Elie Wiesel’s Apocalyptic Prophecies (Part 2/3)

The following is an article, based on two tapes of Elie Wiesel in Yiddish on WEVD, that Zach wrote in 2024 but was never published. Due to the length of the article, this is going to be serialized. This is part 2 of 3. Read part 1 here.

“I have the best students”

1976 was a transition year for Elie Wiesel’s burgeoning academic career. It would be his last year teaching at the City College of New York before moving on to Boston University.

Wiesel started lecturing almost the moment he came to the United States. Michael Berenbaum, a scholar of the Holocaust and executive editor of the 2nd edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, recounted Wiesel’s beginnings. “Wolfe Kelman, who was executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly, helped make Wiesel's non-writing career by getting him speaking to be scholar-in-residence at synagogues,” he recalled. 

Wiesel gained more popularity as time went on, lecturing around the country. In February 1967 the 92nd St. Y in New York City invited Wiesel to give semi-annual lectures, which he gave for decades to come. 

His star was especially ascendant after the 6 Day War in Israel in June 1967. As Israel defeated three major armies, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, there was a sense that the Jews had overcome their weakness and could handle talking about the Holocaust.

In 1972, he began his first-time job as a professor at City College, where he taught two classes: one on “persecution literature” (focused on the Holocaust) and the other on Hasidic texts. Wiesel explained to Weber that he was drawn to teach at City College for one principle reason: that he would get Jewish students. “I want them to be Jews. I have little time, little to give others. Therefore, I want to give what I have to my people and to our youth.” City College, at that time, was considered “the poor man’s Harvard,” and there were many Jewish students who came and studied for free.

Wiesel was very happy with his students; he understood that he was there to transform them, perhaps to encourage them to be more grounded in their Jewishness at a time when campus activism raged across the campus. “The best students, you can imagine; they are all very Jewish and devoted to our people, devoted to our causes. Their lives are, through and through, completely Jewish. Naturally, when the school year started, they were quite different. I hope that nonetheless, by the end of class with me, when they leave my class they change.”

Miro Mniewski, a Yiddish translator, who was one of his “persecution literature” students in 1976, remembers the class being called “the Holocaust.” The term paper assignment was for the students to interview Holocaust survivors and record their memories. Mniewski interviewed their Holocaust survivor mother.  “She actually opened up, and I found things out that I didn't know, like that she had a younger sister that perished, and that she kind of took the blame.” 

But Wiesel, as impactful as he felt he was in New York, was eager to take the offer to teach at Boston University. In one of the interviews, he described New York City as becoming too “repugnant” for himself and his young son Elisha, and aside from that, he would have one less class to teach, giving him more time for study.

It was also the case that the numbers of Jewish students at City College were falling off, a consequence of the College adopting open admission in 1970 as a response to civil rights activists. The “repugnancy” of New York however did not ultimately cause Wiesel to move to Boston; he stayed put in New York City and commuted once a week to Massachusetts.

Zalmen, or the Madness of God

The Jews of the Soviet Union were isolated from world Jewry, but were granted reprieve from Stalin’s purges and overt antisemitism after the dictator’s death in 1953. Nonetheless, they were scarcely allowed to emigrate, which became a serious problem as the Soviet Union began investing in its relationships with the Arab world, culminating in an international anti-Zionism campaign in 1967 and an internal institutionalization of antisemitism. Large numbers of Jews in the Soviet Union began applying for exit visas to go to Israel; some of them were allowed to leave but many remained in limbo. Those who were refused visas were called “the refuseniks.”

Jews in the United States and around the world were not willing to take this state of affairs passively. They saw how, Berenbaum said, “in the 1960s, after the black civil rights movement showed a tremendous ability to marshal forces and demonstrations,” that they could do it too. They believed that they needed to “save Soviet Jewry from either a second Holocaust or oblivion.” 

Up sprung committees to save Soviet Jewry, which raised money, organized public demonstrations, put out material for synagogues, released press releases and lobbied the UN and Congress. The political pressure on Congress was effective. In 1974, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was passed on a trade bill to make trade with the Soviet Union conditional on its releasing of its Jews. Soviet Jews were allowed more and more exit visas in the 70s and 80s, with hundreds of thousands making their way to Israel and the United States.

Wiesel, who was enraged at the world’s inaction to save Jews, went to the Soviet Union himself in 1965 and in 1966 to see conditions there for himself. He reported what he saw in Hebrew for Yedioth Ahronoth and in Yiddish for the Forverts. The Hebrew reporting was translated into English and compiled into the book “The Jews of Silence.”

“He made two discoveries, one of whom proved to be absolutely true, and the other was his imagination,” said Berenbaum. “The first was that Soviet Jews really wanted to remain Jews almost 45 years after communism. The connection between Soviet Jews and Jewish people was not weak, but strong. And there were people who wanted to remain Jews.”

What was his imagination? “He thought there was a religious revival,” said Berenbaum. There “was a Zionist revival and a freedom revival, but not a religious revival. Most of them remained ardently secular. They used religious symbols as a means of revolt.” 

Wiesel understood that he wasn’t going to have the impact he wanted for this cause with another book. He chose to write a play, based on his reporting called “Zalmen, or the Madness of God.” It was broadcast on television in 1975.

The play, Wiesel explains, is based on a rabbi he met in Moscow who speaks out against the Soviet regime — though he couldn’t bring himself to do it according to his actual reporting. Wiesel claims that he really spoke to the rabbi “through his eyes,” and that the rabbi really wanted to do this. Berenbaum believes this to be part of the fantasy as well.

The play garnered positive reviews on multiple occasions in the New York Times, most notably by the critic of all critics Clive Barnes. 

“The New York Times used to come out with the 11pm edition in New York City, and every Broadway show waited for the 11 p.m. review of The New York Times to know if it was going to open or close, if it was going to be successful or not successful. And the great critic was our good friend Clive Barnes. So if Clive Barnes says kosher, it's kosher, and if Clive Barnes says it’s treyf, it’s treyf,” recalled Berenbaum.

Wiesel and Weber were impressed that Barnes appeared so invested in the fate of Soviet Jewry. Wiesel compared his reaction to unspecified “self-hating Jews” who critiqued his play, asking why Wiesel had to write about Jews specifically. 

(to be continued)