M. CHRISTOPHER WHITE SCHOOL OF DIVINITY

THE SILENT CHOICE

SUBMITTED TO DR. DONALD BERRY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

RELI660 WORLD RELIGIONS SEMINAR

BY

THOMAS J. WHITLEY

24 APRIL 2008

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1

LITERARY SILENCE…..………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4

THE SILENCE OF GOD……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….14

NIGHT AND POST-HOLOCAUST THEOLOGY………………………………………………………………………………21

CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………25

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………27

INTRODUCTION

Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania in 1928 to Shlomo and Sarah Wiesel.1 The

small town of Sighet was a close Jewish community. This community nurtured Elie and allowed

him to begin studies in classical Hebrew very early in life. His mother belonged to the Hassidic

sect of Judaism. Elie was drawn to their mystical tradition and folk tales. Life was going well for

the Wiesel family, even through the first few years of World War II. This security, though, was a

false one. The scene changed immediately when Nazis arrived in Sighet in 1944. The Jews living

there were deported to concentration camps in Poland. Elie was 15. Elie was instantly

separated from his mother and his sister, Tzipora, upon arriving at Auschwitz. He would never

see them again. He was, however, able to stay with his father for the next year. They lived the

life of concentration camp inmates; working to near death, being starved, and beaten.

Wiesel was eventually liberated from Buchenwald by the Americans and moved to

France. He began to study the French language and became a professional journalist. He wrote

for newspapers in France and Israel. He wrote nothing of the Holocaust for ten years. Wiesel

finally wrote Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent) in 1955. It was 900 pages of

his memories in Yiddish. Wiesel then condensed that work into 127 pages in French. It was

called La Nuit (Night). Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986. Elie Wiesel is

1 “Elie Wiesel Biography.” No Pages. Cited 21 April 2008. Online: http://www.achievement.org/ autodoc/page/wie0bio-1. Wiesel’s biographical information is taken from the Academy of Achievement online.

indeed “not an ordinary writer. We cannot read him without the desire to change, to lead

better lives. His books are of the kind that save souls…No living writer knows our predicament

better than Elie Wiesel, and his novels touch us to the quick, bearing directly upon our deepest

problems.”2

“Something happened a generation ago, to the world, to man. Something happened to

God. Certainly something happened to the relations between man and God, man and man, man

and himself. Rather than explore the story in abstract terms, I try to tell the real story. But this

story we tell by not telling.”3 Silence; it seems so benign, yet it has the power to be deafening.

Thus is the case in Elie Wiesel’s Night. Wiesel uses silence to draw the reader into his work and

causes them to feel what he feels. Some have called silence Wiesel’s “art”4 and Marie Cedars

even calls it the “language of…Night.”5 These strong words are not out of line at all, for indeed

it is silence that makes Wiesel’s Night so real, believable, heart-rending – so poignant.

The silence in Night, though, is multifaceted. For, Wiesel uses silence in Night literarily.

By this I mean that Wiesel employs silence as a literary technique to take away words, but add

presence. Wiesel also addresses another facet of silence in Night, which is spoken of directly

2 Terrence Des Pres, Forward to Ellen S. Fine, Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), xiv quoted in Marie M. Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence: The Art of Elie Wiesel” (PhD diss., The University of Texas at Arlington, 1984).

3

Elie Wiesel quoted in Harry James Cargas, Harry James Cargas in Conversation with Elie Wiesel quoted in Marie M. Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence: The Art of Elie Wiesel” (PhD diss., The University of Texas at Arlington, 1984), iv.

4

See Terrence Des Pres, “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art” and Marie M. Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence: The Art of Elie Wiesel.”

5

Marie M. Cedars, “Silence and Against Silence: The Two Voices of Elie Wiesel” (review of Irving Abrahamson, ed., Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel), Cross Currents (1986): 258-9.

and indirectly – the silence of God; a silence which destroyed Wiesel’s faith “forever.”6 This

paper will explore these two uses of silence by Elie Wiesel in Night.

6 Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Hill and Wang,2006), 34.

