JJ2020 – a perfect example of this is Elie Wiesel’s “Prayer for the Days of Awe” –
A Prayer for the Days of Awe
By Elie Wiesel
Published: October 02, 1997
Master of the Universe, let us make up. It is time. How long can we go on being angry?
More than 50 years have passed since the nightmare was lifted. Many things, good and less
good, have since happened to those who survived it. They learned to build on ruins. Family life
was re-created. Children were born, friendships struck. They learned to have faith in their
surroundings, even in their fellow men and women. Gratitude has replaced bitterness in their
hearts. No one is as capable of thankfulness as they a
re. Thankful to anyone willing to hear their
tales and become their ally in the battle against apathy and forgetfulness. For them every moment
is grace.
Oh, they do not forgive the killers and their accomplices, nor should they. Nor should you,
Master of t
he Universe. But they no longer look at every passer
–
by with suspicion. Nor do they
see a dagger in every hand.
Does this mean that the wounds in their soul have healed? They will never heal. As long as a
spark of the flames of Auschwitz and Treblinka glow
s in their memory, so long will my joy be
incomplete.
What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?
I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don’t
know
why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the
holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha
–
Shanah eve, with hundreds
of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remaine
d a link to the vanished world of my
childhood?
But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor,
with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are
the Days of Jud
gment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master
of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?
In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I
would not repeat
them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did
you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate
tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Crea
tion? These
thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability
is irrelevant to my ”problem” with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect
much from human beings. But I expected everyt
hing from you.
Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial
tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they
were Jewish?
These questions have been haunting me
for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders,
you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: ”God is God. He alone knows
what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways.” Or: ”Auschwitz was a
punishment for European Je
wry’s sins of assimilation and/or Zionism.” And: ”Isn’t Israel the
solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel.”
I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can
be conceived neither with G
od nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was
not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready
–
made from
heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to
destroy n
ot only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your
children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven’t you also suffered?
As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace
and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of
everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to
be divorced from you so long.
Elie Wiesel, a professor in th
e humanities at Boston University, was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1986.