by
NJJN Staff Writer

As the inaugural guest of the Cooperman Family Distinguished Speakers Series at Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills on March 29, Elie Wiesel was given free rein in his choice of theme.

“They didn’t give me a topic,” he said, to the amusement of the audience. “I hope they give the other speakers a topic.”

This moment of levity belied the seriousness of the Nobel laureate’s remarks over the course of the next hour, which included thoughts on terrorism, Israel, and the meaning of the Holocaust in the 21st century.

An estimated crowd of 1,400, including scores of middle and high school students, filled every seat and many of the aisles of the sanctuary.

“In a way, I feel sad” for the young people, said Wiesel. “What kind of century have we prepared for you? We Jews have never lived in a generation with so many problems and challenges.”

How is it possible, he wondered, that a Jewish population that measures only 14 million “should obsess the world for so long?”

The 77-year-old Wiesel, the Auschwitz survivor whose 1960 memoir Night is back on best-seller lists thanks to a push from Oprah Winfrey, who has chosen it for her on-air book club, said people his age have become “generational mourners,” but added, “There must be a limit to mourning. Jewish wisdom and knowledge allow the mourner to reinsert himself or herself into life” after a period of time.

He characterized “morbidity” as one of Israel’s problems. “It is a young nation with an old people. What happened 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem — the destruction of the Temple — affects us today.”

Although they have experienced centuries of ill treatment, Jews have not cornered the market on suffering. “Has the world learned nothing since the Holocaust? Bosnia, Rwanda, now Darfur.”

Twenty years after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with a speech declaring, “Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers,” Wiesel said he still believes terrorism — and specifically suicide terrorism — is the “greatest weapon in the world,” the gravest threat to the security of all nations. “They kill themselves not because they want to die, but because they want to kill more with their own death.

“What do you do when a young person wants to be a suicide killer because that’s [what he believes] God says?” Religious fundamentalism, regardless of its source, is anathema, whether its comes from Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, even Jews, he said, reminding the audience that Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a religious Jew, as were 29 Muslims in an attack by Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994.

Wiesel lamented the installation of Hamas as the ruling party of the Palestinians. “Their principle is still the destruction of Israel, which means that the majority of Palestinians voted for the destruction of Israel.”

Despite all he has been through personally and everything that has beset the Jewish people, Wiesel concluded his remarks with cautious optimism.

“If we had become nihilists, anarchists…and turned our backs on the world, it would have been understandable,” said Wiesel. “But we didn’t. We became builders and philanthropists, physicians, professors, and rabbis.”

“Whatever the answer is to today’s questions, education must be its major component,” said Wiesel. “I still believe in hope. Without hope, culture and civilization are lost. The doctor cannot operate; the lawyer cannot plead his case. Children cannot grow and old people cannot dream.

“If there is no hope, we must invent it. Why do you think Israel chose ‘Hatikva’ [The Hope] as its national anthem?”

Noting the large number of young people in attendance, B’nai Jeshurun executive director Alice Lutwak told NJ Jewish News that Wiesel’s message was still relevant today — sadly so.

“Even though the sentiment for the past 20 years has been ‘Never again,’ it turns out that holocausts are [still] happening. We have Darfur, we have all kinds of horrible events that resemble holocausts, even though you might call them by a different name.”

Lutwak, whose family came from the same Transylvanian town as Wiesel and was imprisoned in the same concentration camps, said he is “of the generation who can teach us by example, by his survival and his thought process about what can be done to prevent holocausts. Our young people are fortunate enough to hear him, because this is the last generation that has experienced the Holocaust in their own skin and are still able to talk about it.”

The Speakers Series was established by the Toby and Leon Cooperman and Jodi and Wayne Cooperman families to bring high-profile speakers and topics to the B’nai Jeshurun community and the general public.