LITERARY SILENCE

Wiesel uses silence literarily in more than one way. It is true that the pages of

Night are full of the very word “silence,” but that is not the only silence that is present. For, as

will be shown, Wiesel also uses silence in such a way as to transform a space between two

paragraphs, and even between two words, into more than blank space on a page. Wiesel

transforms that blank space into silence. The blank space is given presence. Marie Cedars

recognizes this aspect of Wiesel’s use of silence when she defines silence as “what is not said

but is a presence, is intentional, and is expressed by words and the spaces around them.”7

There has been much commentary on Wiesel’s use of silence in his works, and especially

in Night, and Wiesel has even spoken on the issue. It is important to see the intentionality in

Wiesel’s use of silence and also the reasoning behind it. For, just as one cannot divorce Wiesel’s

work from the fact that he is a Holocaust survivor, one must not see Wiesel’s silence apart from

its impetus. Elie Wiesel understood the power of silence on many different levels. He knew that

if his story was going to offer something positive and necessary to humanity that it must

employ this linguistic phenomenon. Wiesel had lived silence and thus had to share through

silence. The experience he shared, though, was not just his own. No, for Wiesel involves his

reader with every turn of page. Wiesel “makes the reader feel what he feels”.8

7 Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,”vii.

8 Ibid., 26-27.

Wiesel accomplishes this partly through saying as little as possible. This seems to

contradict logic that says in order to make someone feel what we feel we must give them as

much information as possible. Wiesel resists because he understands the futility of this

approach. Because of this, much of Night seems disconnected and lacks emotion. A strange find

when one comes to Wiesel’s only work that actually talks about the Holocaust.9 So, unlike other

Holocaust survivors who have recorded their experiences with much verbosity and great detail,

Wiesel chose the approach of minimalism. Wiesel “states facts and relates happenings,

avoiding reaction, explanation, and interpretation.”10 Wiesel tells what happened. The reader,

then, is left to fill in her reaction. The reader must supply her own judgment when the text is so

blatantly void of one. In doing so, the reader interprets the “silences he leaves between his

words.”11 One of the most stunning examples presents itself when Wiesel is just arriving in

Auschwitz.

Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this with my own eyes…children thrown into the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me?)

So that was where we were going. A little father on, there was another, larger pit for adults.12

9

The rest of Wiesel’s works will reference the Holocaust, but no other work speaks directly of the Holocaust. This, of course, is dealing with his written works, not speeches or conversations that have been recorded.

10

Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 70.11

Ibid., 72.12 Wiesel, Night, 32.

Cedars says it well: “Babies being used as targets? And no comment?”13 Of course, Wiesel does

offer to the reader that he really did see this with his own eyes, implying, at least, the absurdity

of the words that have just been read. Wiesel does also offer a brief parenthetical statement

that mentions his sleeping troubles, but that is it. The next words are of his group marching

toward another pit. The reader is struck by the sheer fact that anyone could move past this

event with nothing else to say. Brief relief is offered shortly at the beginning of the next

paragraph:

I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?14

This comment, however, is already a shift in focus, for now the children are lumped in with

everyone. To be sure, that men and women were being burned is a surreal thought and one

that should move our hearts. However, that babies were loaded onto trucks like trash and were

disposed of in a burning pit is unbearable. One can only imagine the stench that must have

filled the air. Other Holocaust survivors have written about it. Cedars offers us an account from

Leon Wells:

Mothers undress their children, and the naked mother carries her child in her arms to the fire. However, sometimes a mother will undress herself but will fail to undress the child, or the child refuses to let itself be undressed out of panic. When this happens, we can hear the voices of the children. “What for?” or “Mother, mother, I’m scared! No! No!” In these cases, one of the German SD’s takes the child by its small feet, swings it, crushing its head against the nearest tree, then carries it over to the fire and tosses it in. This is all done in front of the mother. When the mother reacts to this, which happens a

13 Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 96.14

Wiesel, Night, 32.

few times, even if only by saying something, she is beaten and afterwards hung by her feet from a tree with her head down until she dies.15

