ELI WIESEL'S SONG: LOST & FOUND AGAIN
Brown, Robert McAfee
T HE MYSTERY of the coming of Mes- siah, the belief that history moves toward a culmination and fulfillment, is one thing Jews and Christians share in common, even though they...
...present task is, in the fullness of gratido not know it, "They are no longer Wiesel does not only write a song tude, to listen...
...the silence of his dead children...
...Blessing...
...enough...
...Wiesel sang the song as a The pleaders intensify their urgen- respond that they and their people will young Hasidic Jew in Transylvania, cy...
...39-40) perhaps more intensely than any other Ani Maamin is Wiesel's latest and It is in this spirit that Christians part, the world's lack of redemption...
...BOOKS A ROSE FOR A ROSE FOR A ROSE CARLOS BAKER Charmed Circle: Gertrude and their work...
...For if man often seems who declines to see what has happened...
...They cannot realGod is being moved...
...Buber, Israel than ever to hear the voice of Jews, ing, is somehow a sign that forsakenand the World, Schocken Books, New who, as Buber reminds us, "experience, ness is not the only world...
...Maimonides' thirteen articles of faith: fore...
...The Stein & Company can justly be said to lie there, the de- names here were likewise eminent, or JAMES R. MELLOW velopment moves well out beyond even shortly became so: Bernard Berenson, so glowing a center as that provided the Cone sisters, Virgil Thomson, SherPraeger, $12.95 by Matisse, Cezanne, Picasso, Gris, wood Anderson, William Carlos WilBraque, Marie Laurencin, Vallotton, liams, Thornton Wilder, Cocteau, Janet It may be a legitimate surmise that and the rest...
...Jacob on his way And so they decide to leave heaven...
...superb collection of modern painters of an irresistible force disguised as an Miss Stein did not, of course, sucthat once graced the walls of her immovable object," and established her- ceed in charming them all...
...He liberal sense of the word, for as Abra- both veiled and unveiled, that the has sung it for us...
...Who the earth, only this time they are do- of a Jewish child, a death march in could blame Wiesel, or any Jew-or ing it during the era of the holocaust...
...Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Messiah...
...each Jewish death, another fragment God consoles...
...The writing is in hood and sung again for us in Ani them to ask, "Why, with the world so blank verse, spare and taut, and its Maamin (Random House, $7.50...
...persists and suffering continues un- Forest, a hope is expressed that the Even in this division, Buber concluded, checked...
...God knows-so it must be at second-hand, but even a telling at his will...
...The cantata retells the old story of a bunker in Warsaw where a Jewish . . . Which would be, of course, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wandering hand had to silence forever the cry a dramatic place to conclude...
...What kind of Mes- virtually invisible, but there always revided...
...ashes...
...destruction the holocaust has brought: and God is still silent...
...We hear counts a tale in which, in the face Where are You...
...Jacob asks: inflicted on children...
...No one knows of it...
...Can one hope common, he said, is "a book and an ful, strident, despairing and yet finally that even yet, at this late time, fulexpectation...
...goes on...
...It is evil, has the Messiah not come...
...Mellow en- spirited monologues, sample the delicate found her appearance or her manner joys a happy field day with the painters refreshments, and absorb whatever wit invariably irresistible...
...Man is not to challenge but in the one who is carrying her, futilely, Is this your blessing...
...It is veiled from the sight there, he would wait for the Messiah Wiesel in Ani Maamin makes his conof Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...
...The men, Isaac as the one who faced his There follows a plea not only for chorus, which has been supportive of own sacrifice uncomplainingly, and those who have been slaughtered but the patriarchs' outcry, ceases to echo Jacob as the one who dreamed of a also for those who have survived and the outcry, and instead invokes blessladder to earth from heaven...
...in the death and there are moments when we may with-yes-love...
...He heard it sung road from Ur to Canaan would end be "consoled" for Belsen, or "rein the death camps and wondered in Treblinka...
...But God does not weep...
...The Buber could state realistically that nevertheless persists demonically in the strands of hope seem slender and often "Pre-messianically our destinies are di- "redeemed" world...
...As I did long ago, Commonweal: 385 ending with the affirmation: alone: God accompanies them, weep- about the hope for a future that lies ing, smiling, whispering...
...suddenly "sings/ Of his ancient and weep...
...In another, a Jew in a doomed village The patriarchs weep...
...the vision from Mount Moriah would of Majdanek...
...York, 1948, pp...
...God does speak, and "The word of within the circle of that hope by dediAnd even if you disappoint me God continues to be heard...
...Each recounts a crucial event Heaven: "Your children implore you: and the plea had been ignored...
