Professor Wiesel invites his listeners on a pilgrimage: “Let’s go far away to Europe, Eastern Europe, to the end of the eighteenth century and talk about a great movement whose reverberations are felt even today.” Professor Wiesel transports his audience back to the enchanted kingdom of Hasidism in its early developing stages, specifically to Ger, a small town near Warsaw, to Rabbi Yitzhak Meir, perhaps the most tragic of figures. Some say that he lost and buried seventeen children. In 1831, his father-in-law was associated with the defeated nationalist rebels and the family lost its economic security. Even he, the master, was imprisoned and, upon his release, he changed his address and name from Rabbi Yitzhak Meir Rottenberg to Alter. After the death of his devoted friend Reb Mendel, the Kotzker Rebbe, he created the school of Ger, which was very different in style, accentuating collective fervor and total connection with the Torah. As a bachelor, Professor Wiesel, together with his friend Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, used to attend services at the Gerrer Shtibl in Manhattan on 101st Street, and hear stories from survivors of Treblinka. Professor Wiesel questions whether the Rebbe of Ger was a prototype survivor, who set an example for later survivors. Although never in favor of analogies when dealing with unspeakable events, Professor Wiesel tells the Rebbe’s story in order “to include it in the vast framework of our collective memory.”