Wiesel makes no mention of children being thrashed against trees or women being beaten and

hung by their feet from trees. Rather, Wiesel offers the simple statement, “A truck drew close

and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies!”16

Following this account Elie and his father continued to march in their group toward the

larger pit. As they stepped closer and closer to the pit, Elie found himself whispering the words

his father had just whispered:

“Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba…May His name be exalted and sanctified”17

Elie seemed to be facing certain death when their group was “ordered to turn left and herded

into the barracks.”18 Elie’s father then asked him if he remembered Mrs. Schächter from the

train. Mrs. Schächter was the lady from the train that incessantly shouted about the fire and

the flames. No one believed Mrs. Schächter. Elie believed her now. Elie remembered her now.

It is after his father asked him if he remembered Mrs. Schächter that Elie pens some of the

most memorable words in all of Night:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

15 Leon Wells, The Janowska Road, 206 as quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 130-131.16

Wiesel, Night, 32.

17 Wiesel, Night, 3418

Ibid.

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.

Never.19

Not only does Wiesel explicitly mention the “nocturnal silence” that took over his life and

changed it forever, but he also inserts it after this section. The silence that is present

immediately after this section is palpable. The reader is stunned for a moment at what is said

and what is not said. Questioning ensues. Interpretation ensues.

Another sobering example of Wiesel’s use of silence both by using the word “silence” in

the text and by injecting the presence of silence into the story is seen when he recounts the

hanging of the young pipel.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more worried, than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows.

This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as an executioner. Three SS took his place.

The three condemned prisoners together stepped onto the chairs. In unison, the nooses were placed around their necks.

‘Long live liberty!’ shouted the two men.

19 Ibid.

But the boy was silent.

‘Where is merciful God, where is He?’ someone behind me was asking.

At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over.

Total silence in the camp…

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

“For God’s sake, where is God?”

And from within me, I heard a voice answer:

“Where He is? This is where – hanging here from the gallows…”20

Wiesel tells the reader that the whole camp was silent; rightfully so. The chapter is concluded

with a single sentence:

That night, the soup tasted of corpses.21

Then, silence. There is nothing left to say, yet there is a multitude left to be said. Harry James

Cargas captures this in his letter nominating Wiesel for the Nobel Prize: “This mystical silence,

this awe before God and the actions of men, is the substance of every line Wiesel has ever

written.”22

The conclusion of the book, though brief in actuality, seems to last into eternity. The

final page is once again filled with silence. The silence that fills this final page is of the sort of

Wiesel’s choice to leave out details and his choice to leave Night with as little emotion and

judgment as possible. Wiesel’s brevity is especially noticeable when he relays Buchenwald

20 Ibid., 64-65.21

Ibid., 65.22

Harry James Cargas quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 8.

being liberated by the Americans. A time that the reader expects to be joyous, new, exciting is

dispassionate and stated as if one has merely noted the occurrence of the event, but not been

affected by it at all. The American liberation is summed up by Wiesel in one single sentence:

At six o’clock that afternoon, the first American tank stood at the gates of Buchenwald.23

Is that really all that needs to be said about the American liberation of Buchenwald? One feels

obligated to say that it is not. No, much more can be said, perhaps should be said. Wiesel,

however desired his story to be closest to the truth, without embellishment or feelings. Wiesel

entire experience is “stripped to the essence.”24

What of the end of Wiesel’s account? He concisely mentions a sickness that he suffered.

He spent weeks in a hospital near death. When he was well enough to get out of bed, though,

he decided to look at himself in a mirror, for he had not seen himself since he was in the ghetto.

The final two sentences then follow. Each stands alone.

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.

The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.25

Silence extends into perpetuity after each period. Each chapter ends with thick silence, but that

which concludes the book is even more substantial, even more present, even more real, even

more silent. The close of the book leaves the reader thinking, wondering, hoping, hurting,

longing. The silence is deafening.

23 Wiesel, Night, 115.24

Cedars, “Silence and Against Silence: The Two Voices of Elie Wiesel,” 258.25

Wiesel, Night, 115.

