Elie Wiesel's First Person Testimony

I was quite disappointed, actually horrified, when I discovered that Eli Wiesel's Night is listed as "fiction" in the my public library system.   The librarian checked to see how the book is listed in the neighboring library systems and found that it is as "non-fiction."

 

He gave me an email address where I could address my complaint to the person in charge of "collection management."  

I wrote a letter saying Night is a memoir, a Holocaust memoir that is assigned reading to many students. What a shame and, worse, what an undermining of Wiesel's work and life, to have students think the book is "made up." I hope you will rectify this categorization.

 

I received a speedy response which said:

 

I am the lead Hebrew and Yiddish cataloger for BPL.

Your question was forwarded to me. I am taking the liberty of letting you know that it is receiving much attention.

I have emailed a number of Jewish veteran librarians around the system to get their input. 

I appreciate the gravity of the impression that this could make on students, or provide an opening for a Holocaust denier. I don't think personally the great majority of people will get that idea, especially as there are so many other memoirs and history books in the collection.

In fairness to the original decision by someone to consider it fiction:

 

The book is a memoir but was written in novel form. There were changes in the ending from the Yiddish original to the French version which was subsequently translated into English.

Also there were sequels Dawn and Day (the Accident).

 

***

I subsequently found this interesting article: Amazon-recategorizes-Elie-Wiesel-s-Night

Life Must Go On

A woman described her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who was the only survivor of a very large family.  She had one child who died at age 40:

"My grandmother is very bitter about losing her entire family in the Holocaust and then her only child dying.  She often talks about her father who was a great talmid chacham.  She is very angry at Hashem.  She keeps Shabbos and a strictly kosher home.  She goes to shul every Shabbos but does not daven.  She says, 'I can't get myself to praise Hashem after what happened to me, so I say nothing.'  She says, 'I don't bentch.  If I were to thank Hashem for the food, I also must scold Him for what He did.'"

What an amazing approach to life! It's like what they teach kallos, that even when upset with your husband, the routine of life must go on.  There is supper and mikva.  This woman has a genuine relationship with Hashem and she is mad at Him.  She stills keeps Shabbos and kosher and even goes to shul, but to praise Him? That's going too far. 

I'd love for her to speak to disenfranchised teens and adults and tell them about her life and her attitude toward serving Hashem.  Perhaps all those who walk away from Shabbos and kashrus will be touched by her story and ashamed when they compare their grievances to the life this woman has led, and hear how she still maintains the routine of Jewish life, because - just because you're upset, doesn't mean you walk away from it all.

Praying for IDF soldiers

Once again, I'm seeing requests that we join the program that pairs up Israeli soldiers with Jews around the world who do acts of chesed, tefilla and study Torah in the merit of "their" soldier.  They say:

Any mitzvah that you do, be it once or on a daily basis, on behalf of a soldier truly makes a difference - to the soldier and to Jewish unity. Pick a mitzvah that can easily be a part of your life and dedicate it to 'your' soldier. Be realistic. Write your soldier's name out and post it where you'll see it: near the Shabbos candles; on the refrigerator; in your car; in your phone. Then, when you are going to do something positive in the world - stop and think of  'your' soldier and include him or her in your mitzvah.

 

I think the idea has merit since it personalizes the war for us.  It's like those who go on the March of the Living and are given the identity card of someone their age who perished in the Holocaust.  It enables the person to see the Holocaust in a personal way.  We don't relate to the number six million, but we can relate to the life of a person just like us who lived at that time. 

 

However, I was surprised to see a very strong reaction to this idea.  A person wrote a comment in which he wondered why these gimmicks are needed and why we can't just pray like our Bubbies and Zeides did "and shed an honest earnest tear for the better health and safety of our fellow bretheren in Eretz Yisroel. No fanfare or organizations needed."

"A Divine Madness" cont.

 

In his lectures, Rabbi Miller spoke about his experiences in Europe on the eve of the war.  He was an American boy who was one of the few to make the voyage to learn in European yeshivos.  I remember hearing him describe, over twenty-five years ago, how he witnessed the chilul Shabbos in Slabodka. 

R' Miller, being an iconoclast, did not follow the frum party line which focused exclusively on the great yeshivos of Lithuania.  He described the deterioration of religious Jewry.  Although he spoke about this, apparently he did not feel that his manuscript about the Holocaust should be published in his lifetime. 

