Skip to main content

Blog Post #3 - Naiya

In the book Night by Elie Weisel, Elie has an immense loss of hope in God. At the beginning of the book, Elie spent almost every day studying the Bible, wanting to know more. Later in the memoir, he loses more and more faith in God by the day: “Blessed be God’s name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves?” (67). Elie is starting to doubt the people who still have some hope in God. He believed that if God really cared, he would have helped the Jews already. He assumed that God no longer has any interest in the people in concentration camps and went on to deal with someone or something else. The only person that Elie really had hope it was his own father: “I no longer accepted God’s silence. As I swallowed my ration of soup, I turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (69). In this quote, Elie is becoming angry with God. He feels His silence is unacceptable at a time like this. It is Rosh Hashanah and a lot of the concentration camp is having trouble deciding if they should fast or not. They are wondering if they should risk their already crumbling health and bless Him or take the food they get. Elie’s first and final thought is ‘why should I fast when God will not do anything to help us?.’ The majority of the camp decides to fast. Because of that, Elie views taking his soup as a revolt against God. One of the connections I can make to America right now is the fact that some people are losing their faith in God today, too. For whatever reason they have, whether it is because they lost their home, they are having financial issues, they are depressed, etc. they believe that they can’t depend on God anymore. They believe that they have put their faith in God for too long now and can no longer depend on Him to help them in any way.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 22, 2018 at 5:53 PM

    Naiya-
    Your blog post helped me understand Elie Wiesel's loss of faith better and you did a very good job writing it. The way you compared it to people today helped put it in better perspective than it already was. Do you think Elie Wiesel regretted being so faithful before the Holocaust? Do you think he was angry at the people who were still faithful?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousOctober 22, 2018 at 7:42 PM

    Naiya,

    Your blog post is well written and gives me a good understanding of your theme. I think the first quote was a good example of how whatever book Elie was using the pray out of, told Elie to be blessed by Gods name. Elie found this so ridiculous because all the bad things that were happening he believed that this was gods fault. Great work on your blog!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Artifact Post - Eliza

Four Jewish children laugh and talk outside the Konvo ghetto in Lithuania.  Taken by George Kadish https://collections.ushmm.org/iiif-b/assets/706623 https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1045736
Post a Comment
Read more

blogpost 5 - Malcolm

The about the Holocaust has made me more aware of how easy it is for us to turn to evil and believe it’s right. When I was first learning about the Holocaust, the word fear seemed to stand out the most to me. The Germans blamed all of their problems on the Jews because of fear, they put the Jews in ghettos because of fear, or they tried to annihilate all the Jews because of fear. I think it is really important to pay attention to people’s feelings especially feelings like fear and desperation. I feel like we, the world let this happen. We allowed this to happen because of our arrogance. We expected that just because we gave Germany a whole bunch of rules to follow and took some of their land, they would immediately become subordinate to us. And even after the Holocaust we in America allowed things like this happen during the civil rights movement. They’re are some people out there that no matter what you do, will not become good people and it is our job to protect people from those h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Post #5-Lachlan.A

This experience of the Holocaust affect me on an emotional level. Before this experience I did not know much about the Holocaust I just had heard of horrible man named Adolf Hitler and the genocide he had created. After reading the book Night and after the documentaries and films that we watched I've been slapped by reality. I've been dwelling a lot on my own as well, about how people could have so much hatred on the people who are their neighbors. Just ordinary people that have so much hatred. I'm just so confused how people could just back stab their neighbors as soon as a new political party rose. Ordinary people turning into monsters you don't see that everyday. I've taken away so many things from this unit. I think the thing that just draws me the most from in this unit is to never forget. So many innocent people died just because of what they practiced and what they look like. So the least I can do is memorialize them by never forgetting what happened to them....
Post a Comment
Read more