It is clear, then, that Wiesel chose to limit what he said, especially about many camp

experiences.26 The question, though, is why? While many possible reasons may be offered, it

seems that the nature of language pushed Wiesel toward silence.27 Wiesel says that he “knew

the story had to be hold” for “not to transmit an experience is to betray it.”28 What he struggled

with, though, was “how to do this.”29 Harry James Cargas relays that Wiesel “voluntarily went

for weeks and weeks without saying a single word, ‘to see what one does with silence.’”30 Of

this Wiesel says, “It was by seeking, by probing silence that I began to discover the perils and

power of the word.”31 Wiesel had begun to understand that a Holocaust author ought to take

responsibility “not only for what he says, but also for what he does not say.”32

More than ever, Wiesel understood the nature of language, complete with its

possibilities and its shortcomings. For Wiesel, “the Holocaust proved that eloquent words can

be used to cover the basest deeds, that ‘logical’ reasons can be given for destroying a people.”33

Wiesel was only going to say what could be said.

We all knew that we could never, never say what had to be said, that we could never express in words, coherent, intelligible words, our experience of madness on an 26 See Gerda Weissmann Klein, All But My Life (New York: Hill and Wang, 1957).

27 Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 70.28

Elie Wiesel, “Why I Write” trans. Rossette C. Lamont, in Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel, (ed. Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 201.

29

Ibid.30

Harry James Cargas, Harry James Cargas in Conversation with Elie Wiesel (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1976), 90 quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 63.

31 Wiesel, “Why I Write,” 200.32

Elie Wiesel in Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy (rev. ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 320.

33 Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 106.

absolute scale. The walk through flaming night, the silence before and after the selection, the monotonous praying of the condemned, the Kaddish of the dying, the fear and hunger of the sick, the shame and suffering, the haunted eyes, the demented stares.34

Wiesel wanted language and words to be intense. Instead, “all words seemed inadequate,

worn, foolish, lifeless.”35

Words alone simply could not complete the task at hand. Walter Kaufmann spoke to

this when he said, “If I have words for it, adequate words, the feeling is not deep and intense.”36

What Wiesel felt during and after the Holocaust was certainly deep and intense. That was just

the problem. How does one convey that which words cannot convey? Wiesel’s solution: “to

mobilize silence…to render silence in ways that make it – and therefore what it embodies –

present and meaningful to us.”37 Wiesel overcame the restrictions of language by employing

silence. Des Pres asserts that Wiesel’s job, as a writer and a witness, was “to make silence

speak.”38 It is a paradox indeed that Wiesel had to “use words to express and delineate these

silences.”39 However, as aforementioned, Wiesel chose to use as few words as possible. For, as

Wiesel himself put it, “the reader feels the density of a page if there are in that page many

others which were cut out.”40

34

Wiesel, “Why I Write,” 201.35

Ibid. See also Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy (rev. ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 320.

36

Walter Kauffman, Critique of Religion and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 79.37

Terrence Des Pres, “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art,” in Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel (ed. Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 53.

38 Ibid.39

Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 93.40

SILENCE OF GOD

There seems to be no more appropriate way to start a section on the silence of God in

Night than with Elie Wiesel’s own words during his first night in Birkenau:

Harry James Cargas, Harry James Cargas in Conversation with Elie Wiesel (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1976), 94 quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 28.

For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent.41

The silence of humanity as it stood by and watched certainly perplexed Wiesel. The silence of

the prisoners in the face of their annihilation came to be logical to Wiesel. The silence of God,

however, has never made sense to Wiesel. How could God abandon his very people and leave

them to be slaughtered? How could God stand by and watch their destruction and not

intervene? To Wiesel, “silence was God’s response to His people’s annihilation.”42 These

questions began to perplex Wiesel during his very first night in Birkenau and remain with him

even until today. They were more than questions though, for the silence of God that Wiesel

encountered in Birkenau and Auschwitz “destroyed the unquestioning faith of his childhood

and has left him seeking answers to that silence ever since.”43

That Wiesel’s faith is being shaken one need only look at the time of Yom Kippur that

Wiesel records in Night. The question of whether to fast was being debated by just about

everyone. There were those who said they should not fast, as that would lead to an even more

sure and a quicker death. Others, however, said that the Jews should fast to show God that

even where they were, “locked in hell” as Wiesel puts it, that they were able to praise God.44

The reader then sees Wiesel’s choice of action and the results:

I did not fast. First of all, to please my father who had forbidden me to do so. And then, there was no longer any reason for me to fast. I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him.41 Wiesel, Night, 33.42

Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 36.43

Ibid., 7.44 Wiesel, Night, 69.

