Elie Wiesel - Colel Chabad Annual Dinner 1985

jewish speaker that i could think of of our times today and i was prepared to read his official biography and credentials and all of his many accolades and awards and i had asked him beforehand how would he like to be introduced and he said you just introduced me and that will be sufficient but i know from a personal level and i think many of you too that probably nobody has struggled more with the question of why the holocaust or what is the holocaust and about the holocaust nobody probably has struggled more with the identity of jewish being jewish and judaism and i don't want to take it to its bottom but i just want to say it is one of the most wonderful honors i have ever had to introduce to you tonight ellie wiesel [Applause] distinguished rabbis friends mr chairman i remember a story which is funny many many years ago a jew in new york worked for the zionist movement and he made many speeches and then israel came into being and he was offered a chance to go to israel when he came back he still made speeches and he said my friends he said do you remember all the lies i used to tell you they are true but you saw about the rabbi on the film is not a lie it is true although i i must tell you that i am not a hasid of your baby i say so because there are so many of you here that i am afraid that you may co-opt me which is not so terrible but still the truth must be said i belong to vishnez i'm a hasid of vishnuts but hasid and we do not claim any exclusivity nor do we claim any special privilege to belong where we belong i do believe as a hasido vignettes that the rabbi of yuba which today and it is true what it is being said is probably the greatest jewish figure in the jewish world there is no doubt to my mind that few spiritual leaders had such vision such courage such determination and such talent to choose his associates i mean every shaliah of his is an associate to spread the word of hasidut of your baby of judaism and therefore of what makes the substance the essence and the beauty of jewishness now i remember a story from my hometown that during the month of elul and especially during the week before rosh hashanah there was a custom and i still remember it that the shamish the beetle would go from window to window and knock in the window and he would say in yiddish naturally jews get up for the service of srihot i still hear the voice of that man and believe me my friends i would give much that i have to hear it again for with that custom and with that story and with that voice a whole generation is gone and more than a generation a way of life a mode a mode of philosophy a mode of commitment because then it was enough for the voice to say get up and people got up today there are too many voices we live probably in the noisiest generation ever never before have people spoken so much never before have so many vehicles been invented to carry the spoken word it is television or telephone or radio and how many stations i really believe that if there could be a moment of silence introduced in our lives it will be welcome because we cannot take it anymore and therefore when you hear the voice that says wake up we listen and isn't that the voice of chabad isn't that the voice of khasidut and isn't that the voice of judaism to the world that we are going around from window to window saying wake up don't sleep don't be indifferent don't live in comfort and surely not in apathy i must tell you that as i have seen today i have been fascinated with whatever the movement stands for since my childhood i love the hasidic movement i really can define my relationship with it as my relationship with the jewish people it's a passionate relationship filled with with ahavat israel which is probably the cardinal point of casualism since the bash the love for our fellow jews which means really the love for israel there is one other point in hatredism which you must know of and i'm sure that those yobavich are here and i know some of them they know of that point and that is called the book javerim the stress on friendship i have studied the history of religious movements because i teach and i teach humanities i teach literature of religion and philosophy of religion and religion of philosophy whatever you want but in my studies i have never found any movement any religious movement which stresses friendship the way we do since the best if i could define with one word but there is more than one word the hasidic thrust it is friendship meaning friendship between one another friendship between the individual and the community and friendship after all between the individual and his or her creator never before has such a thought being formulated that god is not only our judge god is not only our king nor is he only the ruler of the universe he is our friend and that relationship between creator and creature or creator and creation the relationship of friendship is something that appeals to me and i am sure it appeals to you with extraordinary force because it inflames our imagination i am wondering very often how come the hasidic movement is still around after all the main target of the enemy between 1939 and 45 were the hasidim three million out of the six million came from hasidic background and again when you study that movement you don't understand these were the gentlest saddest when they had to be said and joyous when there was reason to be joyous people in the world the hasid never asks anything from anyone except from himself or herself the hasid is always ready to be satisfied with one we one has and yet these humanists in the best sense of the world were targeted by the enemy and rationally they should have disappeared after all think about it the great centers in eastern europe lublin and legends can measure each and and berdychev you study today the modern history and your heart aches once upon a time when i was a child when i read i read birthday chef with mantri blavey yitzhak and i read legends and i read only polite mantra bisousia and today you opened the history books and you read beredict a few hundred jews were killed that day and a few thousand jews were killed that day and you read legends and again it means massacre a tempest of fire and blood has swept through europe and carried all these centers away and logically they should have disappeared especially since most of the hasidic masters went with their hasidim in most cases you spoke of music i testify to that in most cases the rabbi the rabbi in town had always a chance to be saved sometimes even by the priests in town in 99 of the cases all the rabbits all the masters all the teachers chose to go with their communities even if it meant and it meant to die with them so the hasidim were killed the children were massacred and the rabies vanished with them it was normal to assume that after the war there would be no more hasidic movement why not there are cycles in history we had the time of the of the uh tanayim and then the amuraim and then the geoneem and then the kabbalists and then the first hasidim there are cycles maybe that cycle too could have been closed it wasn't one of the great miracles is the rebirth the renaissance of the hasidic movement and i'm sure that much credit is due to you babish for that to others too let's not be exclusive vision it is not bad and even let's know you know even they have done something i don't agree but but has seen him have brought not only hassidu in america they have brought torah in america the once upon a time yeshiva that were musa dominated now are hasidic oriented the great hasidic movements in america have the best yeshivat and they produce the best teachers but above all they produce israel now why really am i here i'll tell you why first because i love what you are doing and i have i have a profound affection and admiration for the rebbe i have met the rabbi years and years ago and we spent nights