discussed at some length. To sleep with young girls, as the French has it, is hardly an adequate translation of the Yiddish, to rape German shikses. Obviously, it is an entirely different telling of the event. Babies were thrown into the air and the machine gunners used them as targets. what happened to elie after liberation. The interpretation of the Holocaust as a religious theological event is not a tendentious imposition on Night but rather a careful reading of the work. That this is true can best be seen when Night is set against Un di velt, of which the same could not be said. And so we will never learn. After writing about his different thoughts on God, write about a time in your life where your beliefs (whether religious or not) have been challenged. One letter writer to the Forward was right to insist, Not only are all the French versions famous passages about God present in the Yiddish volume, but the latter contains other equally harrowing examples of the young death camp inmates struggle with his faith.. The idea of hovering between life and death, as quoted, is also an ironic thought in that Elie has been there for years, under the Nazi regime in the concentration camps, and now finds himself. To the second: A writer revises, its part of the job. Answered by Aslan on 9/21/2013 6:19 AM There are two survivors, Seidman writes, a Yiddish and a French and two survivors will of course tell different stories. Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world?, The very religious principles made to bear the weight of Wiesels scorn in Un di velt are in Night enshrined in a narrative of a holy Jewish childhood. Pleased as I was to stumble across the storied essay, I was puzzled that the link was not to the website of Jewish Social Studies, but to that of a group called AAARGH: LAssociation des Anciens Amateurs de Recits de Guerre et dHolocauste. All donations are fully tax-deductible. As its title suggests, Elie Wiesel and the Scandal of Jewish Rage is concerned with anger, more specifically with the consideration of vengefulness as a common, appropriate and yet rarely acknowledged response to Jewish suffering. That's what happened to Zalman. Night reads: Three days after the Liberation of Buchenwald I became very ill with food poisoning. Such thinking offers a strong prescription, but even a bitter pill can be a placebo. 2023 Killing the Buddha | All Rights Reserved. 3. Moche is Master of both, and through him Wiesel the writer gives voice to Wiesel the theologian: Man raises himself toward God by the question he asks Him, he was fond of repeating. What she documented, essentially, is Wiesels growth his translation, perhaps from survivor/witness to writer/theologian. Why do I breath? After that day I saw him often. Thus faith is pulled from the rubble. We must never make the mistake of wanting to enter the orchard by any gate but our own. Think again of that gap between piety and denial. The import of The Scandal of Jewish Rage is found not in the factual discrepancy between a book and its rewrite, nor in the headline grabbing contentions that Wiesel clothed such crimes as rape in the stubborn vitality of the Jewish people. Already they had found enough damning material to warrant conscripting Seidmans words to their cause. When describing the post-emancipation activities of some of the camp survivors, for example, Wiesel reports some of the boys run off, in Yiddish, tsu fargvaldikn daytshe shikses, while in French they merely go coucher avec des filles. He founded Killing the Buddha with Jeff Sharlet, and the two wrote Killing the Buddha: A Heretic's Bible. Because Night is not, as the paper shows, the unmediated experience its more naive readers may suppose it to be, it is for the revisionists entirely false, a lie upon which larger lies have been built. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple. There is no mention anywhere in Night that Jewish belief was the cause of Jewish misfortune. To put it bluntly: he is introduced, he testifies, he is doubted and then, of course, proven correct. After losing his sister, mother, and father, after suffering beatings and malnourishment, after being hospitalized for a serious foot infection, and after enduring a overnight marathon in. Now stand in the ditch. Another sentence not to be found in Yiddish: One day I asked my father to find me a master to guide me in my studies of the cabbala.. And to the third? Hint: This "thing" is personified in the text. What is most troubling about this is that, breaking it down and considering it piece by piece, it would be possible to find reasonable people who might agree. What idea begins to fascinate Eli while he is running? I wrote feverishly, breathlessly, without rereading. Editor's Note: If you are in the US and you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained . The crime committed by the Nazis was of immense proportions, Amos Funkenstein writes, the horror and the suffering transgress our capacity of imagination, but it is possible to understand them rationally The