Elie Wiesel

March 4, 2013
Elie Wiesel is best known for his humanitarian efforts and his memoirs detailing his experience as a Jew during the Holocaust—especially in the Night Trilogy, comprising Night, Dawn, and Day. However, the Nobel laureate’s oeuvre is far richer than that, as evidenced by this illuminating collection of 24 academic essays covering Wiesel’s interpretations of the Bible, retellings of Talmudic stories, his role in Neo-Hasidism, his post-Holocaust theology, and more. Lay readers put off by academese (e.g., “Rabbinic interpretation... is not simply the free exercise of imagination but always in itself a kind of physiognomy of the biblical text”) need not apply, though dedicated scholars will relish the thoughtful exegesis from experts such as Everett Fox, Arthur Green, and Irving Greenberg. Nancy Harrowitz, a professor at Boston University, weighs in with perhaps the most intriguing offering; in “Lot’s Wife and ‘A Plea for the Dead’: Commemoration, Memory, and Shame,” she examines Wiesel’s idea that the familiar Biblical figure’s choice to look back and engage with the past was a heroic one, and not an act of mindless disregard for the consequences. Indeed, this is a valuable look back on Wiesel’s heroic authorial career.

October 1, 2013
Close, scholarly readings of a master storyteller's fiction, memoirs and essays suggest his uncommon breadth and depth. The 1986 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, memoirist and novelist Wiesel (Open Heart, 2012, etc.) has been a profound thinker and prolific writer whose work reflects his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps. This collection encompasses "a broader range of critical perception," showing how his Hasidic faith, his biblical interpretations and his meditations on the silence and solitude of God illuminate the central focus of his work on the Holocaust--on which the author has written about so often while maintaining the impossibility of writing about it. Among the essays, titles such as "Alone with God: Wiesel's Writings on the Bible," "Wiesel in the Context of Neo-Hasidism" and "Wiesel's Contribution to a Christian Understanding of Judaism" reflect the variety of perspectives through which scholars approach his work, while the literary criticism of "The Trauma of History in The Gates of the Forest" attests to the multifaceted genius of his fiction. Since Wiesel has already been so widely written about and justly celebrated, this attempt to fill some of the cracks and broaden the discussion requires that readers already have a wide and deep familiarity with the author's work. "[Wiesel] has been able to place the questions before the public in his own narrative form, that of the teacher," writes Everett Fox (Judaic and Biblical Studies/Clark Univ.). "The model here is not the lecturer, nor the resident intellectual, nor the pedant. Rather, Wiesel brings his audience along with the flair of a storyteller, but a storyteller who knows how to go into the audience to pose the questions that are on, or should be on, everyone's mind." Criticism that enhances the appreciation of readers well-versed in the author's work.

COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.