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Elie Wiesel on Memory, Prayer, Protest, Suffering, and God |
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Memory Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call
of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of
history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the
Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and
the evil we have suffered. New Year's Day, Rosh Hashana, is also
called Yom Hazikaron, the day of memory. On that day, the day of
universal judgment, man appeals to God to remember: our salvation depends
on it. If God wishes to remember our suffering, all will be well; if He
refuses, all will be lost. Thus, the rejection of memory becomes a divine
curse, one that would doom us to repeat past disasters, past wars. * * * * *
* * * * * Jewish memory does not
resist time, it transcends time. This is a small, but essential
distinction. I mean this:
resisting time would mean ignoring time and the events that make up our
time. Transcending time means
accepting it, taking it up, and passing beyond it in order to attain a
comprehensive perspective on time. Jewish memory is something special.
Human memory in general is something special, but as a Jew I speak of
Jewish memory. Memory wants to
bear reality in mind, commemorate it, both the painful and the less
painful. Suffering We must remember the suffering of my people, as we must remember that of the Ethiopians, the Cambodians, the boat people, Palestinians, the Mesquite Indians, the Argentinian "desaparecidos" - the list seems endless. Let us remember Job who, having lost everything - his children, his friends, his possessions, and even his argument with God - still found the strength to begin again, to rebuild his life. Job was determined not to repudiate the creation, however imperfect, that God had entrusted to him. Job, our ancestor. Job, our contemporary. His ordeal
concerns all humanity. Did he ever lose his faith? If so, he rediscovered
it within his rebellion. He demonstrated that faith is essential to
rebellion, and that hope is possible beyond despair. The source of his
hope was memory, as it must be ours. Because I remember, I despair.
Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the
killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand
and one reasons to hope. * * * * * Hunger and humiliation.
A hungry person experiences an overwhelming feeling of shame.
All desires, all aspirations, all dreams lose their lofty qualities
and relate to food alone. I
may testify to something that I have witnessed, in certain places at
certain times, those people who were reduced by hunger, diminished by
hunger, they did not think about theology, nor did they think about God or
philosophy or literature. They
thought of a piece of bread. A
piece of bread was, to them, God, because a piece of bread then filled
one's universe. Diminished by
hunger, man's spirit is diminished as well.
His fantasy wanders in quest of bread.
His prayer rises toward a bowl of milk. Thus
the shame. Prayer
* * * * * Through prayer God becomes present. Better: God
becomes presence. And everything becomes possible and meaningful: here the
Supreme Judge, here the Father of humanity, leaves his celestial throne to
live and move among His human creatures. And, in turn, here the soul
transported by its prayer leaves its abode and rises to heaven. The
substance of language, and the language of silence--that is what prayer
is. * * * * *
I no longer ask you for either happiness or paradise;
all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware of Your listening.
I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You. I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give. As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers. But not Your countenance. They are modest, my requests, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land. I ask you, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me: God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too. I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only beg You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together. --One Generation After (1971) Protest What I try to do is
speak to God. Even when I
speak against God, I speak to God. And even if I am angry at God, I try to
show God my anger. But even that is a profession, not a denial of God. . .
. . I have never abandoned God. I
had tremendous problems with God, and still do.
Therefore I protest against God.
Sometimes I bring God before the bench.
Nevertheless, everything I do is done from within faith and not
from outside. If one believes
in God one can say anything to God. One
can be angry at God, one can praise God, one can demand things of God.
Above all, one can demand justice of God. * * * * * If He insists upon
going on with His methods, let Him -- but I won't say Amen.
Let Him crush me, I won't say Kaddish.
Let Him kill me, let Him kills us all, I shall shout and shout that
it's His fault. I'll use my
last energy to make my protest known.
Whether I live or die, I submit to Him no longer�And they kept
quiet? Too bad -- then I'll
speak for them. For them, too,
I'll demand justice�To you, judges, I'll shout, "Tell Him what He
should not have done; tell Him to stop the bloodshed now�"
I lived as a Jew, and it is as a Jew that I die -- and it is as a
Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God!
And because the end is near, I shall shout louder! Because the end
is near, I'll tell Him that He's more guilty than ever! God The Midrash tells us that when Pharaoh ordered that Jewish children be walled in alive in the pyramids, the Angel Michael seized one of them and held it up to the heavenly court. When God saw the frightened child, he was moved to such compassion that he decided then and there to bring the exile to an end. I loved to read this Midrashic tale. I was
as proud of the angel because he cared as of God because He acted. I now
reread the tale and desperately try to understand. One Jewish child
succeeded in moving God, but one million Jewish children did not. I try to
understand�and I cannot. * * * * * There
can be no theology after Auschwitz and no theology whatsoever about Whatever
God does happens by intention; God acts intentionally, and even God's will
is wrapped in silence. An old
Jewish poet and philosopher, Rabbi Elieser Kalir, once said: "God is
not silent. God is silence." Yet
God's silence is not that of a passive onlooker.
It is a completely different silence.
The silence of God is deep and full of meaning. * * * * * Is
this to say that I have reconciliated myself with God? I continue to
protest against His apparent indifference with regard to the injustices
that ravage his creation. With
the messiah, perhaps? He ought
to have revealed himself earlier, much earlier.
Maybe Kafka is right: the Savior will not come on the last day, but
on the day after that. And my
faith in all of this? Certainly, I could abandon it.
I would have the right to do so.
I could invoke many reasons, six million reasons to justify my
decision. But I do not do so.
I feel myself incapable of distancing myself from the road traced
by my predecessors. Without this faith in God, that of my ancestors and of
my father, my faith in |
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