Imagine you have a great life, then suddenly everyone around you turns against you because you have black hair. You can’t help the fact that you have brown hair, having black hair isn’t wrong. Yet, others make you feel like it is, and bully you for something you have no control over. Is that fair? How do you begin to feel about your mother who passed this trait down to you? This is similar to what the Jews went through, only on a smaller scale. Elie Wiesel was only fifteen years old when his world changed forever. He was a target for the sole reason of him being Jewish. He along with around six million other Jews were sent to Nazi death camps and were either immediately killed or forced to do hard labor. All of these horrible things rattled many people’s devoted faith in God. Why would the all-powerful, all loving God do something like this to his people? Elie Wiesel’s journey is documented in the book Night by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel and other’s faith was different before the Holocaust, than it was in the camps during the Holocaust, than it was at the end and after the …show more content…
He loved God and wanted to know more about him. He was eager to study Cabbalah, a mystical interpretation of the Torah. Saying, “As for me, my place was in the house of study, or so they said” meaning that studying the Torah was his purpose in life (5). His faith in God was the single most important thing in his life. “By day I studied the Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple”(3). Elie then wanted to find a teacher to teach him Kabbalah. He found a teacher in Moishe the Beadle. Saying, “I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity” meaning that with Moishe the beadle being his teacher he would lead him closer to God, closer to heaven. Before the Holocaust Elie Wiesel was happy and had a strong and dedicated faith in
“Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (4) This was his response to being asked why he prayed.
As a result of living in a concentration camp and the horrible experiences he lived through, it is evident that Wiesel begins to lose the faith that was once so important to him. Although Wiesel himself argues that he did not lose his faith, many would argue that the events that took place during the Holocaust caused Wiesel to resent God and lose his faith that was once so important to him. Growing up, Elie Wiesel’s faith
” During his experience in the concentration camp Elie Wiesel loses faith in his fellow man and in God. He shows this through his thoughts and his actions. Elie Wiesel loses faith in man through the actions of the Nazis and when he first arrived at Auschwitz. Elie and his father both were told
Throughout the book Elie Wiesel’s thoughts on God change. In the time when the book was taking place, Jews were seen as nothing and were treated terribly. For example in this Graphic Memoir Elie uses her knowledge to compare Jews to beaten dogs. With all this happening, Elie turned to one person he trusted to help him and his family get out of this disastrous situation. Elie was sent to constant concentration camps because she was Jewish.
The Jew's religion was taken away by the Nazis. Before the Holocaust, Elie and his family would go to the synagogues to pray but when the Nazis invaded their country, they closed the synagogues and took all of their religious belongings. In the concentration camps, Elie’s father was getting weaker and Elie was barely surviving with nothing the German soldiers gave them. Elie starts getting angry with God because he is not doing anything to stop these German soldiers from killing them. God is letting Jews and non-Jews die and Elie’s faith in God is getting weaker and is losing strength.
Elie’s first reaction is to question is, “Why, but why would I bless [God]? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of Death?”(67). Elie witnesses horror on a level the world had not seen, let alone a 15 year old child.
Hope is a powerful thing; more powerful than death itself. Night, by Elie Wiesel, is about a jewish boy who is put into a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Elie doubted his faith to survive but had others to lean on during the hardship. Elie had the support of others as a sense of hope to survive the long, cold nights, with little food and water.
The Holocaust was one of the worst things to ever happen in the civilization of mankind. The mass genocide resulted in the deaths of 6 million Jewish people all over Europe. During the Holocaust, the people that were not immediately executed were put into concentration camps. During the peoples’ time in the camps, their faith in Judaism was tested as some had an even deeper faith in their religion, meanwhile others lost all faith in God for allowing such things to happen to human beings. Richard L. Rubenstein wrote about how the people in the world lost faith in God and questioned religion as a whole.
In the book Night, Elie Wiesel describes his struggles as a Jew in a concentration camp using a depressing and serious tone, meant to reflect the horrific conditions the Jews were forced to face and the theme that adversity can cause a loss in faith. From the time Elie first arrived at the camp and heard everyone saying prayers, to when the young pipel was hung, and even when the Jews had to make the long, arduous, trek to the other camp, the reader could see his faith dwindling as he continued to question where his God was and why he wasn’t helping the Jews. Not only was a lack of faith evident in Elie himself, but the other Jews around him, even the priests, were having trouble believing in their God. Elie’s disheartened and somber tone
Change. Change is an ordinary process in life that allows humans to evolve as individuals, societies, and as a species. Yet, not all changes are the same. Not all changes are equal. The effect of getting a new job is different than the effect of losing a job.
Elie wanted to know more about God and the Kabbalah, wanting to find someone to teach him all about it. “One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah.” (Wiesel 4). This quote shows that Elie wanted to learn more about God. He ends up learning from Moishe the Beadle, one of the poorest in the town of Sighet, Transylvania.
When reading the book “night” by Elie Wiesel, you can never be sure something is to be set in stone. Even the characters drastically change from societies previous distorted visions of a Jew to the primordial beast that dwells over the basic components of survival itself. For example, a selfless and cultured man known as Eliezer’s father is forced to adapt himself into a man so full of sorrow not even his own wife would be able to recognize him. What did this? Many may say it was the loss of God.
In a situation where your body is surviving on a thread, your stomach is inflated due to starvation and all the strength you had before is gone, you have to rely on mental and religious strength to carry you through your hardships. In Elie Wiesel’s “Night”, Elie talks about his personal experiences and hardships he faced during WWII and his life at Auschwitz as a young boy. Throughout the story Elie pushes through losing his mother and sister, lashings, seeing babies burned alive and the fear of death but also the hope for it in some situations. No amount of physical strength can help someone survive in the brutal place Auschwitz. Everywhere in the story Elie and other characters show that with mental and religious/spiritual strength, you can push through any hardship you have to face.
The Holocaust was one of the most tragic events in history. It just so happened to be the cause of six million deaths. While there are countless beings who experienced such trauma, it is impossible to hear everyone's side of the story. However, one man, in particular, allowed himself to speak of the tragedies. Elie Wiesel addressed the transformation he underwent during the Holocaust in his memoir, Night.
Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”(Wiesel 68) Wiesel clearly is losing faith in God because he has seen babies burned alive, families killed together. Wiesel blames God for what has happened. Additionally, Elie Wiesel is not thankful for God anymore because he is not in Auschwitz helping him and the rest of the Jews. Wiesel feels anger towards God.