Witness

Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom

Ariel Burger

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781328804075
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología judía

In the vein of Tuesdays with Morrie, a devoted student and friend of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel invites readers to witness one of the world's greatest thinkers in his own classroom in this instructive and deeply moving read, a National Jewish Book Award–winner. The world remembers Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) as a Nobel laureate, activist, and author of more than forty books, including Oprah's Book Club selection Night. Ariel Burger met Wiesel when he was a teenage student, eager to learn Wiesel's life lessons. Witness chronicles the intimate conversations between these two men as Burger sought Wiesel's counsel on matters of intellect, faith, and survival while navigating his own personal journey from boyhood to manhood, from student and assistant to rabbi and teacher. In this thought-provoking account, Burger brings the spirit of Wiesel's classroom to life, where the art of storytelling and the act of listening conspire to make witnesses of us all—as it does for readers of this inspiring book as well.

5

Activism

I would have given all the prizes, all the honors, for one life, even one life that would not have been taken away.

—Elie Wiesel

“Hatred Is a Kind of Insanity”

“J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Nobel Prize–nominated father of the atom bomb, once testified before a congressional committee on nuclear power and its dangers. After hearing his testimony, a congressman asked him how the U.S. could avoid nuclear war. Oppenheimer simply said, ‘Make peace, sir.’”

It is halfway through my first semester as Professor Wiesel’s teaching assistant, and our readings and discussions on the theme of faith and power have led us to this lecture on the history of violence. Professor Wiesel had begun the semester focusing on each reading—Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, Toni Morrison’s Sula, Ismail Kadare’s Elegy for Kosovo, and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate—but now he employed a wider lens, turning to a broad examination of the origins of war and drawing on the books we have read as a class.

I’m just starting to feel comfortable with the rhythm of lectures, discussion sections, office hours, and my own course work. Only a few months ago I was still in Israel, in yeshiva, living in a situation fraught with conflict. I still expect to hear news of bombings, shootings, and stone-throwing incidents on the radio. Here in Boston, everything is calm, sunny, relaxed. But maybe because of this lecture’s topic, I feel more tense than I have since arriving.

Professor Wiesel goes on: “Just like that. It sounds so simple. And yet it is not simple—why not? We have so many questions. What makes one human being kill another? What makes a person choose inhumanity to affirm his humanity? Hatred is a kind of insanity. It serves no purpose, does not build anything, it only destroys. What are its underlying causes? What elements in human psychology lead to violence? And how, really, how can anyone choose to take a life?”

Professor Wiesel’s preoccupation with the problem of hatred was urgent due to his fierce commitment to ensure that his own experience of suffering and abandonment would not be repeated. This urgency translated into recurring trips to conflict zones. Starting in the 1950s as a journalist and later as a writer and witness, he traveled to hot spots around the globe—Nicaragua, Cambodia, South Africa, Bosnia, to name just a few.

I had seen the images of him wearing a flak jacket and slightly too-large helmet that appeared in newspapers after his 1992 tour of Bosnia. The memory of our soft-spoken professor in military camouflage brought home for me the sincerity of his belief that discussions were not enough, that the test of an idea, no matter how compelling, was the extent to which it compelled action on behalf of others. He worked hard to transmit this belief to his students so that the project of ending hatred, the work of many lifetimes, would continue. He once told his class, “Teaching for me is a sharing of determination, that mine will become a part of your determination, so that you will continue doing good things after I am gone.” Many students in his classes went on to become activists, and the ways in which they did so were myriad and sometimes surprising.

Now, in class, a journalism graduate student named Valery raises her hand, and Professor Wiesel nods to her. “After all your work, and all your thinking about this . . . if we really want to transform hate, where do we start?”

He opens his hands like a supplicant and replies, “If I knew . . . I have spent many years asking that question. Hatred is like a cancer, and it transcends all boundaries—religious, ethnic, national. It is contagious, spreading from one person or community to another, always ending in more hatred and destruction. When I brought together thinkers and activists to explore issues confronting humanity, I called the conferences the Anatomy of Hate, because we were trying to understand the sources of human hatred and how to respond to it. One thing we have learned: When you face evil, don’t let it grow, fight it right away. Had Hitler been fought immediately there would have been no Holocaust. Be watchful.

“To be human is to share a common origin. And if we share a common origin, our destinies are entwined. What happens to me will eventually happen to you; what happened to my people is a foreshadowing of what will threaten the world. Auschwitz led to Hiroshima and who knows what else? Therefore the most important biblical commandment is Lo taamod al dam réakha, ‘Thou shall not stand idly by the shedding of the blood of thy fellow human being.’ The word réakha, ‘fellow human being’—it is universal. Anyone who is suffering, anyone who is threatened becomes your responsibility. If you can feel this and act with even a little bit more humanity, more sensitivity, as a result, that is the beginning. It is not the end—I do not know how to end hatred, I truly wish I did—but recognizing our shared humanity is a good beginning.”

