Tag: Elie Wiesel

Episodes/2 (How to Sleep at Night)

During Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 Diaspora moralist Elie Wiesel was of the opinion That given the dramatic sweep of thousands of years of Jewish history What was then taking place— The bombing of…

Reasons of State Or Reasons of Memory

First published in The Ecumenist, 1997.   Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory:  The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York:  Penguin USA, 1995. $27.95, U.S.A; $36.99, Canada.   Throughout this spring, there have been several…

Hamas and Ourselves

1. U.S.  critics refer to  “Hamas’s genocidal charter” as odious.  No doubt it is.  Of course, the U.S. was a practitioner of genocide of the indigenous population across this land.  Perhaps a few of those…

Elie Wiesel and the Question of Palestine

This essay was first published in Tikkun, November-December 2002. In his 1986 Nobel lecture, Elie Wiesel spoke with characteristic gravity on any attempt to reckon with the Holocaust: “There are no theological answers, there are no…

Remembering and Forgetting

1. The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. –Milan Kundera, Czech/French novelist 2. The Jews of my city are now forgotten, erased from its memory. Before, there were some…

Mechaiehs

Mechaiaeh… Pronounced m’KHY-eh, to rhyme with “messiah.” The kh sound is, of course, the way a MacTavish would roll it out. From Hebrew. Pleasure, great enjoyment, a real joy. … Mechaieh comes from the Hebrew…

Litany/2 (¡Presente!)

The following was near the end in the original version of The Book of Mev. Ignacio Ellacuría, engaged intellectual, credible witness, Fearless announcer of God’s Kingdom . . . ¡Presente! Ordinary eco-friendly folk, hallowers of…