Days of Awe
Yom Kippur 2022
Marc Chagall | Dedicated to Christ (1912)
A BLACK EYED STORY
Holocaust Survivor, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Scholar, Lecturer, Human Rights Activist and Author, Elie Wiesel decided to write his renowned memoir Night due to an interview with the highly-honored and decorated French writer, François Mauriac.
The story goes that Mauriac, a devout Catholic, wanted to put the young and not yet discovered Wiesel at ease. So, he attempted to insert his faith into Wiesel’s Jewish faith by waxing on and on about how much he loved and respected the Jewish people because he so loved Jesus Christ who too was a Jew.
This is something that Christians often do. We will see another’s wound and press our finger into it claiming that we, too, feel the pain. Wiesel said Mauriac’s attempt was an “impassioned, fascinating monologue on a single theme: the son of man and son of God, who, unable to save Israel, ended up saving mankind. Every reference led back to him.”
Understandably, Wiesel was offended and hurt by this tone-deafness. In stunning outrage, Wiesel tersely said to this revered literary giant:
Sir, you speak of Christ, Christians love to speak of him. The passion of Christ, the agony of Christ, the death of Christ. In your religion, that is all you speak of. Well, I want you to know that ten years ago, not very far from here, I knew Jewish children every one of whom suffered a thousand times more, six million times more, than Christ on the cross. And we don’t speak about them. Can you understand that sir? We don’t speak about them.