Elie Wiesel's Faith - Be an Insider and Turn Inui into Simcha

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On October 2, 1997, the New York Times published an op-ed written by Elie Wiesel, entitled, “Prayer for the Days of Awe.” This is what he wrote:
“Master of the Universe, let us make up. It is time. How long can we go on being angry? More than 50 years have passed since the nightmare was lifted. Many things, good and less good, have since happened to those who survived it. They learned to build on ruins. Family life was re-created. Children were born, friendships struck. They learned to have faith in their surroundings, even in their fellow men and women. Gratitude has replaced bitterness in their hearts. No one is as capable of thankfulness as they are. Thankful to anyone willing to hear their tales and become their ally in the battle against apathy and forgetfulness. For them every moment is grace. Oh, they do not forgive the killers and their accomplices, nor should they. Nor should you, Master of the Universe. But they no longer look at every passer-by with suspicion. Nor do they see a dagger in every hand. Does this mean that the wounds in their soul have healed? They will never heal. As long as a spark of the flames of Auschwitz and Treblinka glows in their memory, so long will my joy be incomplete. What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?”
What about Eli Wiesel’s faith in God after the Holocaust? How does he and millions of other Holocaust survivors have faith in God after the Holocaust? We are a nation that has been battered, beaten and bruised for thousands of years, and yet we still have faith. We still feel that deep connection to God. What is the secret to our faith?
The Gemara in Masechet Yoma (2b) states that the Kohen Gadol had to remain in the Temple area for seven days before Yom Kippur. Therefore, he was sequestered in a room known as the “lishkat Palhedrin,” during this period of time when he would prepare for Yom Kippur. The gemara discusses whether this room requires a mezuzah or not. For certain reasons, the rooms in the Beit Hamikdash did not require a mezuzah, but Rabbi Yehuda argued that the lishkat Palhedrin was an exception and did require a mezuzah. Why did it require a mezuzah? Says Rabbi Yehuda, “she’ma yomru Kohen Gadol chavush b’bet ha’asruim,” maybe they will assume that the Kohen Gadol is imprisoned in the Mikdash. Rabbi Yehuda is concerned that people gathering in Yerushalayim before Yom Kippur would think that the Kohen Gadol is being locked up in the Mikdash; therefore, we affix a mezuzah to tell everyone, “He’s not in prison! He’s in his house, his personal residence! And I’ll prove to you that he’s in his house. After all, he has a mezuzah in this chamber!”
This seems like a very odd halachic reasoning. People will think that the Kohen Gadol is in prison so we need a mezuzah. Don’t they realize that he is being sequestered in his chamber so that he can prepare undisturbed for Yom Kippur in a state of purity? The way that Rabbi Lamm answered this question is that it all depends on how you view Judaism. Do you view Judaism as an insider or an outsider. If you view Judaism as an outsider, then all the restrictions of the Kohen Gadol are just that – restrictions. You think that he is in prison. He can’t go anywhere. But if you are on the inside, then you hopefully have an entirely different picture. You see the Kohen Gadol preparing for an intimate encounter with the Divine, the most intimate encounter all year, a heightened spiritual experience like no other. Two diametrically opposed perspectives of the Kohen Gadol and Yom Kippur, depending on whether you are an insider or an outsider.
And maybe that’s what Yom Kippur is all about. Let’s play word association. What do you think of when I say the words, “Yom Kippur?” Fasting, long davening, standing, and someone might even say suffering. For many, the first thing that comes to mind is the “inui,” as the Torah states, “v’initem et nafshoteichem.” Now there might be a few that remember the gemara in Masechet Taanit (30b) and when I say “Yom Kippur,” they would say “simcha” or happiness, because the Gemara tells us that Yom Kippur is one of the two happiest days of the calendar year, the other being the singles scene of Tu B’Av. But there’s no singles scene on Yom Kippur. You are in shul the whole day standing, davening and fasting, and yet, that is simcha. Yom Kippur captures the inner struggle between inui and simcha, between suffering and happiness, between relating to Judaism as a restrictive and difficult life vs. focusing upon the meaning, beauty, and spiritual pleasure of leading a religious life. And it all depends on whether you are an outsider or an insider. An outsider dreads Yom Kippur, whereas an insider anticipates Yom Kippur, and maybe many of us fall somewhere in the middle. Placing the mezuzah on the doorpost of our lishkat palhedrin, our religious life, projecting a life of simcha, of enthusiasm and passion, transforms us into an insider and not an outsider, highlights feelings of simcha instead of inui, and Yom Kippur becomes a model for our entire religious life.
