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.
Learning about the Holocaust has had a great impact on me. Previously I had little knowledge of its existence, now I know of its horrific impact on our past and present. It's difficult to comprehend the suffering these people went through. Even though it's devastating to process we have to understand so that we don't make the same mistakes. Nadia Murad’s article filled me with empathy as well as anger. Our world is still infected with thriving hatred, people are truly suffering. As citizens of a free country, we must take action, support survivors and give them justice. We need to stop squabbling over the small things and fight for human rights.
Naiya-
ReplyDeleteYour 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?
Naiya,
ReplyDeleteYour 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!