Blog Post 3 - Malcolm

I’d say the most prominent theme throughout the book is Elie’s religion. While reading Elie’s biography, you can see how drastically Elie’s faith is diminished because of the Holocaust. At the beginning of the book you can see several examples of his devotion to Judaism, but as he is introduced to the horrors of the holocaust his faith begins to go on and off, and then quickly is crushed. When Moishe asks Elie why he prays he doesn’t directly respond but he writes that it’s pretty much synonymous with breathing. He says it has always been a very strong part of him. “He had watched me one day as I prayed at dusk… ‘Why do you pray?’ he asked after a moment. Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” Elie also talks about being very devoted to Judaism and wanting to get as immersed in it as possible. Elie talked to his father about wanting to learn Kabbalah, but his father refuses. He doesn’t give up, but goes around to find someone who will. He ends up getting Moishe to teach him. I think this is a prime example goes to show how truly Elie is devoted to his religion. He’s trying to learn something that the Jews don’t learn until they’re much older. I think that’s also a high level of maturity. “One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah. ‘You are too young for that…’... One evening, I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar, the Kabbalistic works, the secrets of Jewish mysticism.” Elie’s faith towards the middle of the book isn’t quite gone, but it is off and on. Sometimes he’s thanking God for things like him getting some boots and getting away with it, “I had new shoes myself. But as they were covered with a thick coat of mud, they had not been noticed. I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and wondrous universe.” and other times he’s mad at God and doubting his existence because of babies being thrown into fires. It is truly amazing that the Nazis could be so evil that they could make somebody doubt the existence of their own God. The evils of the Holocaust are horrendous. Nothing like this should be allowed to happen again.