...Then they become a smile streams down God's somber counte- the ongoing life of the Jewish com- through tears...
...God But Abraham interrupts with the lost faith," proclaiming that he still remains silent...
...Each in- feel guilty for surviving...
...But Son of Shlomo, After each of these recitals of an there is another hope as well, sug- Son of Eliezer...
...liverance, why is the deliverance with- most unbearable poignancy...
...So the song was "lost...
...To the Christian the book full of hope, both veiled and visible, fillment and redemption may still come...
...So does cating the book to his own child: I shall go on waiting...
...ten to the voice that speaks here...
...The Chorus sup- cluding there...
...A plea had been made God in this, the time of greatest tribu- ports the patriarchs and cries out to (Do something . . . send the Messiah) lation...
...In a third, a Jew That bears your seal, Is a messiah in a death camp on the first night of As does the faith Who demands Passover, unable to celebrate the meal Of your victims...
...In promise...
...to accept...
...Not everyone throughout the book Mr...
...Now to the Christian the Jew siah is it that we announce as "good mains a willingness to persist in asking is the incomprehensibly obdurate man, news," when the world seems so un- the questions...
...Our prob- dozen novels, and three books of esOne together, and there are moments lem, of course, is that if the Messianic says...
...But if the inception and wisdom were flowing that day...
...children's faith has moved him, deep- not veiled...
...after the title page...
...most poignant pressing of the Messimust approach, with profound gratitude, For if Christians have a problem that anic question...
...But, he continued, the Messiah has come is as much a autobiographical chronicle, half a "we can wait for the advent of the problem as it is a solution...
...a forest where a father cannot con- any person sensitive to the sufferings They return to the heavenly precincts sole a son, a despairing suicide in a of others, for that matter-for conto plead the cause of the Jews before concentration camp...
...But Heaven remains But the song does not conclude...
...presence...
...He has found a lost song...
...Abraham did not know that the never be consoled...
...is a forecourt, to the Jew it is the sanc- that can, in spite of all the horror and Most poignant of all, may it not be tuary...
...The That every road their people that there is no hope: "For book is Wiesel's exploration of that At dusk now it is clear: God knows-and re•ossibility...
...Before the machine guns, the Buber told us that "we can wait his people, weeps for the third time- child bespoke faith...
...With infinite variety, the Messiwhen we may prepare the way before hope has been fulfilled in Jesus of anic theme is raised, the question is him together...
...It can never be "I believe in the coming of the only silence...
...It is the libretto of a the throbbing, despairing and yet forces them to ask, "Why, if the Mes- cantata, set to music by Darius Milstrangely hopeful song that Eli Wiesel siah has come, is the world so evil?," haud, and appears in the text in both has recovered from his Hasidic child- Jews also have a problem that forces French and English...
...God seems sists that God has abandoned the fu- anguished question about the divine not to provide a blessing, so Israel will ture promised to them and their chil- capriciousness that grants indulgence provide it...
...in the village, a for the advent of the One together, and this time without restraint, and Jew continued to believe...
...The executioners win, for second-hand can force one toward an Each gives an example of the utter God is silent...
...The slaughter, the devastation, con- The angel can only respond: Still, I recite the Haggadah tinues, even as they speak...
...Nazareth, if redemption has come, evil asked, responses are sought...
...Can one, in such a world, have most in common...
...And with As though I believe in it...
...If God remains silent, Jews dren, a future that has been turned to to executioners while chastisements are who have revered his name will not...
...That is enough...
...incomprehensibly daring man, who af- announce as the result of Messiah's On occasion, most notably perhaps at firms in an unredeemed world that its work within it is a world in which evil +he conclusion of The Gates of the redemption has been accomplished...
...crucial question: believes in the coming of the Messiah, Again they implore him: You showed me messianic times even though he is late, even though Faithful God, behold the torment But what kind of messiah God be unwilling...
...Indeed, are we to be "hope turned to dust," he is and to the Jew the Christian is the not worse off if the world we must also, amazingly, "dust turned to hope...
...It first to affirm God as the Redeemer of silent...
...ing of the Messiah" during and after to Bethel did not know All they can do in the face of such the holocaust...
...nance," and finally, "God, surprised by munity...
...response is to return to earth and tell Could it possibly be "found" again...
...from his own past, Abraham as the Hear and answer...
...changed by his advent...
...His lively account of circle of people who did not paint- a charlatan, others as a magpie who these pictures, and of the artists who the literal hundreds of friends, ad- picked up scintillant ideas from her painted them, would alone justify a mirers, enemies, and interlopers who brighter contemporaries and passed new life of their erstwhile owner, and came to see her collection, listen to them off as her own...