And I nibbled on my crust of bread.

Deep inside me, I felt a great void opening.45

Wiesel no longer accepted God’s silence. What exactly Wiesel means by this is not clear, but

one is certainly drawn toward the covenant that God had made with his people. Wiesel no

longer accepted God’s silence because he believe that “during the Holocaust the covenant was

broken.”46

A lofty claim indeed, but one that Wiesel makes with every bit of confidence. How could

he say this though? How could he believe that the covenant between man and God was

broken? It is quite simple actually: “when those who followed the Commandments were being

killed by those who continually defied them.”47 This same concern that God has not been

faithful to his end of the covenant is echoed by another, anonymous character in Night. Wiesel

was in the infirmary when he caught wind of a rumor that said the battlefront was extremely

near Buna and that only be a few more hours. Wiesel had certainly heard numerous rumors of

this sort during his days in the camps; however, this time he could hear the cannons in the

distance. His faceless neighbor assured Elie that Hitler had made it clear he would obliterate the

Jews that very night. Elie exploded back, asking if the Jews should consider Hitler a prophet.

His cold eyes stared at me. At last, he said wearily:

“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.”48

45

Ibid.

46 Harry James Cargas, Harry James Cargas in Conversation with Elie Wiesel (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1976), 56 quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 107.

47

Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 145.48 Wiesel, Night, 80-81.

That was all that needed to be said. Wiesel understood that God had broken the covenant. It is

significant too that Wiesel’s neighbor is anonymous and portrayed as “faceless,” for he seems

to be sharing the thoughts of many of the Jews. Wiesel was not the only one that had begun to

question not only God’s goodness, but also his existence. What happened? Melissa Raphael

offers that “the Nazi’s assumed God’s power and he was impotent in the face of it.”49

The view that the covenant between God and his people had been broken becomes

even more poignantly when the Holocaust is juxtaposed with the Akedah, the story of the

binding of Isaac in Genesis. The Akedah has perplexed Jews, Christians and Muslims for

centuries and its meaning or purpose is still not agreed upon today. Moreover, other authors

have compared Wiesel’s Night with the Akedah; for in both, “a father and a son go to the

sacrifice.”50 The Biblical account is as follows:

After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the ass; I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here am I, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them

49

Melissa Raphael, The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (London: Routledge, 2003), 35.

50 Andre Neher, The Exile of the Word: From the Silence of the Bible to the Silence of Auschwitz, 216 quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 49.

together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place The LORD will provide; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”51

Just as in Night, there is much left unsaid. How exactly did Abraham convince Isaac to go along

with him? Did Isaac really believe that God would provide the sacrifice or did he begin to catch

on? What happened when Abraham bound Isaac, laid him on the altar and raised the knife

above him? Was Isaac laying their willingly accepting what his father was about to do? Was he

scared, trying to get away? Did Abraham have faith that God would provide a sacrifice? Did he

really plan on going through with slaughtering his own son? Questions remain to this day about

the Akedah, just as they remain about the Holocaust. There is a great reversal, however, in the

Holocaust. God did not intervene. Marie Cedars captures how incomprehensible this is: “Wiesel

knew that God had provided the ram for the sacrifice in time to save Isaac, but in the camps, He

did not intervene and He let His children go to the slaughter. Mad and unbelievable as was this

sacrifice, the witness who writes was there. He knows the Holocaust happened.”52 How could

God have intervened to save Isaac, one boy, and not intervene to save six million of his people?

