Examples Of Faith In Night By Elie Wiesel

This shows Elie’s change in his thoughts on God and having faith. At the beginning of the story, Elie strives to be a spiritual kid and is fascinated by learning about God. He goes behind his father's back to learn about God with Moishe the Beadle, and has intense prayers everyday which he cries during. However, he becomes bitter towards God, angry about all the pain he has inflicted on the Jewish race. This change in perspective was brought on by the torture, abuse, and inhumane treatment by the Nazis. It causes Elie to question how God, who is supposed to be helpful and good, could ever allow such horror. This connects to loss, and how the traumatic

Originally, Eliezer was a young teenager who was devoted to his religion and was pious. According to the text, Elie explains, “Why did I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (4). Religion was Elie’s way of life and brought him a sense of completeness. Praying and understanding his religion was like breathing, he couldn’t live without it. He dedicated himself to his faith and wanted to follow the same acts as his father who was a known man in their town of Sighet and put other people and his religion before himself. At a young age, Elie wanted to study Kabbalah, which is the deepest insights into God and the purpose of creation. He found his master in a man named Moishe the Beadle. Moishe the Beadle was a master in everything he has done and was an influential person in Elie’s life. For instance, “Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him...Man asks and God replies...The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself,”(5). Moshe proved that God is always there to guide you no matter what happens, but sometimes you also have to rely on yourself. Elie was astounded with the way Moishe viewed God and the lessons he was taught. It became a routine for Elie to converse with him. But after Moishe was transported from Sighet for being a foreign Jew, Elie started to have a change of thought. Weisel points out, “One day… I saw Moishe the Beadle… told me what had happened to him and his companions… were forced to dig huge trenches… they [the Gestapo] shot their prisoners… Infants were tossed… and used as targets for the machine guns,” (6). Moishe’s experiences sounded so horrifying that nobody believed him- he was called a fool and liar. Although

Faith plays a big part in the book “Night”, by Elie Wiesel. Elie seemed to have more faith in humanity and God than those who were older than him. Yet when when he and his family enter the concentration camps that faith disappeared. The faith he had in God, Humanity and including himself were gone.

It’s in these moments that Eliezer has lost all faith he had in humanity and religion, which he

Eliezer was taught that God is supposed to be filled with good, yet as he goes through the Holocaust, he thinks that maybe God doesn't exist at all . As he and his father are walking through Auschwitz, he sees the Nazi's burning babies in a large pit. While his father began whispering to himself the prayer for the dead, reciting "may his name be blessed and magnified...," Eliezer asks himself, thinking that he would be burned as well, "Why should I bless his name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe...was silent. What had I to thank him for?"(Page 31) This is the beginning of his lack of faith in god. As Eliezer and his father were together in Buna, an occasional public hanging would take place. Hangings were executed not only for those that committed a crime, but also for the prisoners of the camp, in order to learn a lesson from the accused. In Buna, one of three prisoners who were hung was a little boy, who was a servant of a member of the resistance group in the camp. Once the boy was publicly hung, the boy was still alive, just hanging there on the noose for about half an hour. As the prisoners in the camp were forced to watch the hanging, they began to cry. Eliezer said that even though there were so many hangings, this was the first time everyone was crying. At that moment, a prisoner asked out loud "Where is God now?"(Page 62) and Eliezer answered to himself "Where is he?

In the concentration camp Eliezer can’t understand why God allows so much death and destruction, and even though he is angry and questions God he never loses his faith. Although Eliezer never has his questions answered he never loses his faith. Eliezers evolving relationship with God is a major source of character development for himself.

