9 July 2016 ~ 3 Tammuz 5776                        

This has been a month of anxiety, anger and anguish. 

Israelis and Jews continue to mourn the murders of 13-year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel who was stabbed to death in her bed and Michael Mark, father of ten, who was killed when his car was ambushed and attacked by over 20 bullets.

ISIS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in a busy Baghdad shopping district that killed at least 215 people. Istanbul’s Atatürk airport was attacked by guns and bombs, leaving at least 41 people dead.  Jihadist extremists hacked 20 people to death in a cafe in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka—sparing only those who could recite from the Koran.

In the United States, an American-born man who declared allegiance to ISIS gunned down 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. There have been two black men killed in encounters with white police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Thursday night, a sniper attack killed five police officers and wounded seven police and two civilians in Dallas.

In this week’s Torah portion, we read of a revolt led by Koraẖ and his cohorts against the leadership of Moses. Factions arose among the Israelites. Tensions reached the breaking point. While Koraẖ and his co-conspirators were swallowed by the earth and the ritual leadership of the people was confirmed by the budding and blossoming of Aharon’s staff, there was still frustration fomenting among the families of bnei yisrael: “You have killed God’s people.” Once fired up by the oratory and demagoguery of Koraẖ and company, many were not amenable to other points of view.

The aspirations of Koraẖ led to antagonism and agitation, anguish and anger.

Elie Wiesel, who died last Shabbat, presented an alternative to the notion that these feelings always lead to violence. Wiesel grew up in Sighet, then part of Hungary. His childhood memories included Shabbat songs, enjoying chocolates and studying Talmud. On the wall of his study were two pictures. One was a photograph of his home in Sighet. Wiesel once observed, “Since I began writing, I always face that house. I must know where I come from.”

Wiesel was just a teen when the Nazis came to his town. In May of 1944, Eichmann visited the ghetto as deportations were beginning. In less than two months, between May 15 and July 9, 1944, nearly 440,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz. Most were gassed on arrival at Birkenau.

My teacher, Rav David Weiss-Halivni, was Wiesel’s life-long friend. “We were in the ghetto together. He was on the last transport. I was on the first. I left on Monday, he left Thursday.”

Wiesel's mother, Sarah, and younger sister, Tzipora, were among those sent to the gas chamber. His older sisters were separated from the rest of the family and survived. Wiesel, together with his father, Shlomo, went through forced labor and a death march to the Buchenwald concentration camp. His father died in Buchenwald three months before the camp was liberated on April 11, 1945 by the U.S. Army.

After the War, Wiesel spent a few years in a French orphanage, then settled in Paris where he studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne. During that time, he was deeply influenced by an anonymous teacher whose gravestone, written and paid for by Wiesel, reads: "The wise Rabbi Chouchani of blessed memory. His birth and his life are sealed in enigma."

Night was Wiesel’s first book. It was among the first first-person accounts of Nazi atrocities. Originally written in the mid-1950s as a lengthy Yiddish memoir, it was cut to under 300 pages for an Argentinian edition, released in a 200 page French version and finally in English, in 1960, as a publication of just over 100 pages.

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. … Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

In 1956, Wiesel came to New York as a journalist to cover the United Nations. He was struck by a car and confined to a wheelchair for a year. This became the basis for his book Day. Wiesel became a New Yorker, writing for the Yiddish newspaper The Forward.

Wiesel’s writing presented polarities of doubt and faith, with questions and commitment to Jewish life and belief. His heritage set a tone for post-Holocaust Judaism. In the early 1960s, Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, originally of Toronto, met the unknown Wiesel and brought him as a speaker to a Rabbinical Assembly convention. Young and gaunt, Wiesel’s words were haunting and evocative. He was invited to speak at many Conservative congregations throughout Canada and the States, including Beth Tzedec. He became noted as a speaker and representative of Shoah survivors.