and nights together struggling i was struggling at least not about being jewish i have never struggled about being jewish i had other problems but never that one for me being jewish is a privilege and it is up to us to raise that privilege higher and higher and give it meaning jewish meaning and because of his jewishness universal meaning but we had i had problems and i love to be with rabbi he is a man of knowledge passion dedication he knows how to listen which is something so do i so we listened a lot so much so that once when i wrote a novel i took him as one of my main characters and since then we saw each other meaning i came to see him often at night and i would send him my books i write in french and he reads french perfectly and he answered every book i have letters now that one day will be i think more important probably than my own book and i remember once i wrote him about uh i sent him a book a novel and he sent me back a 12-page letter and the novel dealt with problems of faith and god so he wrote back 12 pages about problems of faith and why faith must be affirmed and not only questioned since i also question faith but never without remaining inside that faith but at the end it was many many years ago he finished and he said by the way he said why don't you get married we were speaking about faith about history but he wanted also why don't you get married when i did get married the first bouquet of flowers i got in jerusalem was from the gabby it also the most beautiful you promised our listeners that in an hour and ten minutes it will be over i think i have three more minutes i will eight now what else why is there another reason yes there is another reason as well i teach and my passion is study and teaching meaning i love to be with young people and occasionally i leave my university and go around the country lecturing and i must tell you that i am very moved when i meet in these small places there are universities here that were it not for the him of chabad hundreds and hundreds of jewish young boys and girls would be lost to our people but i i'm saying you is true i wouldn't lie why should i i am not a chabadnik i'm a vignette but also because it's had a shalool one doesn't lie before rosh hashanah it is true hundreds of them would be lost to the drugs to the cults or to indifference or to other things but somehow there is always ahabatnik who arrives and he opens the lubavich center and these young boys and girls who need a presence who need a warm handshake who need a sentence of two or three somehow they are drawn to them and they remain sons and daughters of our people so if they can do that much for so many of children in so many places the least i could do is come here in new york and bear witness to what they are doing in the orient i also spent time in the orient when i was a student i learned a lot about indian philosophy hinduism that was used it used to be my interest then still is but from a different viewpoint and i remember a very very special custom i would witness do you know how two friends behave in india when they want to give each other a present the most beautiful present is that a person comes and brings a a bird in a cage and the present is that a friend can set the bird free how more beautiful is it to be able to say thanks to me or to you a hungry person is no longer hungry i studied your program the coll program in israel i thought i knew much about yobavich i studied at tanya and you know i'm writing about the rabbi book so i know a lot i think i'll learn more i didn't really know that the kale of chabad was the first kale in palestine on earth israel i'm glad i know now i didn't know that you were not only helping soldiers like twill in the army nor did i know that you are also helping orphans war orphans in israel but you simply have a kitchen to give soup for hungry i must tell you i almost feel bad about it to be here in the plaza hotel with so much food around and to think that we have to give hungry people soup it hurts is it possible that we live in the same world that we belong to the same people is it possible that there are hungry people among our people what greater privilege then is it than to be able to think or to say here thanks to tonight one person less will be hungry in eretz israel or anywhere my friends i think we live in in biblical times our generation is a very special generation i will take two more minutes i'll tell you why because somebody came up and mentioned that that he saw me on on television last year about the nuclear war i am not a television person i don't like television it's too much spectacle even the information is the news is not what i want it to be i want it to be better i would like the uh the broadcaster one day one day to come and say the machine but that that program was an important one 100 million program watched it about the nuclear menace i went i listened to everybody kissinger mcnamara they all were specialists i was the only amores i was the only ignorant there i didn't know anything about science about politics i still don't so i listened and each one wanted always to speak i never raised my hand i'm too shy and too ignorant and then when my turn came after all dead couple who is a good moderator and a friend said what do you think about it and i said you know i had the feeling when i watched this program meaning about nuclear catastrophe that the whole world became jewish you should have seen the expression on the faces around the table there you know instant conversion that's all we need what did i really mean by that i meant that for 2000 years the jewish people lived in constant uncertainty now the whole world lives in constant uncertainty for 2000 years we lived on the threshold of the unknown we jews never knew what will happen what king will wake up and issue a new decree now the whole world lives in on the threshold of the unknown for 2000 years we always depended on the whim on the capricious mood of any person any ruler anywhere now the whole world depends on the capricious whim or mood of the gaddafi or the humane if they were to get nuclear weapons so i really felt that the whole world now knows what we felt for 2000 years and it's time they should feel a little bit that too however it's not all we survived how did we survive on one hand whatever we have is usually taken away so fast there's a man here who told me he was five years in russia in a camp and we spoke about communism and he said you know he said what power the jews had in the communist party it's true but it was enough for stalin to wake up in the morning and finished no more power they were all in jail go to better times we had in spain the golden age the golden age where total symbiosis was achieved between jews and non-jews the prime minister was a jew and what a jew donate the finance minister shmuel hanagit and we had philosophers and poets it was enough for one king and his queen don ferdinand and isabella to wake up one morning and finished and all the power that we had was taken away and yet somehow we survived how first because when we left jerusalem 2000 years ago we were not the first people to have to be expelled from our homeland others have been expelled but we were the only people in history that when we were expelled we took a little book with us and it is that little book the torah yes that keeps us alive that kept us alive it lived in us and we lived in it and as for hazidism i'll tell you why hasidism lives on because when the hasid loses everything he or she still has the rabbi isn't this a lesson a lesson that we all can share receiving giving and above all when it comes to approach rosh hashanah and what is rosh hashanah if not yamazicaron the day of memory [Music] a good year healthy year and a year placed perhaps above all under the sign of the bukhavirim of friendship i thank you so a wise person does not follow and just announces dinner will be served