In Memory of Elie Wiesel

I first heard ‪‎Elie Wiesel speak when I was a college student at the University of Maryland in the 1970’s. Sitting behind a desk on an empty stage before several hundred students he spoke quietly and forcefully about the importance of remembering. Long before I thought about becoming a rabbi he had a profound impact on my thinking and the direction my life was to take.

At that lecture he said that to forget the victims of the Holocaust and what happened would be to cause them to “die a second death.” He spoke of the importance of asking questions, even if we do not have answers, for the questions and the act of questioning is what is most important. He spoke of faith, of the world that was lost, of the cruelty of humanity, and the inexplicable silence and indifference of the world, as well as of the importance of honoring the victims by keeping Judaism alive.

As a result of his experiences, he lived the words of Hillel, cited in the Talmud, “If I am not for myself who will be for me. If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” He taught that when we speak and act as Jews, out of our unique experience is when we are most effective and our values are most universalistic. He advocated passionately on behalf of oppressed and persecuted Jews around the world, and spoke out for other victims of genocide as well. In a collection of essays entitled “A Jew Today” he wrote that we are a people with a mission, but that we have forgotten that mission, for the role of the Jew was never to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human. Recognizing that we are such a fragile people and such a small minority, with so many enemies, he refused to engage in public criticism of Israel, preferring instead to encourage love and support of the Jewish state.

His most famous book, “Night” is an important account of the Holocaust. If you have never read any of his other books, I encourage you to read them. I am sure you will also be profoundly moved, as I was, to seek to live a life of meaning, and to appreciate and work to perpetuate the beautiful heritage he describes, a world the forces of evil sought to destroy.