Examples Of Faith In Night By Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel uses many factors to display the horrors that took place at Auschwitz, but his use of Judaism and faith are by far the most prevalent and, in my opinion, the most meaningful. His transition from an ultra-orthodox Jew to an Atheist in such a short time period showcases the amount of trauma and dehumanization caused in order to put in motion such an upheaval. Elie Wiesel begins his memoir by describing himself as, “deeply observant. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the temple.” (3) With this statement, he is trying to articulate that at this point in time, Eliezer’s life was mainly comprised of his faith. He spent every day diving into the literature of God, and every night mourning the loss of a sacred Jewish artifact, but that all changed when Eliezer was

I concurred with Job! I was not denying his existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.” (45) With this statement Eliezer is displaying that he still holds the belief in God, but chooses to keep his silence just as Job did when everything was taken from him. He cannot comprehend how a self-proclaimed God of “justice” can allow for such a monstrosity to occur, but he still believes in God’s existence. Towards the end of Night, Eliezer realizes family members have abandoned each other for a greater chance at survival and mentions “this God in whom I no longer believed.” (91) He started as a young boy devoted and absorbed by his faith, but he has become a man with no religious belief in the slightest. What mattered most to him was completely reversed in two tremendously long years. His whole life has changed, and he has been remade, for better or for worse. In the original Yiddish version of Night, Elie Wiesel describes his horror ten years later as anti-Semitism begins to rise once again, and how a percentage the population begins to deny that the holocaust ever