...And I await the prophet Elijah, of the Temple goes up in flames...
...Each of the patriarchs, as he withFinally the silence of heaven is draws from the heavenly throne, reYou promised me to watch over broken, not by God, but by an angel Israel who comes to plead his cause...
...There will be salvation in away from the Nazi machine guns...
...Over forty years ago, Martin Buber, in an essay on "The Two Foci of the Jewish Soul," described the ultimate division between Judaism and Christianity messianically, but also suggested that our point of deepest division was the very area in which we have the and his failure to appear, a probing held...
...So finally in Israel's children...
...They step back to leave, encounter with the tale at first-hand...
...No telling can capture it Would lead to Auschwitz...
...T HE MYSTERY of the coming of Messiah, the belief that history moves toward a culmination and fulfillment, is one thing Jews and Christians share in common, even though they stand on opposite sides of a great divide in their interpretation of that hope...
...Some depavilion and atelier at 27 rue de self as a center for an ever-widening parted the premises to impugn her as Fleurus in Paris...
...For Shlomo-Elisha "Auschwitz," he declares, "has killed The presence of God is a veiled Son of Eliezer, Jews/ But not their expectation...
...Berenson, having 12 July 1974: 386...
...But from the celestial tribunal, It is not enough...
...He places himself I shall wait for you...
...Something new enters in...
...What of your of insurmountable odds and a silent the familiar arguments offered in the heaven, a Jew nevertheless affirms...
...Moved him, indeed, in the most firmation, of a presence and a hope beauty...
...But his to come...
...Isaac did not know that warded" for Birkenau, or "forgetful" how it could continue to be sung...
...The timates, poses different problems for Wiesel, out of the horror of his own Christian's expectation, he said, "is di- Christians and Jews, and part of the experience at Auschwitz and that of rected toward a second coming, ours Jewish contribution to Christian Mes- his entire generation, has wrestled to a coming which has not been anti- sianism is a reminder that a claim that with the Messianic problem in an cipated by a first...
...If God's children normous anguish built up as the quesROBERT MCAFEE BROWN teaches in the Religious Studies Department at Stanford stand in such crushing need of de- tions addressed to God assume an alUniversity, California...
...For Miss Stein, who used Flanner, Apollinaire, Sylvia Beach, James R. Mellow, art critic for the to sit Buddha-like "in one of the high- T. S. Eliot, Ford Madox Ford, FitzNew York Times, was attracted to backed Renaissance chairs in the stu- gerald, Hemingway, and Mabel Dodge, Gertrude Stein in part because of the dio," gave, says Mellow "the impression to name a few...
...God has one instance, a child expresses belief Israel his reasons...
...Ani 12 July 1974: 384 maamin beviat ha-Mashiah is one of Hope is being murdered as never be- At that, the pleading turns to anger...
...The angels the end...
...These acts of presence are tribution to that preparing of the way...
...And it is out of such af- He has given us a creation of fearful ly...
...How could one "believe in the com- include Majdanek...
...No one sees this camp an inmate affirmed that, even prepare the way before him together...
...must be present in all men, whose very holding fast to our own separate faiths, If those are not real "problems" to presence in the world, singing, praybut caring "more for God himself than Christians, then Christians need more 'g, crying and obdurately questionfor our images of God...
...But, he went on, "In this place heartache, enable us to face the future...
...Better no Messiah, it might Messiah is not one man, but can and we can engage in a common watch, be claimed, than such a one...
...There is an ing upon them...
...Six million dead nevertheless can say, Before he reveals himself...
...mains silent...
...book of Job: Who are men to quesYou promised me blessings for tion the divine power or plan...
...It is impossible to and believed it...
...weeping...
...If we are to "preham, Isaac and Jacob go away, the story of God's people continues to be pare the way . . . together," our own Narrator informs us that although they written...
...indomitable willingness to go on wait- gested in each of the examples that fining, to refuse to succumb fully to ally moves God to a weeping and These are the first words one reads despair, the Narrator informs us that smiling engagement with his people...
...very economy of line, apparent in an old song, a song about the Messiah Further questions unfold: What will both languages, contributes to the it take to bring him...
...What we have in that is by turns insistent, pleading, tear- any hope for the future...
...the case that even if Messiah comes, we can dwell together, and together lis- The Messianic coming, as Buber in- he will come too late...
...The first time "a This is the hope that Abraham, Isaac ly be read until after one has read the tear clouds his eyes," then "a tear and Jacob have in their children, in final page...
Vol. 100 • July 1974 • No. 16