After class, I knock on Professor Wiesel’s door. He greets me, finishes signing a letter, and puts it neatly into a pile. I notice a stack of books on his desk, books he has assigned for our courses—the Bhagavad Gita, works by Euripides, Brecht, Kafka. He walks over to the little seating area by the bay windows and gestures for me to join him so we can discuss my doctoral dissertation.

I tell him that recently, when I was visiting my grandparents in Florida, I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for my thesis. I would examine nonviolence in Hasidic sources through a case study of sectarian conflict between two Hasidic groups in 1830s Ukraine. I got out of bed, walked over to the table in the guest room of my grandparents’ house, wrote down some ideas and some questions, and went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing, filled with texts that seemed relevant to this project. I got up again, walked over to the table, wrote down a list of sources to review, then went to bed again. Again, I could not sleep; questions roiled my mind, imaginary conversations between mystics and civil rights leaders. I was awake for most of that night asking questions: What would Martin Luther King Jr. have said to the Hasidim who were being persecuted by another, more powerful sect? How did the weaker group’s leader persuade his young disciples not to respond with aggression to their antagonists? What is the relationship between religious practices and peacemaking in Jewish sources?

Professor Wiesel says, “Ariel, this is good. Revealing the connections between religious literature, especially lesser-known texts, and practical application is important. You should focus on the specific period you’re most interested in rather than including a survey of Jewish teachings on peace and peacemaking—that’s too broad. But this example will help reveal both the dynamics of and a religious response to conflict.”

Then he asks me a personal question. “I want to know one thing. What in this topic is important to you?”

I think for a moment, then tell him that I have always been fascinated by peacemakers. Whether it was reconciling the two homes I grew up in, participating in interreligious dialogue between people hurt in the Middle East conflict, or simply my own internal wrestling with competing values, one question I consistently saw at the heart of my life was How do we make peace?

“But it’s not a simple question for me,” I tell Professor Wiesel.

“Why is that?”

I say, “When I was in Israel, I saw two very different kinds of peacemaking work. The first was when modern, Western groups tried to impose a modern narrative on local communities, to tell both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims that compromise, universal rights, and moderate policies were in everyone’s best economic and political interests. This was the approach of Oslo and other peace accords, the method of politicians.

“The second approach was more organic. It appealed to the sources of meaning and religious texts of local communities, using the language of prayer and sacred stories to inspire change. It seems to me that this approach worked better and had more staying power, because it appealed directly to people’s worldview, their sense of faith and meaning. Because my project is partly inspired by encounters with these kinds of peacemakers, I am sensitive to the first, top-down approach. And this approach defines a lot of the literature of conflict transformation. Some of that literature is very self-righteous; it represents an attitude of poor listening, and it doesn’t inspire local religious actors to find their way to peace. That’s why I want to explore religious sources of conflict transformation.”

Professor Wiesel replies, “Well, really, any sincere attempt to make peace is good and should be supported. But it is true, it is very important when engaging in peacemaking, or any activism, really, to question yourself, to question your assumptions, to be precise with language, and, especially, to listen. I have spent a lot of time at the United Nations, where some of the worst violators of human rights sit on the Human Rights Council. I have seen the conflation and facile comparisons of morally different situations. And who has not heard a celebrity discussing people’s suffering only to enhance his own image? It is important, and it is possible to break through those distortions. But you must study—conflict resolution, yes, but also human rights and its history, as well as specific examples of its application. That way you will know how it has been used as a weapon and also how it has solved real problems.”

“How Would I Live with Myself?”

The next week in lecture, Professor Wiesel asks students to share their questions about the readings or about the issues raised in class so far. The first comes from Dave, a tall undergrad with thick glasses and long blond dreadlocks. “Professor, how did you first get involved in human rights activism?”

“Well, you know I was a journalist for many years, in France and then in the United States. I worked for a Yiddish newspaper, then for an Israeli one, and I was paid a few pennies per article. The main advantage was that they sent me to many places I otherwise would not have visited. And I saw suffering in many places. I learned of conflicts, acts of oppression and inhumanity, around the world. The poor in India, the boat people of Vietnam, the victims of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Mesquite Indians in South America. And knowing what I know, seeing what I have seen, how could I not do something, anything, to help? But what could I do? I was a poor journalist, a writer. So I wrote about it, in articles, interviews, and, later, some essays in my books. Even later, I wrote op-eds in the New York Times and elsewhere when a response was needed. I also started gathering others, Nobel Prize winners, writers, anyone with any influence who wanted to help. I used words to try to change facts, to create new realities.”

“Do words really help, though?” Dave asks.

“They are all we have sometimes. If they are words of testimony, if they are not abstractions, merely ideas, they have a certain power. That is why I felt, even after I was no longer a journalist, that I must travel to those places to see what was happening for myself. I knew that if I could bear witness with my own eyes, I would have a chance of conveying what I have seen with authenticity, and therefore with power.”

Valery, the journalism student, raises her hand and asks, “Was writing about other people’s suffering similar to writing about your own?”

