Elie Wiesel

Steven T. Katz is Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies and holds the Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Boston University. He is editor of The Shtetl: New Evaluations and The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology.Alan Rosen teaches Holocaust literature at the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, and other Holocaust study centers. He is author of Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism, and the Problem of English and The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews with David Boder.

There is no getting our minds entirely around this immense figure, but the editors come pretty close....This book is an absolute requirement for all university libraries and Jewish institutions; a pleasure for any educated reader.(Jewish Book World) [An] illuminating collection of 24 academic essays . . . [and a] valuable look back on Wiesel's heroic authorial career.(Publishers Weekly) Close, scholarly readings of a master storyteller's fiction, memoirs and essays suggest his uncommon breadth and depth...Criticism that enhances the appreciation of readers well-versed in the author's work.(Kirkus Reviews) Within this book, prominent scholars in the fields of Biblical, Rabbinic, Hasidic, Holocaust, and literary studies offer fascinating and innovative analyses of Wiesel's texts as well as enlightening commentaries on his considerable influence as a teacher and as a moral voice for human rights. By exploring the varied aspects of Wiesel's multifaceted career—his texts on the Bible, the Talmud, and Hasidism as well as his literary works, his teaching, and his testimony—this thought-provoking volume adds depth to our understanding of the impact of this important man of letters and towering international figure.(Examiner.com) By exploring the varied aspects of Wiesel's multifaceted career—his texts on the Bible, the Talmud, morality and Hasidism as well as his literary works, his teaching, and his testimony—this thought provoking volume adds considerable depth to our understanding of his impact. (New York Journal of Books) Katz and Rosen's rich and accessible volume deepens our understanding of Wiesel's role as an intellectual and literary figure: a seminal Holocaust writer and witness, an innovative moral thinker, and an interpreter of Jewish texts and traditions. In sustained, consistent, and fluid analyses, the contributors provide powerful new insights and interpretations. It will remain the definitive collection of critical thinking onWiesel for years to come.(Holocaust and Genocide Studies)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction \ Alan RosenPart 1. Bible and Talmud1. Alone with God: Wiesel's Writings on the Bible \ Joel Rosenberg2. Wiesel as Interpreter of Biblical Narrative \ Everett Fox3. Wiesel and Rabbi Akiva \ Joseph Polak4. Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis \ Reuven KimelmanPart 2. Hasidism5. Wiesel in the Context of Neo-Hasidism \ Arthur Green6. Reflections on Wiesel's Hasidic Tales \ Steven T. Katz7. Yearning for Sacred Place: Wiesel's Hasidic Tales and Postwar Hasidism \ Nehemia Polen8. The Hasidic Spark and the Holocaust \ Gershon GreenbergPart 3. Belles Lettres9. Lot's Wife and "A Plea for the Dead": Commemoration, Memory, and Shame \ Nancy Harrowitz10. The Storyteller in History: Shoah Memory and the Idea of the Novel \ Sara R. Horowitz11. Wiesel's Post-Auschwitz Shema Yisrael \ Alan L. Berger12. Dreams and Dialogues: Wiesel's Holocaust Memories \ Ellen S. Fine13. The Trauma of History in The Gates of the Forest \ Victoria Aarons14. Victims, Executioners, and the Ethics of Political Violence: A Levinasian Reading of Dawn \ Jonathan DrukerPart 4. Testimony15. Dialectic Living and Thinking: Wiesel as Storyteller and Interpreter of the Shoah \ Irving Greenberg16. Wiesel's Aggadic Outcry \ David Patterson17. Whose Testimony? The Confusion of Fiction with Fact \ Lawrence L. Langer18. Wiesel's Testament \ Oren Baruch Stier19. Améry, Levi, Wiesel: The Futility of Holocaust Testimony \ Alvin H. RosenfeldPart 5. Legacies20. With Shadows and With Song: Learning, Listening, Teaching \ Alan Rosen21. Teaching through Words, Teaching through Silence: Education after (and about) Auschwitz \ Reinhold Boschki22. Toward a Methodology of Wonder \ Ariel Burger23. Wiesel's Contribution to a Christian Understanding of Judaism \ John K. Roth24. Conscience \ Irwin CotlerContributorsIndex