It is not that no one called out to God, for they cried out incessantly. Elie and others call out for

God. Their response? Silence. The moral of the Akedah seems to be that God demands sacrifice

51

Genesis 22:1-14. This and any future Biblical quotations from the New Revised Standard Version.52 Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 51.

but is ultimately compassionate. During the Holocaust, however, Elie feels that God’s silence

demonstrates the absence of divine compassion; as a result, he ultimately questions the very

existence of God.

In “God’s Suffering: A Commentary,” Wiesel notes the dilemma that the Jewish believe

has now, in a post-Holocaust world: “by allowing [the Holocaust] to happen, God was telling

humanity something, and we don’t know what it was.”53 Wiesel asks if God was trying to tell

humanity that God suffered. To that Wiesel responds: “He could have – should have –

interrupted His own suffering by calling a halt to the martyrdom of innocents. I don’t know why

He did not do so and I think I never shall.”54 That Jews have to live in the shadow of the Akedah

story is painful. Simon Sibelman depicts this when he says, “the rewriting and reversals of the

Akedah in La Nuit underscore how radically the original has been transformed, how much more

painful is God’s silence, and how the miracle that saved Isaac’s life cannot transpire in this

particular story where death reigns supreme.”55

How, then, does Wiesel deal with this silence? He meets it with his own silence. As was

seen previously, Wiesel incorporates silence into Night by speaking of it specifically and by

giving it real presence within each page. Terrence Des Pres states that Wiesel has succeeded in

making silence “meaningful.”56 I, however, think that Wiesel reminded us of the meaning of

53

Elie Wiesel, “God’s Suffering: A Commentary,” in Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust ed. Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 683.

54 Ibid.55

Simon Sibelman, Silence in the Novels of Elie Wiesel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 42.56

Terrence Des Pres, “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art,” 53.

silence. He did not make it meaningful, for silence has always been meaningful. Wiesel’s own

religious tradition understands how meaningful silence is when they are desperate to hear a

word from God, while God remains silent. This can be seen in the book of Amos when God

threatens to remain silent: “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘when I will send

a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of

the LORD.’”57 The silence that God threatened during Amos’ day was experienced during the

Holocaust. It was a devastating time indeed.

“Silence remains…because unanswered questions about God’s and man’s silences

continue to perplex Wiesel.”58 Wiesel understands that silence is the only appropriate response

he can have to the Holocaust. For, “there are no answers, no meanings to be discerned, only

the intolerable weight of the event itself, to be faced in the quiet of an endless sorrow.”59 There

are no explanations, no justifications. Wiesel even says, “Nothing justifies Auschwitz. Were the

Lord Himself to offer me a justification, I think I would reject it.”60 In the same text Wiesel

makes an attempt at hope and yet remains without answers.

A Midrash recounts: When God sees the suffering of His children scattered among the nations, He sheds two tears in the ocean. When they fall, they make a noise so loud it is heard round the world. It is a legend I enjoy rereading. And I tell myself: Perhaps God she more than two tears during His people’s recent tragedy. But men, cowards that they are, refused to hear them.

Is that, at least, an answer?

57

Amos 8:11.58 Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 11.59

Terrence Des Pres, “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art,” 57.60

Elie Wiesel, “God’s Suffering: A Commentary,” 683.

No. It is a question. Yet another question.61

Searching for answers for a lifetime has still left Elie Wiesel void of them and full of questions.

How does one respond to that. Des Pres holds that “the contradictory but nonetheless

authentic response that Wiesel expressed through Night” is that “there is no God, and I hate

him.”62

NIGHT AND POST-HOLOCAUST THEOLOGY

Richard Rubenstein notes in After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary

Judaism that the twentieth century brought about more significant changes to the Jewish

community than did any other time in Judaism’s long and rich history.63 Obviously, the

Holocaust was one of the events that worked to create so many problems and such chaos in

Jewish life. Some attempted to bring back an “irretrievable past, yearning for a restoration of its

virtues.”64 This of course is futile. Others, Rubenstein included, attempted to recognize “the

61

Ibid., 684.62

Terrence Des Pres, “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art,” 56.63 Richard L. Rubenstein, preface to After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism.

