Filled with fire and light Portraits and legends from the Bible, Talmud, and Hasidic world

The late Nobel laureate Wiesel (Night) displays his rhetorical gifts in this collection of essays, which have been adapted from his lectures on Judaica. Wiesel casts a wide net, taking in lesser-known biblical figures including the prophet Elisha and King Josiah, as well as broader topics, such as depictions of God in the Torah. His treatment of Josiah is emblematic; though the Judahite monarch is known for implementing religious reforms, the discovery of a scroll supposedly written by Moses himself calls into question his legacy: "Could it simply be that just as Noah was considered righteous in his evil generation, Josiah was considered righteous amid all the evil in his?" Wiesel poses and answers questions about whether Josiah's morality was only relative to his time, and concludes that he had been a notable exception "to the corrupt, idol-worshipping Jewish kings." All the sections, including a look at the unusual friendship between an ancient rabbinic scholar and a reformed criminal, achieve Wiesel's goal of studying the stories "in the context of our need to create through learning a community" and in a way that can inspire joy and ethical behavior. Wiesel astounds with these timeless lessons drawn from ancient texts. (Nov.)

A posthumous collection probes sources of Jewish wisdom. Adapted from a series of lectures delivered between 1967 and 2014, Nobel laureate Wiesel (1928-2016) celebrates the lives and struggles of spiritual leaders appearing in the Bible, Torah, and Hasidic lore. How, he asks, can one person make a difference when faced with evil and oppression? With a special affection for prophets, the author introduces Elisha ben Shafat, "strange, elusive, complex, full of contradictions," a man of volatile temper, at times directed cruelly at children. His teacher was the prophet Elijah, to whom Elisha felt unwavering loyalty. Purveyor of 16 miracles, especially in the aid of women, Elisha fought hunger, repelled enemies of the king of Israel, cured the afflicted, and intervened in affairs of state, including the incitement of a bloody revolution. Among biblical kings, Wiesel singles out Josiah, "one of the notable exceptions to the corrupt idol-worshipping Jewish kings," who restored the commemoration of Passover among his people. From the Talmudic universe, "a place where conflicts and contradictions meet and rarely get resolved," Wiesel examines the odd friendship between Rabbi Yohanan and the courageous gladiator Resh Lakish, to whom the rabbi offered marriage to his beautiful sister. The contrast between the two men, Wiesel observes, inspired their grappling over meaning in the Torah. Each attracted Wiesel: Resh Lakish for his "sense of urgency" and commitment to seek the truth; Rabbi Yohanan for his compassion. The enigma of Satan focuses one chapter. In another, Wiesel creates an admiring portrait of the philosopher and scholar Rabbi Schneur Zalman, founder of Chabad Hasidim, a deeply humanitarian sect that offered "a new way of attaining hope" and community to Jews--often uneducated and disaffected--who were scattered throughout Eastern Europe. Wiesel counts himself among Hasidim. "Faith in memory," Wiesel reminds readers, "helps individuals transcend their condition" and justifies "faith in the future." Empathetic inquiries into the challenges of faith. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Elisha The Perfect Disciple The man is strange, elusive, complex, full of contradictions. Why is he so severe one day and so affectionate the next? Which principle governs his existence? A man of faith, is he a carrier of hope or of punishment? Is he dominated by rage or by love? He astonishes us by his humanity as much as by his inflex­ibility. Can he be understood by us, always? Does he understand himself? How is one to reconcile the kindness he shows a barren woman and the tenderness he demonstrates toward a lifeless boy with his apparent cruelty to other, living children? Of course, he is a prophet, and prophets do not seek to be understood or admired. All they want is to be obeyed. They teach by example. They follow God's words; why shouldn't people follow theirs? People rarely understand what a prophet expects of them. Nor does he understand what God wants of him. But he remains obedient--always. Is Elisha son of Shafat my favorite prophet? As with the great Hasidic masters whose souls were sent down to put ours on fire, all of the prophets are my favorite--but one at a time. When I evoke Isaiah, the prince of the prophets, it is he whom I most admire. But when I tell of Jeremiah's witness, it is he whose inspiration I seek. Each time I am drawn to a prophet, whether because of the majesty of his language or the intensity of his vision, he becomes the melodious center of my inner landscape. Since Moses, the prophets have shaped the lives of the Jew­ish people by influencing their practices as well as their dreams. Some distinguished themselves through fear, others through hope. Some felt their mission was to disturb, others to console. What do they have in common? They allow the human being to be sovereign and speak truth to power. For them, truth matters. God is not only truthful, He is Truth itself. Truth is God's seal, just as human beings are in His image. Our prophets proclaimed this even if it made them unpopular. Since they were not elected to their positions with the assistance of political parties, they were totally independent. They owed nothing to kings or to their subjects because they owed everything to God and God alone. God was their only elector and very special protector. And yet, prophets led lives filled with solitude and suffering; only rarely did God come to their aid. But they knew that their suffering had meaning. How can one not feel for them, how can one not approach them with both humility and gratitude? The Romans had their legislators and gladiators, the Greeks their oracles and philosophers. As for the Jews, they had their prophets. Did they reveal the future? No. The present occupied them more deeply than the future. What they did was unravel the significance of the present so as to understand its conse­quences for the future. In so doing, they praised virtue and con­demned the cheap seduction of evil. Their mission consisted of trying to reunite the people of Israel and the God of Israel. Were they all-powerful? Was their power limitless? In matters of study and law, they enjoyed no privileged status. "Chakham adif mi'navi," states the Talmud. A sage, a master has priority over the prophet. In debates, it is the word of the sage and the scholar that is decisive. We are guided by his position, not by that of the prophet. But isn't the prophet God's emis­sary? Yes, but his voice is like the bat kol, the heavenly voice; it does not affect the outcome of the debate. We are commanded to believe that the Torah "lo b'shamayim hi," the Torah is not in heaven but here, on earth. It is to be found not among the angels but among human beings. It is up to us to appropriate it, study it, comment on it, and interpret its eternal message. Is it meant to put the prophet back in his place? Perhaps, but--where is his place? These questions relate to all the prophets--thus also to Eli­sha. Who is he when he is not possessed by God's words and is compelled to use his own? Does he have a private life, a secret existence? Does he have aspirations that are independent of God? Whenever we approach a biblical or Talmudic topic, we must place it in the context of our need to create through learn­ing a community from which it is possible to draw, as from an inexhaustible fountain, a joy that is exhilarating and pure. One studies these texts not out of a desire to please or to conquer but to better understand things that both elude and envelop our being in an endless quest for transcendence. One studies the words left to us by the prophets in order to penetrate our collective memory, to help us find ourselves again, as we did thousands of years earlier, in the silence that, at dawn, hovers over the eternity one encounters only in the stones and the souls of Jerusalem. Excerpted from Filled with Fire and Light: Portraits and Legends from the Bible, Talmud, and Hasidic World by Elie Wiesel All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.