OTHERNESS (pages 35-70) Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom by Ariel Burger

"It is the otherness of the other that fascinates me." -Elie Wiesel

"If I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I - then I am not I, and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you - then I am I and you are you." (Burger quotes Wiesel quoting the rebbe of Kotzk: page 68)

"We define ourselves by the stories we tell, and our entrenchment in those stories can lead to conflict, he says. For a time, it was common for human beings to burn other humans at the stake over competing cosmologies. Wars have been caused by disputes over textual interpretation. Our differences - skin color, language, accent, wardrobe - still lead us to murder." (Burger speaks: page 38)

"We are here, after all, to build bridges between worlds." (Burger quotes Wiesel: page 41)

"In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said that the only thing really worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. There is a mirroring that happens between inner and outer hospitality. The more we are able to accept the many aspects of who we are, however contradictory those aspects are, the more easily we can accept others, with all their contradictions.” (Burger speaks: page 46)

The Otherness of the Other and our inclination towards bias- even when unnamed

"If we pay attention to the ways we discuss difference and diversity in our culture, we will notice hidden biases and leanings. In New England, where I live now, we often celebrate connection, speaking of what unites us as being greater than our differences. This is good, but it can lead to a subtle tyranny of sameness, two people living in echo chambers in which they surround themselves with those who think like them. Social media often exacerbates the problem.

In order to fight this tendency, Professor Wiesel emphasized difference. 'It is the otherness of the other that fascinates me...What can I learn from him? What does he see that I do not, cannot?' In his writing and teaching he celebrated the madman, the rebels, the outsiders, the underdogs - the others in literature and in life.

We each have blind spots, just as every candle cast its own shadow. Only when you place a second candle next to the first do the shadows disappear, illuminated by the other's light. The beginning of dialogue is the knowledge that we can do this for one another." (Burger speaks: page 50-51)

God as the Other

"Of course we must find what unites us,” says Professor Wiesel. "But we must not allow that search to collapse the distinctions between us. We know that in the Middle Ages, Church inquisitors tortured and burned people for the good of their victims’ souls. From the accounts that we have, we know that this sentiment was heartfelt, sincere. Therefore, we see that compassion itself is not enough; it is actually dangerous when it is married to the collapse of the otherness of the other. If I believe the other is identical to me, then I may apply my own calculus of pain and salvation to him. If, however, I acknowledge that his values, his priorities, are different, and if I respect that difference, then I can avoid this temptation.

“For the believer, there is a theological element to this as well. I must respect your otherness because it emerges from the ultimate other, God. Each of us is alone as God is alone. So who am I to judge you? I am a witness, not a judge. You know, in the Inferno of Dante, God is never referred to by name; the word God does not appear. Instead, the word Other is used. And this is true also in the book of Esther-God’s name does not appear. But these two elisions are for very different reasons. In the Inferno, because the characters are in hell, it is forbidden to speak God’s name. In Esther, it is because this book explores God’s hiddenness in history, how God works through natural or political processes. But in both places, God is the other. Once we really know that we are strangers to one another, we can begin to truly respect one another. From this respect, friendship can develop.” (Burger quotes Wiesel: page 54-55)

Needing a desire to listen

Professor Wiesel says, “I hope that you encounter the other here, in this room, those who hold different beliefs, values, worldviews than you do. When you do, you are faced with a choice. The choice is to listen, or not. I hope that you listen, really listen, not to find the other’s weakness but to find his strength. To disagree, to engage with controversy, does not mean to refuse to listen. On the other hand, to agree with someone does not mean to merge with the other. We are different; we have our own histories, our own destinies.” (Burger quotes Wiesel: page 53)

Finding similarities

‘Well, if I truly respect you, that means I can learn from you, that you have some wisdom or a sensitivity that I lack. And you mention Jesus. I have been asked many times in interviews, ‘If Jesus lived today, what do you think he would say?’ If Jesus lived in my time and place, he most likely would have died in a concentration camp. How can we forget that he was a Jew who lived in a Jewish milieu? That his stories were Jewish stories, and his family was a Jewish family? The distance between us is not as great as we think it is.” (Burger quotes Wiesel: page 61)

“When evil threatens the weak, we must fight back. And yet it is true that sometimes the only way to disarm a threat is to be vulnerable, to share our common humanity, in hopes of awakening the humanity of the other.” (Burger quotes Wiesel: page 67)

All progress we have made in the realm of civil rights has been accomplished through identity politics: women’s suffrage, the American with Disabilities Act, Title 9, federal recognition of same-sex marriage. A key issue in the 2016 presidential election was the white working class. These are all manifestations of identity politics.

Take women’s suffrage. If being a woman denies you the right to vote, you ipso facto cannot grant it to yourself. And you certainly cannot vote for your right to vote. If men control all the mechanisms that exclude women from voting as well as the mechanisms that can reverse that exclusion, women must call on men for justice. You could not have had a conversation about women’s right to vote and men’s need to grant it without naming women and men. Not naming the groups that face barriers only serves those who already have access; the assumption is that the access enjoyed by the controlling group is universal. For example, although we are taught that women were granted suffrage in 1920, we ignore the fact that it was white women who received full access or that it was white men who granted it. Not until the 19605, through the Voting Rights Act, were all women-regardless of race-granted full access to suffrage. Naming who has access and who doesn’t guides our efforts in challenging injustice.

