Tag: holocaust

On a number of occasions during his writing life, Nobel Prize winner and author Elie Wiesel tried to re-tell the story of a profound experience he’d had as a young boy in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. He wrote a play, a novel, and even a cantata to try to re-create his memory of this event, each of which remained unpublished. Finally, he wrote another play, set in another time and location, to try to capture the spirit of the event, which was published in 1979 as The Trial of God. But his re-imagining of the story remains less compelling than even a brief re-telling of the experience itself.

Courage is a special virtue: unlike other virtues that can be formed and polished over time, courage only makes itself known spontaneously and fully in situations where one is required to act, proving its existence.

This year, Yom Hashoah,[1] or Holocaust Remembrance Day, begins on the evening of April 27th, and ends on April 28th, at sunset. In Israel, entertainment venues are closed from sunset to sunset, sirens sound long, and the six traditional torches are lit, a symbol of the nearly 6 million people who perished in the atrocities of World War II.

The scenario in which God is a judge and His creatures are subject to His judgment culminates, in the Bible, with a happy ending for all lovers of righteousness. But what would be the end of a situation in which God is the accused in a trial instituted by His creatures? Whose ending would be happy?