Religion In Elie Wiesel's Night

Elie Wiesel’s Night provides the reader with the perspective of a Jewish adolescent during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a historical time period of hate and fear projected by the Nazi party against Jews and other minorities from January 30th, 1933, to May 8th, 1945. During this time period, minorities were kept in concentration and forced labor camps. Those who could not contribute to the cause were executed. Elie Wiesel’s Night portrays the horrors faced in these camps as his faith begins to wane. The fundamental principle of Eliezer’s spiritual beliefs is that the Hebrews will never be abandoned by their God because they are God’s Chosen People; this core belief forms his inner spirituality. The character, Elie Wiesel, changes from unconditional
Upon entering Birkenau, Eliezer experiences the terrible atrocities committed against the Jews by the Germans. Eliezer sees the Jews around him start to pray to God the Almighty. “For the first time, I felt anger rise within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” (33). The feeling of confusion and anger is evident as Elie doubts God’s actions through rhetorical questions. Due to the questioning of God’s actions through rhetorical questions, the reader understands Elie’s frustration with God. He loses his acceptance and unconditional devotion to God, and his feelings of God’s abandonment begin to grow. However, the current questioning of his faith should not be understood as a loss of faith. At this point in the novel, Eliezer still looks towards Jewish prayer in order to provide himself with security at the brink of death. When Eliezer believes he is about to be thrown into the crematorium, despite himself, he recites a Jewish prayer. “Deep down, I was saying goodbye to my father, to the whole universe, and against my will I found myself whispering the words: ‘Yisgadal, veyiskadash, shmey raba’… May his name be exalted and sanctified. My heart was about to burst. There, I was face to face with the Angel of Death” (34). Eliezer, by invoking God’s
On the eve of Rosh Hashana, the last day of the Jewish year, many Jews gather for a prayer to the Almighty. However, instead of the cheerful attitudes one expects on such an occasion, the hall is filled with faces torn apart in anguish. As Elie states: “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance?...Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies” (66). Through the rhetorical question “What are You, my God?” (66), Wiesel depicts Elie’s emotional disconnection and anger by challenging God’s identity as the protector of the Hebrew people; Elie does not believe that the God he is praying to is the same God who chose the Jewish people to be God’s Chosen