"White Fragility: Why it is so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism," Robin Diangelo. Page xiv.

Elie Wiesel’s son opens up about growing up with world-famous Holocaust survivor

By Doree Lewak

January 25, 2020 | 3:09pm

Elisha WieselTamara Beckwith

Elisha Wiesel visited the ruins of the Auschwitz with his father, Elie — the humanitarian, Nobel Peace Prize winner and world’s most recognizable Holocaust survivor — only once, in 1995.

”It was a very powerful experience,” he said of the notorious extermination camp in Poland where his father was deported at age 15. Elie’s mother and younger sister were sent to the gas chambers on the first day there.

“We found the spots where my father thought each of the various members of [our] family died” and read Psalms there, Elisha recalled.

But even more emotionally piercing was when father and son toured Elie’s hometown of Sighet, Romania, where there had been so many happy times before Nazis occupied the area, rounding up Jewish people and sending them to the camps.

“There were ghosts for him [in Sighet] and not very much left of what there was before,” said Elisha, now 47. “It was like going with someone who had a spiritual radio; he was picking up signals that only he could feel and hear. And being with him, it went through him to me.”

Monday is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and a time for people around the world to be reminded of the horrors that happened there — as documented in stories like Elie’s best-selling 1956 memoir, “Night,” and photos like the one of him crowded with other men in the barracks at Buchenwald, skeletal and malnourished days after liberation. (Elie was transferred to that German camp and then liberated from there in April 1945. He died of cancer in New York City in 2016, at 87.)

Elie and his wife, Marion, named their only child Shlomo Elisha, after Elie’s father, Shlomo, who died at 50 after a death march to Buchenwald.

Growing up, Elisha recalled, the family’s Upper West Side home was a hive of activity: people coming over to discuss various commemorations or plans for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. “Everybody wanted a piece of my father, so that was part of growing up for me,” he said. “My classmates were going to Florida for vacation and we were going to Poland.”

The attention surrounding his dad could be overwhelming, especially when Elie was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986. Elisha was 14 at time.

“I was obviously proud of and happy for my father, but it was difficult for me. I felt like the spotlight had just been turned up [in a way] that I didn’t want,” he said.

Elisha admitted it drove him to rebel during his teen years, pulling away from family and religion.

“I raged against my school, against my parents and against my tradition. My father was ill-equipped to explain the rules of modern adolescence, and I raged against myself. His love seemed too heavy to bear, the confidence he had in me grievously misplaced,” Elisha, who attended Modern Orthodox yeshiva Ramaz on the Upper East Side, wrote in the Jewish Week in 2017.

“I think it was a rage against expectations,” he told The Post.

There was also sometimes a disconnect between Elisha, a modern New York City kid, and his immigrant father.

“There were certain things that were not going to be a part of my father’s toolkit in parenting,” Elisha said. “Other dads were able to go and spend hours at a baseball game or have a catch or engage in modern US culture. And these were things I had to drag my father along to.

“He’d bring a book, but he’d come,” Elisha said of getting his father to go to baseball games. “He was game.”

Elisha even taught Elie how to throw a baseball before the humanitarian threw out the first pitch at the 1986 World Series.

And the love of his father, he said, was unconditional.

“When I was really into rock ’n’ roll and came home with a strange haircut, he had no problem putting his arm around me and walking down the street.”

Elie never forced his own history on his son.

“He gave me as much space to be who I needed to be,” Elisha said, noting that he first read Elie’s book “Night” as a young teen. “It was very much a subject matter that was discussed, but my father didn’t want to push that on me. He felt that was a big burden to give a child. He tried to spare me where he could.”

Elisha went on to attend Yale, studying computer science, and now lives in Manhattan, with his wife, Lynn, 14-year-old son, Elijah, and 11-year-old daughter, Shira.

“The most important way to carry on [my father’s] legacy is to be a good father to my children, a good husband to my wife, a good son to my mother. Everything else is secondary,” he said. “I want both my kids to appreciate what they have, which is what my father didn’t have: a normal childhood.”

Last month, Elisha left a 25-year career at Goldman Sachs to help with Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign to bolster its technology push.

“Now that I moved on from my career on Wall Street, I hope I’m so fortunate enough to find ways to give back and emulate my father by having an impact on the world,” he said.

And he did eventually find his way back to Judaism.

“If you would have told me, at 16 or 17, that 30 years later I’d be studying a page of Talmud a day, I would have said it’s impossible,” said Elisha, who sometimes prays with his father’s beloved Torah book.

He’s also adopted Elie’s life philosophy.

“My father was very clear,” Elisha said. “Every time someone asked what he aspired to be, he said, ‘A good Jew.’”