Rabbis Saul Lieberman and Abraham Joshua Heschel also welcomed Wiesel. He used to attend Prof. Lieberman’s Talmud classes and often was a Shabbat guest at the Heschel home. They helped Wiesel to retain his belief and practice while not accepting simple answers to the challenging questions that the Shoah poses for believers. Wiesel was even granted honorary membership in the Rabbinical Assembly.

Wiesel became a U.S. citizen in 1963. Although based in New York, he spent extended time in Paris and Jerusalem, and commuted to Boston University for almost three decades to teach Jewish thought and literature. His annual lecture series at the 92nd Street Y in New York became sell-outs and were the source of many books of H̱asidic and Biblical tales.

In addition to Night, two other books were among his most significant: The Jews of Silence and A Beggar in Jerusalem. These three represent the three-fold core of Wiesel's concerns—as a witness to the Shoah, a spokesperson for Soviet Jewry and an imaginative voice for the State of Israel. Indeed, when Wiesel sat at his desk, the other picture on the wall was a sketch of Jerusalem.

Wiesel also spoke up for others. In 1986, as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace, he reminded listeners, “Whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation, take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” He defended the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua, refugees from Cambodia, the Kurds and victims of African famine and of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

Chosen by President Carter to help to plan an American memorial museum of the Holocaust, Wiesel said that the museum had to tell the Jewish story; although all the victims of the Holocaust were not Jewish, all Jews were victims. But he also gave the museum a contemporary mandate, in addition to denying the Nazis a posthumous victory and honouring the victims’ last wishes to tell their stories. The museum also was to stand as a witness about contemporary efforts to oppress others.

In 1985, when he received a Congressional Gold Medal from President Ronald Reagan, Wiesel asked the president not to make a planned trip to a cemetery in Bitberg, Germany. The cemetery contained graves of Adolf Hitler’s personal guards. During the ceremony, Wiesel made one of his more memorable statements as a public intellectual: “May I, Mr. President, if it’s possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site. That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims.”

In addition to Night, many of Wiesel’s short stories, novels and plays demonstrate his struggle with faith post-Holocaust. Yet, in October 1997, he composed an unusual “Prayer for the Days of Awe” which was printed in the New York Times.

Master of the Universe, let us make up. It is time. How long can we go on being angry?

More than 50 years have passed since the nightmare was lifted. Many things, good and less good, have since happened to those who survived it. They learned to build on ruins. Family life was re-created. Children were born, friendships struck. They learned to have faith in their surroundings, even in their fellow men and women. Gratitude has replaced bitterness in their hearts. No one is as capable of thankfulness as they are. Thankful to anyone willing to hear their tales and become their ally in the battle against apathy and forgetfulness. For them every moment is grace.

Oh, they do not forgive the killers and their accomplices, nor should they. Nor should you, Master of the Universe. But they no longer look at every passer-by with suspicion. Nor do they see a dagger in every hand.

Does this mean that the wounds in their soul have healed? They will never heal. As long as a spark of the flames of Auschwitz and Treblinka glows in their memory, so long will my joy be incomplete.

What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?

I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don’t know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those ones reserved for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?

But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?

In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. …

[Q]uestions have been haunting me for more than five decades. … I reject all [their] answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven’t you also suffered?

As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.

The anger and anguish Wiesel experienced could have turned into antagonism and attacks on others. That was the path of Koraẖ. Wiesel chose a different way. Although Western society faces many social and security challenges, we should be cautious not to head down the path of exclusion. The aspiration for inclusion creates more affirmative and hopeful possibilities. 

Despite Wiesel’s mission to remind the world of past mistakes, he indicated that the greatest disappointment of his life was that “nothing change. ... Human nature remained what it was. Society remained what it was. Too much indifference in the world, to the Other, his pain, and anguish, and hope.”

The Wiesel legacy stands in contrast to that of Koraẖ. Let us aspire to make the world a safer and better place for all.