BEYOND WORDS (pages 189-223) Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom by Ariel Burger

He ends the melody and waits a moment in silence before opening his eyes. He says, "The nigun of the Vizhnitzer Hasidim is the best way I know to return to my childhood. And to share it with you. Why do I tell you about Hasidism other than because it is an essential part of my childhood? Because Hasidism teaches how to build on ruins." (Burger and quoting Wiesel, page 189)

He looks at me soberly and says, “Sometimes, we must move beyond words. As you know, teaching and learning do not happen only through the sharing of information; there must be an added element. I have been lecturing all semester, the students have been reading wonderful novels and plays, we have discussed and questioned. And yet I felt that something was missing: the melody. So I decided to sing.”

I thought about this brief conversation over the next few weeks. Now that he mentioned it, I could see that this group of students had been less engaged than others in previous years. It was subtle, but it was so. That moment of song opened some hidden door, and in the class meetings that followed, the discussions were more alive; the students raised their hands more often, they asked deeper questions. It struck me that perhaps they began to share more of themselves because he had shared more of himself. (Burger and Wiesel, page 190)

In a classroom lecture he says, “The original version of ‘ Night, which I wrote in Yiddish, was almost nine hundred pages long. And then, I cut, and removed, and pruned. Writing for me is not like painting; it is like sculpture. The sculptor sees an image within a piece of rock, and he carves away material to reveal that image. Flaubert once said, ‘I spent the entire morning sitting before my novel, and added a comma. Then I spent the entire afternoon, and erased it.’ That is how it is for me. I carve away words until what is left is the essential. But those other, erased, words are there.”

“How are they there if you’ve erased them?” asks Alan, a lawyer and master’s student from Washington, DC.
“They are present like the dead are present, though they are gone. But it doesn’t happen by itself; it requires intention. I swore not to write of my experiences until ten years had passed.”
Alan asks why.

"So that the silence too would be there, within each word.”

“Why is that important?”
“Because words alone cannot convey the experience. The killers found a language to describe what happened; the victims did not. I did not know-I still don’t know-whether I could find the right words. Therefore, there must be silence if one is to have any hope of transmitting something that is beyond words."

“Look, language is essential. It is more than a vehicle to transmit ideas or memories; it is a desire of the human being to transcend his own limits. Language is composed of words but is more than words. It is also the white spaces between letters, words, people." (Burger quotes Wiesel, pages 191-2)

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld "The Challenge of Modernity"

There is a statement in the Talmud Yerushalmi that describes the Torah as being black fire written on white fire. Over the centuries this phrase has been explained in a variety of ways. They all begin with an image of the fire you can see (the black fire) and the fire you can't see (the white fire). One interpretation is that the black fire is the letters of the written Torah and the white is the Oral Torah. For Jewish mystics, the white fire is the hidden meanings of the Torah that lie beneath the written text.

I want to suggest a new interpretation for our time. The white fire is the larger world around us. Without the white spaces the Torah can not be read. Without the white fire the Torah would be lacking a larger context.

. . .I want to suggest that modernity is the opportunity and the challenge to be touched by both the black fire and the white fire. It is also to understand that the real truth is we always have read the white letters. We always interacted with the world around us even when hindered by the walls of the ghetto. Now the walls are down. We are free of the limitations of so many centuries. Reading only the black letters is an inadequate response to the world we live in.

. . .It will not be easy but without reading both the black fire and the white fire we are misunderstanding the nature of Torah. The Midrash says that God looked into the Torah and created the world. It doesn't say God looked into the Torah and created the Jewish people or just the land of Israel. The whole world is Torah's context. After all, the Torah begins not with the Exodus or even with Abraham and Sarah. It begins with creation and Adam and Eve.

. . . at least in America, we have the possibility of exploring Torah as it was meant to be-in the fullness of God's intention---black fire on white fire.

