Read Online And the Sea Is Never Full by Elie Wiesel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elie Wiesel
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still, but I can hear it. A man’s voice
.
That of my father? Too harsh. My grandfather? Too sharp.
Suddenly I remember: It is the voice of a beggar I once wanted to follow. I was young, a child still. He laughed, and I asked him why. “To make you laugh,” he answered. Then he changed his mind and began to shout: “Would you rather I make you cry?” Making myself small, very small, I said: “What I’d really like is for you to make me dream.”
What is more important, asks the Talmud, what is essential: thought or action? The opinions are divided, but in the end all the Masters agree: Study comes first, because study incites action.
As a Jew, I question myself about the role of the Jewish writer. Is it to make readers spill one more tear into the ocean? What must the writer express, and to what end? Which story should be told, and to what audience? Some are convinced that he must devote himself exclusively to his writings, that his influence and his power derive more from his art than from his deeds. This may have been a valid notion long ago. Poetry does not prevent the torturer from beating his victims, and the greatest novel in the world remains powerlessbefore a fanatic. Thus the need to act. But in what area, and by what means? And where does one begin?
Of course, the fight against anti-Semitism remains a priority. It is, after all, the most ancient collective prejudice in history. Its virulence and its capacity to survive remain inexplicable. It is said to be as old as the Jewish people itself. The Talmud detects its first signs at the time of the Revelation at Sinai. Even in antiquity Jews were hated, especially in the higher echelons of society. What did Cicero and Seneca have against the Jews? If one is to believe Flavius Josephus, Apion the Greek reproached the Jews for “belonging to a tribe of lepers capable if not desirous of contaminating the entire world.” Tacitus is annoyed with them because they show for each other an “obstinate attachment, an active commiseration in contrast with the implacable hatred they feel for the rest of mankind. Never do they eat with strangers, never do they live with foreign women.” Apion and Democritus accuse them of ritual murder. Since then anti-Semitism has become more modern, though it retains the same irrational arguments. One has only to compare those of Pharaoh’s counselors in the Bible to those of Haman in the Book of Esther, of Torquemada, Hitler, and Stalin: Their delusions are the same. All were convinced that the Jews were always greedy, determined to achieve political and religious domination and thus to control the affairs of the world. They see Jews everywhere and ascribe to them terrifying mystical powers. At the same time, they have contempt for those who appear helpless. In other words, the anti-Semites hate the Jews because they believe them to be strong but despise them when they perceive them to be weak.
The anti-Semite resents the Jew both for what he is and for what he is not. He blames him for being too rich or too poor, too nationalistic or too universal, too devout or too secular. In truth, he simply resents the fact that the Jew exists.
Thus, for a Jew, anti-Semitism remains the enemy. But it is not the only one. There are other hatreds, other exclusions, other human communities targeted. There is misery on all continents—hunger, ignorance, intolerance, silenced political prisoners, nuclear proliferation: Which of these challenges requires our immediate intervention?
And war, which mankind seems incapable of eliminating or at least restraining, more than fifty years after World War II. What is war? A perverse lack of imagination, of memory? A fascination with the end, with death? How to understand this madness that leaves so many graves in its wake?
• • •
Having virtually given up journalism—not without regret—I turn to teaching.
Once again fate intervenes at a crossroads. I owe my appointment as
.
That of my father? Too harsh. My grandfather? Too sharp.
Suddenly I remember: It is the voice of a beggar I once wanted to follow. I was young, a child still. He laughed, and I asked him why. “To make you laugh,” he answered. Then he changed his mind and began to shout: “Would you rather I make you cry?” Making myself small, very small, I said: “What I’d really like is for you to make me dream.”
What is more important, asks the Talmud, what is essential: thought or action? The opinions are divided, but in the end all the Masters agree: Study comes first, because study incites action.
As a Jew, I question myself about the role of the Jewish writer. Is it to make readers spill one more tear into the ocean? What must the writer express, and to what end? Which story should be told, and to what audience? Some are convinced that he must devote himself exclusively to his writings, that his influence and his power derive more from his art than from his deeds. This may have been a valid notion long ago. Poetry does not prevent the torturer from beating his victims, and the greatest novel in the world remains powerlessbefore a fanatic. Thus the need to act. But in what area, and by what means? And where does one begin?
Of course, the fight against anti-Semitism remains a priority. It is, after all, the most ancient collective prejudice in history. Its virulence and its capacity to survive remain inexplicable. It is said to be as old as the Jewish people itself. The Talmud detects its first signs at the time of the Revelation at Sinai. Even in antiquity Jews were hated, especially in the higher echelons of society. What did Cicero and Seneca have against the Jews? If one is to believe Flavius Josephus, Apion the Greek reproached the Jews for “belonging to a tribe of lepers capable if not desirous of contaminating the entire world.” Tacitus is annoyed with them because they show for each other an “obstinate attachment, an active commiseration in contrast with the implacable hatred they feel for the rest of mankind. Never do they eat with strangers, never do they live with foreign women.” Apion and Democritus accuse them of ritual murder. Since then anti-Semitism has become more modern, though it retains the same irrational arguments. One has only to compare those of Pharaoh’s counselors in the Bible to those of Haman in the Book of Esther, of Torquemada, Hitler, and Stalin: Their delusions are the same. All were convinced that the Jews were always greedy, determined to achieve political and religious domination and thus to control the affairs of the world. They see Jews everywhere and ascribe to them terrifying mystical powers. At the same time, they have contempt for those who appear helpless. In other words, the anti-Semites hate the Jews because they believe them to be strong but despise them when they perceive them to be weak.
The anti-Semite resents the Jew both for what he is and for what he is not. He blames him for being too rich or too poor, too nationalistic or too universal, too devout or too secular. In truth, he simply resents the fact that the Jew exists.
Thus, for a Jew, anti-Semitism remains the enemy. But it is not the only one. There are other hatreds, other exclusions, other human communities targeted. There is misery on all continents—hunger, ignorance, intolerance, silenced political prisoners, nuclear proliferation: Which of these challenges requires our immediate intervention?
And war, which mankind seems incapable of eliminating or at least restraining, more than fifty years after World War II. What is war? A perverse lack of imagination, of memory? A fascination with the end, with death? How to understand this madness that leaves so many graves in its wake?
• • •
Having virtually given up journalism—not without regret—I turn to teaching.
Once again fate intervenes at a crossroads. I owe my appointment as
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