Description
Book SynopsisAdds depth to our understanding of the impact of this important man of letters and towering international figure
Trade ReviewThere 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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction \ Alan Rosen
Part 1. Bible and Talmud
1. Alone with God: Wiesel's Writings on the Bible \ Joel Rosenberg
2. Wiesel as Interpreter of Biblical Narrative \ Everett Fox
3. Wiesel and Rabbi Akiva \ Joseph Polak
4. Wiesel and the Stories of the Rabbis \ Reuven Kimelman
Part 2. Hasidism
5. Wiesel in the Context of Neo-Hasidism \ Arthur Green
6. Reflections on Wiesel's Hasidic Tales \ Steven T. Katz
7. Yearning for Sacred Place: Wiesel's Hasidic Tales and Postwar Hasidism \ Nehemia Polen
8. The Hasidic Spark and the Holocaust \ Gershon Greenberg
Part 3. Belles Lettres
9. Lot's Wife and "A Plea for the Dead": Commemoration, Memory, and Shame \ Nancy Harrowitz
10. The Storyteller in History: Shoah Memory and the Idea of the Novel \ Sara R. Horowitz
11. Wiesel's Post-Auschwitz Shema Yisrael \ Alan L. Berger
12. Dreams and Dialogues: Wiesel's Holocaust Memories \ Ellen S. Fine
13. The Trauma of History in The Gates of the Forest \ Victoria Aarons
14. Victims, Executioners, and the Ethics of Political Violence: A Levinasian Reading of Dawn \ Jonathan Druker
Part 4. Testimony
15. Dialectic Living and Thinking: Wiesel as Storyteller and Interpreter of the Shoah \ Irving Greenberg
16. Wiesel's Aggadic Outcry \ David Patterson
17. Whose Testimony? The Confusion of Fiction with Fact \ Lawrence L. Langer
18. Wiesel's Testament \ Oren Baruch Stier
19. Améry, Levi, Wiesel: The Futility of Holocaust Testimony \ Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Part 5. Legacies
20. With Shadows and With Song: Learning, Listening, Teaching \ Alan Rosen
21. Teaching through Words, Teaching through Silence: Education after (and about) Auschwitz \ Reinhold Boschki
22. Toward a Methodology of Wonder \ Ariel Burger
23. Wiesel's Contribution to a Christian Understanding of Judaism \ John K. Roth
24. Conscience \ Irwin Cotler
Contributors
Index
