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Elie Wiesel:
Messenger to All Humanity
By Robert McAfee Brown
Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. 244 pp. $16.95.

Recent years have seen a tremendous increase in the appearance of Holocaust literature. An indication of this phenomenon is the concomitant growth in literature on the literature in which the Holocaust serves either as topic or setting, directly or indirectly. It is to this latter category that Robert McAfee Brown contributes. Professor of Theology and Ethics at the Pacific School of Religion and Protestant member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the author uses his excellent literary and theological skills to lead the reader on a series of challenging journeys through and beyond the complex world of Wiesel.

It is often the fate of a "living legend" to become a focus of analysis and commentary. Wiesel is undoubtedly one of the best known of the prophetic voices of the Holocaust. It has been observed, however, that at times the towering figure so eclipses the event about which he writes that many Wiesel studies engage more in personal homage than in literary analysis. Personal homage is present here in the sense that the author shares his personal respect for Wiesel the survivor, author, and teacher. But the personal serves here as hermeneutical strength. The author states that his intention is not to provide a critical appraisal of Wiesel's writings. Rather, his concern is "to expound [Wiesel] clearly enough and sympathetically enough so that the readers can go on to confront him at first hand." Literary criticism per se is left up to the individual. Nevertheless, critique is present. But it is self-critique. The evolution of the book's title serves as an illustration.

Long aware of Wiesel's role as a messenger to the Jews in their struggle to cope with the devastation of the Holocaust, the author perceived himself to be merely "an eavesdropper to an important conversation." It soon became clear that, speaking out of his Jewish stance, Wiesel was also urging the author to a critical examination of his own Christian stance. Wiesel's words were unavoidable: "as surely as the victims are a problem for the Jews, the killers are a problem for the Christians." Wiesel is, therefore, a messenger to Jews and Christians. It

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did not stop. Upon sharing this discovery with university students, many of whom were neither Christians nor Jews, the author learned how deeply Wiesel touched all humans. Wiesel is also a messenger to all humanity.

A major issue lurks behind an understanding of Wiesel as a messenger to all humanity. Properly used, the term Holocaust refers to the death of almost six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators during the years 1939-45. About five million non-Jews were also consumed in the fires of Hitler's National Socialism. However, the experience of the Jews under Hitler remains starkly unique. One can therefore resonate to a Jewish concern over the blurring, at times the erasing, of this uniqueness by those who seek the universal message of the Holocaust. By depicting Wiesel as a universal messenger, is the author diminishing the Holocaust? Most certainly not. In fact, the author employs a method by which the Holocaust's universal meaning emerges only when full weight is given to the uniquely Jewish dimension of the Holocaust. The linchpin of this method is the art of story telling.

The use of story as a methodological key reflects Wiesel's own struggle to cope with the tremendum of the Holocaust. Wiesel is not an historian, nor a collector of data, nor a systematician. Rather, he is a teller of tales, his own and others. Drawing from the well-spring of his Hasidic heritage, Wiesel tells tales not by analytic description, but by human recital. Thus, although his stories weave intricate patterns from hemes ultimately common to all humanity, these universal patterns have the distinct texture of Jewish experience. The author's exposition of Wiesel reveals how our human needs to analyze, classify, interpret, and compare Wiesel's stories can only be legitimate "if they finally confront us once more with the story and the story teller." In this way the universal and the uniquely Jewish dimensions of the Holocaust remain inextricably intertwined.

The author structures his book as a series of journeys. Divided into two parts, the first part relates the personal, moral, and historical journey of Wiesel. It is a journey from the death and despair of his first novel, Night, to the proclamation of hope and liberation in his latest book, A Beggar in Jerusalem. Wiesel's painful passage is one which shows that just as the mystery of good does not cancel out the mystery of evil, neither does the mystery of evil cancel out the mystery of good.

The second part explores the theological and ethical questions involved in the journey of those who hear Wiesel. The author confronts Wiesel's assertion: "The sincere Christian knows that what died in Auschwitz was not the Jewish people but Christianity." The questions are unavoidable: Why were so many S.S. members also members of Christian churches? How could so many of the killers have been educated in the church and in Christian institutions? How could there have been killers who still went to confession? As the author indicates, the questions are Wiesel's, but Christians must make them their own. Why? The Holocaust was a betrayal of Jesus.

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The book is aimed at those who have not yet read much, if any, of Wiesel. The inclusion of a generous number of extensive quotes conveys a sense that Wiesel has not simply been spoken about, he has also spoken. This volume is an impelling introduction to the writings and world of Wiesel. But even more so, it is a sensitive and informed exploration of the impact of the broader moral dilemmas of the Holocaust. In this regard, the book is worthy reading for those already conversant with a critical appraisal of Wiesel. The author not only evokes the universal without diminishing the uniquely Jewish aspect of the Holocaust, his method prevents the impersonal from consuming the personal.

Story begets story. As Wiesel's story begot the stories of his characters, so their stories touch our lives and stir our stories. Each of us can only connect with the unconnectable as it touches the themes of pain and hope, lamentation and peace in our own lives. Indeed, the greatest threat to the power of story is indifference. This book cannot be read with indifference.

William A. Hartfelder, Jr.
Hebrew Union College
Cincinnati, Ohio