prehistory of genocide, its necessary preconditions, can be illuminated more and more. Having exhausted his historical understanding of events in Un di velt hot geshvign he moved on to mystery with Night. Each one had to go up to the hole and present his neck. Beginning as he does, Wiesel leans in close to scripture, unafraid to show his resemblance to it. Neither is the heart of the paper Wiesels supposed suppression of further incidents of Jewish retribution. elie fell ill 3 days after liberation to food poisoning, transferred to a hospital for two weeks where he stayed between life and death. What does Elie realize about Rabbi Eliahou's son? Miraculously. Why? what does elie see in the mirror. Cambridge too would seem a city if one has never visited New York. This was the source if not the cause of all our misfortune.. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.. Similarly, the third response, the critical reflexive, the willingness to question theology itself in the face of catastrophe, he regards as honest but rarely honest enough. In the first book, for example, the Wiesel familys home, Sighet, is referred to as a shtot, a city, while in the second it is that little town where I spent my childhood essentially the archetypal shtetl. On the other we have the likes of David Irving, Michael Hoffman, Robert Faurisson the kind of historians-on-the-side who assert that Zyklon B was merely a pesticide, that the number of Jews murdered was actually far less than is contended, that anyway they died of typhus, and that, really, nothing much happened at all. Elie Wiesel's Holocaust theology does not fit neatly into any of Funkenstein's categories. Section 2: Pages 55-72 (or 35-48) 1. In this moment, what does Eliezer hear? chapter 9. Finding Night lacking Jewish rage in sufficient quantity in relation to both the circumstances which inspired it and the Yiddish text from which it was born, Seidman alleges that Wiesel excised all traces of the survivors desire for retribution when Un di velt hot geshvign became Night. Naturally, there are exceptions. Term 1 / 83 When and where was elie wiesel's early boyhood spent? Follow him on Twitter @petermanseau. Wiesel has stated that the only real difference between the books is the length; that he shortened, shortened, shortened the manuscript for purposes of concision. 1 22642_4848__5304_syllabus.doc 12 Elie Wiesel's Night-Pgs. For purposes of clarity while discussing these differences, Ill refer to the Beadle (or Shamas) of Un di velt as Moshele, as he called in Yiddish, and that of Night as Moche. Building a case that the two memoirs tell significantly different stories, Seidman provides cogent examples of curious choices Wiesel made when reworking the original into French. Taking the book at its word, it seems possible that something like a rough draft of Un di velt hot geshvign was written, or at least considered, even while Wiesel remained in the camps. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Why doesn't Elie want his father to rest while he himself had a hot bath?, What does Elie feel ashamed of himself while searching for his father?, Why does Elie hesitate to give his sick father soup? Un di velt hot geshvign begins in onheyb, in the beginning, as do most Yiddish translations of Genesis and the Gospel of John. Again, Hoffman: Belief is not incumbent. In Night the teacher of the mystical secrets becomes also the teacher of the truth of the camps. Hypocrisy, says Funkenstein. The Church is built on co-opted Jewish tragedy; left unchecked it would surely build again. Try to see the size of it: an H-Bomb crater, a city-shaped hole in the earth. This, it must be stressed, is Mosheles only function in Un di velt hot geshvign. Nights beginning, They called him Moche the Beadle, can be found several pages into Un di velt. Rather the real story here is of the development of Wiesels theology. Asked by jesse s #337380 on 9/20/2013 11:07 PM Last updated by Aslan on 9/21/2013 6:19 AM Answers 1 Add Yours. He nods graciously to his influences, and then he spits on them: In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a holy spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. In a news item which sparked much of the controversy of the papers initial publication, the Jewish Daily Forward reported, In editing his Yiddish memoir for his French publisher, Ms. Seidman told the Forward by telephone from her Berkeley office, Mr. Wiesel replaced an angry survivor desperate to get his story out, eager to get revenge and who sees life, writing, testimony as a refutation of what the Nazis did to the Jews, with a survivor haunted by death, whose primary complaint is directed against God, not the world, [or] the Nazis.'. But we dont understand His answers. While trying to track down a copy of Un di velt hot geshvign, I remembered Professor Seidman had done work with it, and so did a web search on her name. It remains an attempt at universal understanding, and so can only come up short.

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