(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966), ix.64

Ibid.

irretrievability of the past and to explore the potentialities inherent in the present.”65 Jews, by

necessity, had to respond to the Holocaust. Rubenstein puts it thus:

Although Jewish history is replete with disaster, none has been so radical in its total import as the holocaust. Our images of God, man, and the moral order have been permanently impaired. No Jewish theology will possess even a remote degree of relevance to contemporary Jewish life if it ignores the question of God and the death camps. That is the question for Jewish theology in our times.66

This work is indeed extremely difficult and has resulted in a variety of theologies. The one that

will be discussed here is the death of God theology. I have chosen to briefly look at the death of

God theology as representative of post-Holocaust Jewish theology because it has many ties to

the work of Elie Wiesel and especially Night. As Michael Morgan points our Wiesel’s account in

Night of the young pipel being hung “is probably the most recalled and cited episode in all

Holocaust literature.”67 This is because this account raises “the idea that the death camps were

a radical break in life and thought, not for the victims alone but for all of us, and that to go on

requires going on in a different way.”68 Moreover, I believe there is no more important question

of the Holocaust than the one that Wiesel asks in Night, namely, “For God’s sake, where is

God?”69

This was a very real question for Wiesel as well as for many other Jews in the aftermath

of the Holocaust. In light of the Holocaust, Jews are faced with having to either retreat to

65

Ibid.66

Ibid., x.67 Michael L. Morgan, Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2001), 33.

68 Ibid.69

Wiesel, Night, 65.

“fideistic dogmatism which ignores modern scholarship,” or seek a new rationale for their

theological commitments. “For many, the problem of finding a new rationale has been

aggravated by the death of their personal God. After Auschwitz many Jews did not need

Nietzsche to tell them that the old God of Jewish patriarchal monotheism was dead beyond all

hope of resurrection.”70 Rubenstein holds very surely that we are now in the time of the death

of God;71 we must be. “Though many still believe in [transcendent, theistic God of Jewish

patriarchal monotheism], they do so ignoring the questions of God and human freedom and

God and human evil. For those who face these issues, the Father-God is a dead God. Even the

existentialist leap of faith cannot resurrect this dead God after Auschwitz.”72 How can one be so

sure?

For Rubenstein the death of God movement has thrived for a very simple reason: “The

vitality of death of God theology is rooted in the fact that it has faced more openly than any

other contemporary theological movement the truth of the divine-human encounter in our

times. The truth is that it is totally nonexistent.”73 These are heavy words that are not spoken

lightly. It is with intensity and sadness that Rubenstein arrives at these words, but they exhibit

his integrity in light of the Holocaust. His theology, like that of many other post-Holocaust Jews,

has experienced a paradigm shift and is largely anthropological.74 This because of the inherent

70

Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, 227.71

Ibid., 246. Rubenstein chooses to use this phrase instead of “God is dead.” His reasoning: “It is more precise to assert that we live in the time of the death of God than to declare “God is dead.” The death of God is a cultural fact. We shall never know whether it is more than that.”

72 Ibid., 238.73

Ibid., 245.74

Ibid., 246.

subjective nature of all theologies. Doubtless, theology’s “significance rests on what it reveals

about the theologian and his culture.”75 Post-Holocaust theology has no significance if it is not

cognizant of the culture in which it is purporting truths about God, humanity and creation.

Thus, it is under the assumption that we are living in a time of the death of God that

Rubenstein is able to make positive affirmations about God. He suggests that “God can be

understood meaningfully not only as ground of being but also as the focus of ultimate

concern.”76 It is through this Kierkegaardian language that Rubenstein is able to find at least

some solace. Moreover, in this view God is “the infinite measure against which we can see our

own limited lives in proper perspective.”77

Not only is it important to see ourselves in proper perspective, but also to have integrity

and remain authentic, even when it is the most unbearable task we have ever attempted in our

lives. In talking about the work of Emil Fackenheim Morgan tells how Fackenheim sees Elie

Wiesel as a model of authentic Jewish existence. “[Fackenheim] notes that Night is not a

speculation or fiction but an ‘eye-witness account of the most terrible actual darkness.’”