“It is similar, and it is different. When I went to Cambodia or Bosnia, my experience allowed me to see theirs with more compassion and perhaps with greater understanding. Almost as if, having lived through one catastrophe, I could bear witness to others more deeply. One thing emerged from the other—my attempts to change things, to fight indifference, emerged directly from my own experience.”

“Did you find it easy, being an activist?” asks a French exchange student named Colleen.

“Oh no. I am very shy, believe me. It is not easy for me to speak up, to be on camera. But I could not be silent. How would I live with myself?”

Valery asks, “Can anyone do this? Does anyone have the authority to be an activist?”

Professor Wiesel replies, “Moral authority doesn’t develop spontaneously; it must be earned. Arthur Koestler, whose book Darkness at Noon we have read, once asked, ‘Can a conscience function by proxy?’ The answer is no, it cannot. You must take action yourself, even if it is a small, modest action. You cannot pass it off to someone else. You build the authority by doing it; you do not wait for someone to give you permission.”

Professor Wiesel’s own authority followed this pattern. As a Holocaust survivor, as the author of Night, he certainly had the authority of suffering, of survival, early in his career. But it was by standing in solidarity with other oppressed people, by visiting conflict zones in person, that his authority gained real influence. It was the act of bearing witness to suffering, not public posturing or armchair commentary, that gave him the moral weight to “speak truth to power.” He showed up, again and again, with the only tools he had: his eyes, his heart, and his words. Until he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, he was an independent scholar-author-activist, representing no organization, agency, or constituency. After the Nobel, when he established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, he had a larger platform, and that enabled him to purchase ad space in major newspapers and convene meetings of Nobel laureates. But he never lost the commitment to acting independently with total freedom and autonomy. He often spoke of this, noting that even when he was speaking in the White House or at the United Nations, he felt like a yeshiva bachur (a student) from a little town, a member of no group or committee, armed only with words.

In October 2006, Professor Wiesel took me aside after class to tell me that he had been offered the position of president of the state of Israel and that he had declined. The presidency, a post also offered to Albert Einstein in 1952, is a largely symbolic and diplomatic position. Its holder does not have to attend parliamentary meetings or get involved in the often aggravating work of parliamentary coalition politics.

“You said no? But why?” I asked.

“I have never spoken for anyone but myself; I would not want my words to be used as a political tool, even for the Jewish state, which I love.”

“But you could do so much good with a platform like that!”

“I’m a teacher and a writer, not a politician.”

From Sarajevo to Sarajevo

Next week in class, Professor Wiesel returns to Dave’s question. “You asked whether words are enough. Sometimes they are not. When it came to Bosnia, with a heavy heart I supported the U.S. and NATO decision to go to war, in order to stop the mass rape, murders, and deportations. Otherwise how can I complain of the world’s silence in my time? I don’t want people to ask our generation, Why were you silent? We cannot allow the killers to get away with it. It is intolerable, wherever it happens. So we speak, we write, but when innocent people are dying, sometimes we must also act.

“I was in Sarajevo in the early 1990s, and I cannot forget. I spent four days on a mission to see what was happening, and I left with more questions than when I arrived. I saw a city in ruins, people cold and starving, displaced . . . The cold was very bad; temperatures reached thirty or forty degrees below zero, and people would collect wood, newspaper, anything that would burn, from beneath the snow. The silence was punctuated by occasional shooting, and stray bullets were a danger throughout the city. I saw the ashes of thousands of books; the national library had been burned a few months earlier. And I met with Izetbegovic, who was president of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the leader of the Muslims, and Karadzic, who at that point had occupied most of Bosnia. I begged them to sit down with one another, to speak, so that no more children would be killed. But neither would sit with the other. The Muslims felt unable to speak to the Serbian perpetrators of so many killings. The Serbians accused their victims of lying, of exaggerating their losses. It was very demoralizing.”

“Were you afraid?” asks Valery.

“It was dangerous. At one point, one of our group said that he was nervous because we were near an area called Sniper’s Alley, so we moved away. But in general, I did not feel afraid. I felt frustration, because all of this bloodshed was so stupid!” He slices the air with his hand as he says this word. “And children were dying because of the stupidity and hatred of adults.

“I also felt frustration because the leaders tried to manipulate me several times. Before I went there, I made them promise that there would be no state dinners, no formal receptions of any kind. I was there as a private person; I didn’t represent any organization. A dinner would make it look like I was adding credibility to their government, which was not my intention at all. At one point, the president took me by the arm and led me through a door. I thought we were going outside, but suddenly, I found myself at a state dinner! There were officials, journalists. It was exactly what I had said I would not do. I asked for everyone’s attention, and I told them, ‘It is Friday evening, and the place of a Jew on Friday evening is the synagogue.’ And I left. I would not allow myself to become a prop for someone else’s agenda, especially not there, where every gesture was scrutinized and interpreted by the different sides.”

“Did anything good come from that trip?” asked Thomas, a grad student in international relations.

“Well, I was able to bring Bosnia to the attention of the U.S. government, President Clinton, and others, and this played some part in the American and NATO decision to intervene. And, perhaps, the shame the world felt at allowing another atrocity to occur led t...