James Williams Elie’s Religious Journey 4/3/2024 Throughout Eliezer Wiesel’s captivating memoir, Night, Elie’s view of God and religion shifts constantly going from being incredibly religious and faithful to doubting God, and back to believing again.. This shift affects his identity and personality in a major way. Early in the memoir, Elie is highly religious and is trying to learn more about Judaism, specifically, the Kabbalah. Many excerpts show his devotion to learning the Kabbalah, for example, “There are no Kabbalists in Sighet," my father would often tell me. He wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind. In vain. I succeeded on my own in finding a master for myself in the person of Moishe the Beadle.” (4). Through this, as well as in other examples throughout the memoir, the readers can conclude that before Sighet is invaded by …show more content…
Although he is very faithful at the beginning of the memoir, when Sighet is occupied and the Jews of Elie’s city are forced out and into concentration camps, Elie changes significantly in only one night “The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too have become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded—and devoured—by a black flame.”(37). In one single night, Elie's entire religious viewpoint has changed as a result of the horrors that he and his family and friends have been subjected to. Elie’s experiences clearly demonstrate how being put through terrible things can change someone, and thus, it is more understandable how the things happening to Elie, such as being forced from his home into a camp where he either works or dies, shift his view on