“For myself as a writer, this is essential. Camus said, ‘I entered writing through worship.’ Others entered through anger. I enter through silence. There are many varieties of silence that of consent, of confusion, of grief, of mystical experience. We have seen the silence between Cain and Abel, their inability to communicate, which led to history’s first murder. There is the famous awkward silence, which many of us have experienced. And then there are some questions to which silence is the only answer, like Aaron’s silence in the book of Leviticus when his two sons are killed when they bring a ‘strange fire.’ VaYidom Aharon, And Aaron was silent’ -this was the only response to such a tragedy. But there are other forms of silence as well, which I have tried to explore in my books.” (Burger quotes Wiesel, pages 193-4)

"It is even more difficult when we consider the weakness of language itself. For we have seen how the enemy manipulated language during the war."

“Do you mean propaganda?” asks Alan.

“That is a part of it, the identifiable aspect. The oppressor: often obscures facts with contrived language. Beckett said, ‘Language, like a prostitute, offers itself to whoever wants it.’ It is very easy to distort. In war it is always language that dies first, is mutilated first, is violated first. In war, language becomes obscene, indecent, vulgar. How? It is simple. Orwell described this well, that words lose their meaning to their substitutes. Hitler referred to his anti-Semitic program as the Final Solution. Stalin used the term popular democracy to describe his satellites in Eastern Europe, even though they were neither popular nor democratic. Governments don’t lie; they engage in disinformation. Revolution? Oh no, don’t call it that, call it destabilization. Third-world countries aren’t poor, they are underprivileged.

“Part of our task is to liberate language, to name things as they really are. Don’t say income inequality when you can say hungry child. Don’t say racial tension when you can describe rocks thrown at a family. This is true in political life, in literature, and in education as well. We cannot liberate reality if we distort language.”

I understood that, for Professor Wiesel, words were necessary but not sufficient. The reason he chose to sing in class was a response to big questions: Have we succeeded in transmitting the message? No? Well, then, perhaps a song will succeed where words alone could not." (Burger quotes Wiesel, pages 195-6)

The case against the incorruptibility of art is strong. But Jason, whose grandfather is a survivor, also speaks up: “But isn’t it also true that prisoners created their own music in secret? Wasn’t there an entire culture of Jewish art, music, and theater right under the Nazis’ noses? Wasn’t their art a form of resistance?”

Professor Wiesel says, “You are right. In Buchenwald, children wrote poetry. In Theresienstadt, they became painters. In Lodz, there was a theater. There were high schools in the ghettos, weddings, children . . . they went on studying and singing. Their art was resistance. In general, art has its own inherent power and the intention of its creator. Nevertheless, it can be tainted by misuse, which is why knowing the history of works of art is important. For example, I would not go to a concert of Wagner’s music. I have friends who do not agree with me but personally I cannot do it. He was such a vicious anti-Semite. I have debated this with Daniel Barenhoim, the conductor, who wanted to perform a concert of Wagner in Israel. There were survivors in the orchestra! This is a personal example; you must make your own choices. But you must know what the music, or art, or play was intended to convey and whether it was used in the service of humanity or its opposite before you decide.” (Burger quotes Wiesel, pages 204-5)

In class a student named Margaret asked him whether he loved music for its own sake or for its ability to express what couldn’t be expressed in words.

He said, “Both, of course, and more. After the war it gave me hope. It contains yearning for the past, and even if the past is gone, lost, it still exists in the song. After all, the music of exile is different from the music of home. And yet it can contain joy in spite of everything. You know, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 of the Common Era, many of the leading rabbis decreed that Jews would no longer make music. For many years, this was the rule in exiled Jewish communities. Maimonides and others record this ruling in their legal works. But how could we survive without music? Therefore, first only at weddings, later as a general rule, music was allowed again. After certain experiences, how can you sing? How can you not?” (Burger quotes Wiesel, page 208)

"...find ways to remain grounded. Silence does help, but there is one thing you didn’t mention.”

The class is curious, as am I.
“Friendship. Your friends keep you honest, if they are good friends; they help you stay close to your own voice, your truth. And the best music is polyphonic. There is a Hasidic teaching of Rebbe Nachman. He said, ‘When two people speak simultaneously, there is dissonance. But When they sing together, there is harmony.’ When the world loses its ethical compass, it needs beauty to recalibrate. When words fail, What is left to us but to sing?” (Burger recounting Wiesel lecture, page 222)