In his book A Jew Today, Elie Wiesel has an essay to which I repeatedly turn in times of trouble. Tellingly, the essay is entitled "Against Despair."
Midway through the essay, Wiesel tells two stories about Simhath Torah, that day which customarily celebrates completion of the annual cycle of readings from the Pentateuch in the synagogue. Since the Middle Ages, the day has been accompanied with great festivity, rejoicing in God's gift of Torah to the people. Immediately following the Holocaust, however, many rabbis faced the question of whether or not to celebrate this joyous occasion among their congregations.
Wiesel's two stories come by way of response to this question. The first concerns a remarkable Simhath Torah celebration held in a packed boxcar carrying hundreds of Jews to their death in the concentration camps. The second story takes place within the camps themselves. The Jews gather to observe the occasion-yet they have no Sefer Torah, no Torah scroll to carry about in the traditional procession. An old man thus asks a young boy present if he remembers the Sh'ma Yisrael that he would have learned in religious school. "Yes," the boy responds. And so the old man lifts him in his arms-a thin and vulnerable child, become the Teaching Enfleshed-and begins to dance with him around the barracks. All present join in, singing and dancing and weeping, celebrating with a fervor that refuses to die.
Singing and dancing and weeping, celebrating the divine presence with a fervor that refuses to die: does this not seem to be the appropriate response of people of faith to the tragic events of our world? At least, it would seem to be the appropriate response of People of the Book-Jews, Christians, and Muslims together. For, all of us are guided and upheld by a Holy One whom we encounter in a text that leads us from creation to promised fulfillment, by way of prophetic challenge and psalmic outcry. Laments, too, are singing; swaying in the arms of one another as we cling together for comfort and reassurance is a form of dance; weeping of necessity tarries for the night through which we pass together in our confusion and our grief.
But joy also comes with the morning. The last of these affirmations is, of course, the hardest to utter in the wake of tragedy without seeming callous or cavalier. Joy, with so many dead or dying; with so many bereft; with the veil of normalcy and security that once covered our lives seemingly rent beyond repair?
And yet, and yet . . . as Elie Wiesel himself writes so often. Joy itself is an act of defiance, a refusal to let the forces of hatred and destruction seize the final victory. Joy affirms the persistent divine breath that draws compassion out of the wreckage, that sends firefighters into the rubble, that lines up crowds of people eager to give blood as a gesture of tender support. Joy affirms that hope itself is not ultimately vanquished, even when its presence is seriously threatened and obscured by evil forces in our world.
So in defiant joy, may we lift one another in our arms-each one of us an embodiment, however feeble, of God's teaching and promise. With all the fervor we can muster, may we dance together through our tears, "Against Despair"-until the morning comes.
Mary Louise Bringle, Brevard College
Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today, trans. Marion Wiesel (NY: Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 192-193.