Faith and God in Elie Wiesel\'s Night

Faith and God in Elie Wiesel's Night

Elie Wiesel's Night is a dramatic autobiographical novel that vividly describes the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust. Words do not make justice to what happened in German concentration camps, but if one is to see a glimpse of it in a written novel, the writings of Wiesel are the place to look for it. Wiesel describes in vivid details the sheer cruelty and absolute evil of the Nazi regime. Jews who went through the Nazi Hell were profoundly transformed by the atrocious experience. So horrific was what the Jewish prisoners saw in Nazi camps that even the most devout religious persons began to question their faith in God. Elie was no exception. From being a faithful youngster who could not imagine life without his belief in God, he turned later into a questioner, interrogator, and the accuser of God. He questioned God's justice and His existence, but at the end he still remained a person with faith.

As a young boy, Elie learned the Torah and the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. He was so devout that he used to cry while praying and he believed that praying was as part of his life as the need to eat, sleep, drink, and live. Even if his father did not approve of his desire to be a student of Kabbalah, Elie took lessons from Moishe the Beadle. When asked "Why do you cry when you pray?" Elie said he did not know but felt that he cried "because something inside me felt the need to cry." And when asked "Why do you pray," Elie was bewildered. "Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?" Elie said to himself (Wiesel and Wiesel 4). Elie believed in God unconditionally. He believed that God was everywhere and that He was everything. As a student of Jewish religion, he learned that God was good, so the world must also be good then. Elie could not even imagine questioning God's existence or the power of divine justice.

His unconditional belief in the goodness of God and the world He created was, however, profoundly shaken by what he witnessed later in his life. One of the most shocking experiences was Elie's witnessing of a furnace pit where children were being burned and another pit for adults. While his father and other Jewish prisoners were praying at the grisly sight of Nazi cruelty, Elie began to question his faith. He wrote: "For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?" Trembling with fear, Elie still exalted God's name. At the sight of his fellow Jewish people being burned in flames, Elie said his famous words: "Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever. . . . Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes" (Wiesel and Wiesel 33-34). How could just God allow these inhumanities continue, Elie wondered? He began to think that God either did not exist or the existing God was unjust and cruel.

While Elie continued to struggle with his faith, another incident further shook his childhood faith in the goodness of God. During an allied raid in Buna, one of the prisoners tried to eat some food and the Nazis shoot him. Afterwards, accusing another boy of stealing food, the Nazis hanged him in the presence of other Jewish prisoners. Many others began to lose faith. "Where is the merciful God, where is He?" Elie recalls a man behind him asking. The man later repeated his question: "For God's sake, where is God' And from within me, I heard a voice answer: 'Where He is? This is where -- hanging here from this gallows . . .'" (Wiesel and Wiesel 64-65). For Elie, the hanging symbolized the death of God and the death of his spiritual faith. His belief in the goodness of the world God had created was completely shattered. Losing faith in God, many Jewish prisoners began to lose their humanity. They only cared about survival, betraying their faith, friends, and close relatives. Elie himself did not pity his father when he was beaten up once; instead, he became angry that his father did not learn how to appease his Nazi guards. When he was in a hospital, Elie's neighbor said: "I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people" (Wiesel and Wiesel 81). Implicit suggestion in this quote is that they'd rather have faith in Hitler's evil intentions than in God's goodness.