Elie Wiesel Takes Us to Hebrew School

By KEN GORDON

WISE MEN AND THEIR TALES
Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters
By Elie Wiesel
368 pages. Schocken. $26.95.

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate, winner of the Prix Médicis, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, Member of the French Legion of Honor, and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University, has just added a new item to his résumé: Hebrew-school teacher. Well, not really. Wiesel, who turns 75 on September 30, is far too venerable for such a modest post. But our author demonstrates, in his latest work, Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters, that he could, if he so chose, do a wonderful job teaching secular American kids the rich traditions of Jewish narrative.

Wise Men brings us a series of lively lectures, starring many of Judaism’s marquee names: Ishmael and Hagar, the Bal Shem Tov, and the ever-salty Mrs. Lot. (The essay began life as talks Wiesel has given at B.U. and at Manhattan’s 92^nd Street Y.) Wiesel doesn’t just recite the tales—he interrogates each and every member of the dramatis personae, including, at various points, God. Consider, for instance, his take on Sodom:

Sodom is already lost, no doubt about it. The mechanism of its destruction has been set in motion; nothing can stop it, nothing will. Nothing? No. Not even Abraham’s intercession. But—what about teshuvah? What about repentance and its extraordinary power? Is it too late for Sodom's citizens to mend their ways and be saved? Hasn’t tradition told us again and again, since the beginning of history, that it is never too late for teshuvah, never too late to turn toward heaven and beg for forgiveness? Granted, it is not the angels’ role to urge human beings to improve their behavior. But it is man’s responsibility to his fellow man. And so what about Abraham? Why didn’t he rush to Sodom to sound the alarm? Rather than argue with God over the hypothetical number of Tzaddikim, of righteous men, in Sodom, why didn’t he share his knowledge of the impending catastrophe with its future victims? And furthermore: didn’t he know from the outset that this debate was a waste of time? Can one win victories over God? The same question may be addressed to God: why did He allow Abraham to go on arguing, when He knew that there were no righteous men in Sodom? He could have said to His friend and ally: Really, Abraham, save your strength; it is of no use; it is too late... These are troubling questions.

Now, for those of you who have spent your life reading the Torah and the Talmud, Wiesel’s question-slinging approach is nothing new. But for people like me, secular Jews whose religious training basically involved memorizing a few prayers from a cassette, this book is quite instructive—an accessible yet complex introduction to Jewish scholarship. There’s something bracing about Wiesel’s textual cross-examinations. They are almost impious, and kind of, well, fun. 

Reading Wise Men makes me realize just how rigor- and passion-free my own Jewish education was. As a kid, I did time at one of those suburban bar mitzvah factories, in which the whole process was a chore to be run though as speedily as possible. Not one of my teachers ever gave me a real sense, as Wiesel does, that we Jews are the inheritors of a long, dramatic history. Nobody tried to make Biblical stories interesting, as Wiesel does when he says that Samson disappointed his parents by chasing shiksas. No one ever made the learning personal, as Wiesel does when he says that he loves Rashi. (Such an admission would not have gone over well in my Hebrew school.) By talking in such an animated yet serious way about Judaism, Wiesel commands our respect and attention.

 Of course, much of Wiesel’s power comes not just from his words, but from his autobiography as well. As a man who grew up in an impoverished Romanian shtetl, and perhaps the most famous living Holocaust survivor, Wiesel emanates real historical authority. (Q: What do contemporary American Jews, with our Cossack-free lifestyle, know of the suffering, which makes up so much of our people’s history? A: Not much.) Here’s a man who survived the Shoah, and who still continues to believe. He’s a teacher who can truly say, “I am the man, I suffered, I was there.” Indeed, Wiesel seems a legend out of Jewish history. It’s enough to make even the most assimilated, most secular, most MTV-minded teenager hit the pause button and pay attention. An exaggeration? Perhaps. But any Hebrew-school teacher looking to make a dent in his students’ sensibility would do well to bring Wise Men into the classroom.