This is a short paper that takes a position on the loss of faith that the main character takes in the book "Night" by Eliezer Wiesel. It is easy for anyone to lose their faith in challenging times. This paper talks about how it must have been difficult for the Jewish people who experienced the Holocaust and what effects this had on their faith.
Eliezer's Struggle To Keep His Faith In God
It is common for people of faith to have difficulty upholding their faith in trying times. Eliezer Wiesel wrote about a boy named Elie from Sighe in his book the Night. Elie was deported to a concentration camp by the Nazis government when they held power in Germany. They took everything from Elie; his freedom, identity, family, and even his dignity. The Nazis treatment of the Jewish people in general was dehumanizing and immoral. However, Elie also behaved with questionable ethics at times himself. Yet his intentions had something of a moral end whereas the Nazis were focused on genocide. Elie used episodes of moral ambiguity to help him retain his humanity in the face of the harsh treatment he received and he gave hope to others. It is not always the act that is important, Elie shows that intentions can be important drivers of morality and faith can be even when God has seemed to have turned his back to humanity.
Body
The Holocaust and the terrible tragedies that occurred throughout this event have undoubtedly caused many people to question their faith as well as many to lose it altogether. Wiesel writes that "man is stronger, greater then God… You have betrayed (man), allowing him to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned… and what does (man) do? They pray before You! They praise Your name!" (Wiesel 67-68). This passage represents the perceived positioning of humanity above that of God. Despite all the suffering and torture that God has bestowed upon mankind, or at least turned away from, people still praise him for his perceived negligence. This sentiment stands at the very root of why people may come to question their God's glory, or even his existence altogether.
Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Treblinka were the names of some of the concentration camps in which the Nazis inflicted vast amounts of suffering and death. Before Elie had the misfortune to experience the Holocaust, he was a sincere and devote Jewish child. However, the Holocaust acted to change many people's worldviews. Elie waited for God's intervention up until the end of his experience with the Holocaust, but it never came. God never intervened and Ellie had to reconsider the role of his faith in his life. Though the absence of God may have led many to question their faith, there is another component of faith that must be considered. Elie's faith in God, by itself, had allowed him to find the strength to carry on as the elders reminded him, "You must never lose faith, even when the sword hangs over your head. That's the teaching of our sages" (Wiesel, 40).
Lack of faith can quickly turn to despair Elie considered the idea that he was "alone-terribly alone in a world without God" (Wiesel, 75). He goes as far as to mention that he might believe in Hitler beyond all others because he is one that kept his promises; though the results of these promises were horrific. This represents the lengths that he went in his fall from faith. There was a strong mistrust of God by most while others were angry with God, and even more were forever shaken in their faith. However, those that held on to their faith found strength even through these trying times.
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