“How can we live without faith? How can we live with it?”
Talking about the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel said, “We cannot understand
that period with God or without God.” “Can one have too much faith?” “I believe in a wounded faith. Only a wounded
faith can exist after those days.” (For Wiesel, a wounded faith is faith as
protest, loyalty as an act of rebellion.)
“No faith is as whole as a wounded faith.”
Ariel Burger, a student of Wiesel, tells us, Wiesel had “an
angry faith, an activist faith, a faith with teeth.” Wiesel says, “It is possible to argue, to
protest, to shout against God, for God. Indignation may be the most authentic
expression of faith, for it is a testimony to our belief, in spite of what we
see, that God is just. And even if he is
not, we shall still demand justice.”
“The Hebrew word for question “shelah,” contains the word
for God, El. God is in the question.” “Does our faith cause us to fall asleep or
does it wake us up?” “The messiah is a question, not an answer; a demand not an
excuse, a beginning not an end.” “Even as I demand justice from God, I feel
compassion for God.”
“Our questions are not impediments to faith, they are faith.”
“If we do not have faith in God, we will have faith in some
other ultimate that can become fanaticism.
This is why the Bible does not give us God’s name, so we cannot be a
fanatic in God’s name.”
“Why do I believe in God despite the Holocaust?”
“Faith can coexist with tragedy, can survive it, and we can
carry it with us in spite of or perhaps because of our wounds.”
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