The Holocaust is Dark

Night's Elie Wiesel is a young boy raised in the devout Hasidic tradition. However, he has too much "chutzpah" to follow his father's advice to passively practice Hasidism alone. As his life is torn by the rising crescendo of the Holocaust, Elie experiments with spirituality and concepts that change his religious views as well as his perceptions of God. While his life tumbles into disarray, his feelings toward God and his religion change drastically.

Elie's first guide on his path to religious enlightenment is Moshe the Beadle. Moshe is learned in Jewish mysticism (cabala) and he is considered an outcast by Elie's community. In contrast, Elie is entrenched in a traditional community based on order. Because Elie is rebellious and curious about why his father forbid him to study the cabala, he forges a friendship with Moshe, learning the cabala from him. Moshe instructs Elie to study the many facets of God through asking provocative questions. This is Elie's first step toward becoming part of the fringe elements of Judaism.

As the Holocaust envelops Elie, his all-trusting feelings toward God waver. He finds a new role model: the biblical character Job. He declares his thoughts succinctly, "...But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God's existence but I doubted his absolute justice." (34). The similarities between Job and Elie are uncanny, however the one colossal difference becomes glaringly apparent to Elie: he discovers that unlike Job he is not alone in his hellish existence. Given that a plethora of Jews are being punished, he concludes that to believe in God is to accept that God is punishing the Jewish people as a race.

For a brief period Elie is content to struggle against his dark contemplations. His revelation occurs amid the horrors of the concentration camps. It appears that no matter how much Elie's mind ponders God's righteousness, it is his heart that discovers his personal truth. On Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish equivalent of New Year's Day) Elie solemnly declares, "I (am) alone in a world without God and without man." (50). Ten days later, on the more pensive holiday of Yom Kippur, Elie decides not to follow his usual tradition of fasting because "(he) no longer accepts God's silence." (51). These denouncements of Elie's omnipresent role model, coupled with the growing distance between Elie and his father, lead to the spiritual destitution of Elie's once ritual laden life.

Night is a harrowing tribute to the way a boy's life is shattered by the Holocaust. The deconstruction of Elie's Jewish faith is almost ironic in that the cause of the collapse is his imprisonment for being Jewish. This dismal loss of faith, induced by the Holocaust, is the most disheartening loss of all because it resembles a concession to the deep-rooted Nazi motivations.

Bibliography

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill & Wang, 1960; Bantam Books, 1982