People often begin to lose faith in God because of the results they faced from their life experiences. Some face things that seem cruel and unbearable while others are “confronted with the information presented from another viewpoint that rejects God” (Gospel Billboards). Elie was told by his father to never lose his faith in God, it would help him get through tough times and keep him strong. The faith is the only strong force that helped Elie Wiesel get through the Holocaust. Through experiences that involve cruel and unbearable moments, people start questioning whether God has the answers to life’s problems. This results in faith beginning to weaken, people stop communicating with God, which makes it easier for one’s faith to diminish. We encounter Elie questioning and refusing God, but also see his contradictory behavior he exhibits to praise. However, throughout the book, Eliezer witnesses and experiences things that leads him to lose his faith in his religion. The longer he stays in the concentration camps, the more he experiences and sees cruelty and suffering. Eliezer believes that people who pray to a God who allows their families to suffer and die are more stronger and forgiving to God. Elie was angry at God, he thought God didn’t deserve his praises or honors because he expected God to come save him but he never did. He observes people die and others around him slowly lose hope, starve, Elie ceases to believe that God could exist at all now. “Where He is? This

Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.

What God would let his people be burned, suffocated to death, separated from their families, and starved to death? Many people persecuted and sent to concentration camps questioned this thought. It was near impossible to keep faith at this time of torture. They felt as if God had abandoned his people, left to suffer the cruel events of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel grew up as a faithful and deeply spiritual young person. For a person of his age, he was greatly curious by his Jewish faith, he pursued Moishe the Beadle to deepen his spiritual understanding. Upon experiencing the torture of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel lost his faith completely. He found it impossible to believe that a God could allow his people to experience such torture. Upon surviving the Holocaust Elie Wiesel realized that faith is crucial to surviving without losing character. The hardships that Elie Wiesel faced in the concentration camps lead him to lose faith, until after when realizing it was crucial to keep faith in God despite the horrendous events of the Holocaust.

As a 12-year-old boy living with his family in the town of Sighet, Eliezer was a devout and studious Orthodox Jew studying both the Talmud and the Kabbalah and faithfully following Jewish law. When asked why did he pray, he thought it was such a strange question, his faith is shown when he thinks to himself, “Why did I pray? Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (Wiesel 4). He believes that God is everywhere and since God is everywhere and we are all a reflection of God that good must be everywhere and within everyone. Unfortunately, once the Germans move into his town

Elie’s faith is very tight at the beginning of the memoir, he had faith in God when he and the other Jews of Sighet were taken to the ghettos. “And we, the Jews of Sighet, were waiting for better days, which would not be long in coming now'' (5). This show that Elie’s faith was strong enough to believe that life would get better and the hardship would soon be over. It was not easy for Elie to have doubt in God when the Nazis were brutally oppressing the Jews in the ghettos. Once Elie and all the others were transported to Auschwitz, Elie was separated from his father and was tortured and forced to work. In the camp Elie was in, some of the youth with him were planning to take down the Nazis and said "We must do something. We can't let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse. We must revolt."(31). Then an

Though faithful as they enter the horrific camps of Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Buna, Birknau, Dachau, and Buchenwald, the Jews become capricious. They start losing grip and begin falling down the slippery slope of death the Germans set up for them as more horrors of the camps become unveiled. Soon after arriving in the camp and being told about the crematoria, he felt “anger rising with me [Elie]. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent” (33). This is the first time that his faith is challenged. After a few days in Auschwitz he “had ceased to pray. I [Elie] was not denying His existence, but doubted His absolute justice” (45). As seen, Elie is beginning to have doubts about God and therefore his belief and faith in him. Finally, when Elie is looking for God to come though he doesn’t and he asks,

Furthermore, as the story progresses, Elie stays the same person, but seems to gain a new view. He admits that he has lost faith in God, but still reverts back to pray out of habit and the comfort that it brings as it is all he has from his life before the concentration camps. However, he acknowledges the fact that praying to God is a comfort. Elie tells himself that he will not become like Rabbi Eliahou’s son. “And, in spite of myself, a prayer rose in my heart, to that God whom I no longer believed” (pg 87). This quotation takes place near the end of the book. Eliezer has completely lost faith in God, but he still has faith and confidence in himself. Although other characters in Night were broken without their faith in God, Eliezer’s ability

Furthermore, Eliezer is once again faced with death standing upon him. In the book Day is mentioned, “Death. I was thinking: He thinks that death is my enemy. He’s mistaken. Death is not my enemy. If he doesn’t know that, he knows

​ Faith. Unbearable. Compassion. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel it's based upon Elie and his father during the Holocaust.