Yom Kippur actually shows us how to transform our inui into simcha. It shows us how to be an insider as opposed to an outsider. I remember a number of times taking my kids when they were little to a regular grocery store, not a kosher one, or to a baseball game or an amusement park and they would see a non-kosher candy and would ask for it and I would say no and I would get looks from strangers like the child is only five years old – why don’t you just give him or her a candy? For the outsider, our religion is inui. But Yom Kippur teaches us to think like an insider. If we understand, if we place the mezuzah first and foremost on our minds, then the inui becomes simcha.
On Yom Kippur if we find ourselves in the moment and we are all focused on God and davening with intensity and we are especially sensitive to one another, then we see ourselves like how the midrash sees us, as angels. If we do all this, then we actually spend the entire Yom Kippur transforming our inui into simcha. But then we return to normal tonight, tomorrow, and then we wonder how we can take some of that Yom Kippur simcha into our daily lives, and it’s hard. But Yom Kippur teaches us that we don’t have to travel far to find this simcha.
A chassid once came to the Kotzker Rebbe and asked if he could become a disciple of the great Rebbe. The Kotzker asked him sharply, “What have you come to search for here?” The chassid said, “I am looking for the Ribbono Shel Olam.” “Well, then,” said the Kotzker, “you have come to the wrong place. I cannot help you find Him.” The Chassid was surprised, and he asked the Rebbe, “Then what is it that everyone has come here to find?” The Kotzker stared at him with his piercing eyes, “Each one of them has come to find himself.”
It’s hard to visualize real, meaningful change in our lives, but our experience today on Yom Kippur teaches us that if we do the inui from the perspective of the insider, that this is who I am and this is what I want to be, then it all becomes simcha. I make sure that I am extra sensitive to everyone around me. It’s not my nature but I engage in “inui” and work very hard at it, and ultimately I feel b’simcha when I act in a refined and a dignified manner. I establish fixed times to study Torah and I never miss even if I’m tired. I work my schedule around it and it’s difficult – there’s some “inui” involved, but I feel b’simcha to take a deep dive in consistent Torah study. I understand what it’s all about. I’m an insider.
Rav Lichtenstein once quoted the Mishna in Pirkei Avot (4:17) that:
יָפָה שָׁעָה אַחַת בִּתְשׁוּבָה וּמַעֲשִׂים טוֹבִים בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה, מִכָּל חַיֵּי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. וְיָפָה שָׁעָה אַחַת שֶׁל קוֹרַת רוּחַ בָּעוֹלָם הַבָּא, מִכָּל חַיֵּי הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה
“More precious is one hour in repentance and good deeds in this world, than all the life of the world to come; And more precious is one hour of the tranquility of the world to come, than all the life of this world.”
He explained that, on the one hand, momentary bliss of basking in the Divine Presence in Olam Haba, the next world, is superior to the totality of all joys in this world. However, “in moral terms, this world, where you will be challenged and where you will respond, is preferred to the next world, where you are going to be metaphysically pampered; a single hour of teshuva and good deeds now is weighted over all of the World-to-Come.” This is true joy – the inui, the struggle of bettering ourselves and bettering the world with resilience and resolve. There’s nothing like it. And if we are an insider then we fully appreciate the depth of this message. And for some people, being an insider becomes so compelling that it fortifies our faith even when facing the most tortuous inui imaginable.
Here is how Elie Wiesel’s New York Times op-ed continues. “I now realize I never lost it, [referring to his faith,] not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don't know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?
But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?
In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Creation? These thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability is irrelevant to my ''problem'' with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect much from human beings. But I expected everything from you.
Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?
These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: ''God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways.'' Or: ''Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry's sins of assimilation and/or Zionism.'' And: ''Isn't Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel.''
I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?
As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.”
This is what it means to be an insider, to not let the inui of even the Holocaust shatter our faith in God. May we all emerge from Yom Kippur appreciating how to transform inui into simcha, and may God give us the strength so that this appreciation informs how we live our lives the rest of the year, that we stop focusing on the negative, what’s bad, what’s oppressive and what feels like a prison, and instead reflect on the mezuzah, how beautiful it is to be a Jew and how lucky we are.