A Dwindling Faith
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A Dwindling Faith
“My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God” (Wiesel 68). Most people would think hard times would strengthen peoples faith, that they would rely even more on their beliefs. But that is not always the case. In times of great crises, peoples faith may disintegrate to an almost nonexistent state. When people must look to physical things like food for survival, spiritual things like faith tend to be dropped. It has no use anymore.
Night by Elie Wiesel is a dramatic book that tells the horror and evil of the concentration camps that many were imprisoned in during World War II. Throughout the book the author, and main character, Elie Wiesel, as well as many prisoners, lost their faith in God. People are trying to keep and strengthen their faith but they end up rebelling against God and forgetting their religion. Even Elie, who had been training to be a religious figure in the community.
Elie had a strong faith as a young child, and at an early age of twelve he went to his father and asked him to find him a tutor to teach him the Kabbala. His father refused with the reason that he was so young and that he should wait until he was older and knows more of what he wants. This reason did not satisfy Elie. He decided to take it into his own hands and he recruited Moishe the Beadle as his tutor, and he started his training behind his fathers back and against his wishes.
What causes a young boy to want to be a religious figure in the community so much that he would defy his fathers wishes to pursue his future in his beliefs? Strong faith. Elie had an undoubtedly strong faith and it would seem that nothing in the world could shake that faith. “He wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind. In vain. I succeeded on my own in finding a master for myself in the person of Moishe the Beadle” (Wiesel. 4). Elie couldnt imagine anything changing his faith, but he hadnt known the biggest crises he would survive, but his faith wouldnt; the Holocaust.
One day, after he is sent to the camps, when Elie and his fellow inmates returned to the barracks from working, they saw three gallows and three men in chains, heading towards the gallows. One of those men, was a young boy with an angels face. Everyone starred at the young boy. He seemed calm as he bravely bit his lip in the shadow of the tall gallows. The two older men shouted a phrase known to the camp from a previous hanging. A phrase that talked about liberty and freedom. But the boy said nothing. Everyone wept when the boy hung. However, the boy did not die as fast as the older men, his body was too light for a quick death. He hung from the gallows for hours before he died. As the inmates walked past the gallows and saw the boy still alive, one man asked God where he was, and Elie thought the answer to himself, that God had died on the gallows along with the boy.
The men had all witnessed the hangings of fellow inmates before, but this time, it had a different effect on them. It made there already frail faith crumble more. To see a boy that looked like a messenger from heaven, be treated cruelly then killed inhumanly, most of the men, along with Elie, in the concentration camps couldnt handle it faith-wise. ” “For Gods sake, where is God?” And from within me, I heard a voice answer: “Where He is? This is where–hanging here from this gallows…” ” (Wiesel, 65)
In the beginning, the Gestopo came to Elies hometown and took all the foreign Jews. Elies friend and tutor in religious studies, Moishe the Beadle, happened to be one of them. He escaped them and returned to the town to warn everyone, with no success. Everyone called him crazy and grew annoyed with his persistence. He knew the Germans would return and nothing but abuse and death was to come. But since everyone ignored his “mad” rantings he lost his faith, he fell silent, and not a single prayer escaped his lips.
Moishe the Beadle, who had always been seen walking around Elies hometown praying, and who helped train Elie in the Kabbala, had started to lose his faith after experiencing the Germans wrath, but when the crises became even more urgent, and still no one would believe him about what was to come, he lost his faith entirely. He no longer prayed, he just simply fell silent and awaited the return of the German solders. “Even Moishe the Beadle had fallen silent. He was weary of talking. He would drift through synagogue or through the streets, hunched over, eyes cast down, avoiding peoples gaze” (Wiesel. 8)
During one of the Jewish Holidays, questions of weather