Wednesday, January 28, 2009

After the Darkness

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0805241825/ref=sib_dp_ptu#reader-link
Elie Wiesel reflects on the Holocaust with these valid observations:
-Recurrent pogroms and hateful myths were stirred up about the Jews. These had a long thread back to the Middle Ages and before . In an educated twentieth century society among the world's most cultured peoples, most learned peoples, the Germans and the French, the recurrent spectre of the Blood Libel myth ,the myth that Jewry had soaked their matzos with the blood of Christian children, were prolonged into the twentieth century and were alive and well even beyond the Nazi era."In Little Jewish villages,a wise man was a prince".

Another Haunting book, The Trial of God, has its setting in a Ukranian village. Only two Jews survive brutal Cossak raids,Berish and his daughter Hannah .Three itinerant actors arrive to perform a Purim play and Berish insists they stage a mock trial of God indicting Him.
Indicting Him for His silence in the face of evil.The idea for this play came from an event Elie Wiesel witnessed at Auschwitz. Three pious Rabbis decided one evening to indict God for allowing His people to be massacred. Wiesel felt like crying but there nobody cried.Searching for faith in a world where God was silent were two joining Christian theologians Robert Brown and Matthew Fox.