Morgan then goes on to assert that Fackenheim moves beyond appropriating Martin Buber:

“the lineaments of an authentic post-Holocaust Judaism arise out of the complex response to

Auschwitz, out of the mystery, the paradox, and the silence.”78

75

Ibid.76

Ibid., 238.77 Ibid.78

Morgan, Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America, 70.

CONCLUSION

Contemporary musician/theologian Tracy Chapman asks us a piercing question: “If you

knew that you would find a truth/That brings up pain that can't be soothed/Would you

change?”79 The Holocaust is indeed a truth that brings up pain that cannot be soothed. How

then does one deal with this pain? Does one change? Elie Wiesel was changed, indeed. He had

no choice but to change. His faith in the God of his childhood was shattered forever. He chose

to express this change through silence in his Holocaust memoir Night. Terrence Des Pres said

rightly of Wiesel: “we cannot read him without the desire to change, to lead better lives.”80

79 “Change” by Tracy Chapman. Lyrics obtained from “Tracy Chapman – Change Lyrics,” http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Change-lyrics-Tracy-Chapman/5FC3EA772D7A27BF4825706F00110C21 (accessed 22 April 2008).

80

Des Pres, Forward to Ellen S. Fine, Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel, xiv quoted in Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence.”

Wiesel explored silence literarily and relived the silence of God. It resulted in a work that is truly

affecting.

Likewise, Jewish theology was necessarily changed in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Richard Rubenstein recounts an experience in which he was asked by a Polish theologian after a

lecture at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, “Do you love God?” Rubenstein replied: “I

should. We are enjoined to love God ‘with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy might.’

But I cannot. I am aware of His holiness. I am struck with wonder and terror before His

Nothingness, but I cannot love Him. I am affrighted before Him. Perhaps, in the end, all I have is

silence.”81 Silence was the only appropriate response for Richard Rubenstein post-Holocaust.

Similarly, silence invading Elie Wiesel’s life and his works was a must. For, the Holocaust

“demands a retreat to silence.”82 The Holocaust is like God: ineffable. “Only Silence can transmit

its mystery.”83 Hence, to be true to himself, the Holocaust, survivors, and the world, Elie Wiesel

chose silence.

81 Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, 263-4.82

Cedars, “Speaking Through Silence,” 86.83

Ibid.

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----. “Speaking Through Silence: The Art of Elie Wiesel.” PhD diss., The University of Texas at Arlington, 1984.

Des Pres, Terrence. “The Authority of Silence in Elie Wiesel’s Art.” Pages 49-57 in Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Edited by Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Donadio, Rachel. “The Story of ‘Night’” (review of Elie Wiesel’s Night). New York Times Book Review, Jan 20, 2008, 27.

“Elie Wiesel Biography.” No Pages. Cited 21 April 2008. Online: http://www.achievement. org/autodoc/page/wie0bio-1.

Katz, Steven T., ed. The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology. New York: New York University Press, 2005.

Kaufmann, Walter. Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.

Morgan, Michael L. Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Patterson, David. Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of the Holocaust. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.

Raphael, Melissa. The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust. London: Routledge, 2003.

Rubenstein, Richard L. and John K. Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy. Rev. ed. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.

----. After Auschwitz: Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966.

Sibelman, Simon P. Silence in the Novels of Elie Wiesel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

Stern, Ellen Norman. Elie Wiesel: A Voice for Humanity. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1996.

“Tracy Chapman – Change Lyrics.” http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Change-lyrics-Tracy-Chapman/5FC3EA772D7A27BF4825706F00110C21 (accessed 22 April 2008).

Wardi, Dina. Auschwitz: Contemporary Jewish and Christian Encounters. New York: Paulist Press, 2003.

Wiesel, Elie. “God’s Suffering: A Commentary.” In Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust, edited by Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman, and Gershon Greenberg, 682-684. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

----. Night. New York: Hill and Wang,2006.

----. “Why I Write.” Pages 200-206. Translated by Rosette C. Lamont, in Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Wiesel. Edited by Alvin Rosenfeld and Irving Greenberg. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.