A very prevalent question asked by the irreligious and religious in the decades following the war was, "Where was G-d in the Holocaust."  This was (maybe still is) a question that kiruv rabbis had to expect.  R' Miller's book is his response to that question as the subtitle is, R' Avigdor Miller's Defense of Hashem in the Matter of the Holocaust." His position can be summarized as: the Holocaust was a fulfillment of what it states explicitly in the Torah, if you abandon Hashem, He will abandon you and you will suffer tremendously. 

"Blame the victim" implies that someone undeserving of pain, suffering, and sorrow is being accused of deserving pain, suffering and sorrow.  The premise of R' Miller's book is that the Torah spells out what we must do and what will happen if we don't do it.  Were we or weren't we faithful to Hashem?

The facts are, European Jewry, to a great extent, was comprised of Zionists, freethinkers, Bundists, Socialists, Communists, and Yiddishists.  Frum families were losing children rapidly to the secular world.  Sarah Schenirer's radical idea of schools for girls in the 1920's and 1930's was an emergency measure because girls were educated in Polish public schools and were dropping out of Yiddishkeit.

Although I can see how R' Miller's approach is true to Torah, it is troubling because of all the fine, frum people we know about who were destroyed and the destruction of frum life, shuls, sifrei Torah, yeshivos, i.e. those who did follow the Torah.  Furthermore, we don't see how destroying European Jewry accomplished anything.  Numerous assimilated Jews escaped or survived and numerous religious Jews who survived dropped their observance.  You had the resilient few who were frum previously and remained frum.  We don't see a mass teshuva movement happening during the war and subsequent to it.  That doesn't happen until decades later.  If the goal was to get European Jews back on track, did the Holocaust accomplish that? No.  And if that was not the goal, was the goal just to punish? Then why did so many assimilated Jews escape and so many pious Jews perish? But then, R' Miller is not talking about a goal; he is saying the Holocaust was a natural consequence of our behavior as spelled out in the Torah.

I'd find it interesting to read a sampling of book reviews written by Holocaust survivors.

"A Divine Madness"

 

A book with Rabbi Avigdor Miller z'l's perspective on the Holocaust has been published, posthumously.  It is quite provocative and controversial to the point that in a full-page ad, it shows the book surrounded by people's opinions:

"I would recommend this book to every Jew."

"I honestly would be terrified to give this book to a non-observant person."

"Solely defended the justice of the HaKadosh boruch Hu."

"This is a big change from the usual approach."

"I feel that this book stands at the brink of a crossroads in Jewish History.  The Jewish world can either choose to read it and take heed of its message, or carry on and reject it."

"I think this book should be banned."

"I'm buying ten copies for my children and rabbinical friends."

"Not likely to be a popular message."

"Hard to put down.  Read it in one sitting."

"The notes distracted me from the book's readability."

And the ad says: You Judge.  Your comments are appreciated.  First printing sold out. 

to be continued

Counting Jews

We just read Parshas Bamidbar in which the Jewish people are counted.  Why were they counted? As Rashi says, because they were dear to Him, He counted them often.

The same week, there was a news item that said that Yad Vashem representatives "are going door-to-door in a race to record the memories of elderly survivors before their stories are lost forever."  They have 4.2 million names of those who were killed in the Holocaust and are trying to collect as many names as possible before the few remaining survivors die.

There's counting and there's counting.

History in the Flesh

 

I have the privilege of knowing Mrs. Pearl Benisch.  By my reckoning, she is in her 90's since she describes knowing Sarah Schenirer who died in 1935 and she was a teenager, about 14 at the time.  Mrs. Benisch is the author of To Vanquish the Dragon which is about Beis Yaakov girls during World War II and and Carry Me in your Heart about Sarah Schenirer. 

Mrs. Benisch addresses group of high school girls and the main message she seeks to convey is: You are great.  You don't know what greatness you possess.

She is a very warm and positive woman who has been known, when speaking to young people, to say that she and they are the same age for they are all young.   

When I see her, I feel that I am looking at an extraordinary sight; a woman who helped Sarah Schenirer raise tzedaka funds, a woman who went through the war whose wish was not for bread or a sip of water but, "v'taher libeinu l'ovdecha b'emes" (Purify our heart to serve You in truth).

An interview with Pearl Benisch is here.

 In this excellent video: here which I recommend be watched in its entirety, Mrs. Benisch speaks at 31:26 minutes and 37:24 and 40:45 among other snippets.