The Elie Wiesel Living Archive

at The 92nd Street Y, New York. Supported by The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

Building a Moral Society

A Society That Aspires To Be Just; Showing the Beauty in Being Jewish

Mar 04, 1993

Professor Wiesel responds to questions and comments from two interviewers, David Woznica and Joseph Telushkin, concerning general and personal issues. Regarding a moral society Professor Wiesel says there is no place that is a just society, which would be a utopia—and utopia means “nowhere.” What is rather needed is a society that aspires to be just. Regarding how to show the meaningfulness of Jewish life and learning to young Jews: I would try to show the beauty and richness in Jewish tradition, Jewish learning, Jewish culture, Jewish law; to waste it is silly. A Jew who is not involved with his or her Jewish memory is mutilated, since this memory is all-encompassing and brings everything together. For a week I would teach a page here, a law there, tell a story, and then we would see how all of that fits together. Regarding end of life issues: I don’t know enough to answer; I’m still studying. Regarding being afraid when meeting a president: I’m more afraid of a policeman, truly; I continue to think like a refugee.

Selected Quotes:
Subthemes:
1) Elie Wiesel’s Awards
2) Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity
3) Conferences on the Anatomy of Hate
4) Wiesel’s Advice to Presidents
5) Wiesel’s Humanitarian Efforts
6) Wiesel in Bosnia
7) The War in Bosnia
8) Positive and Negative Memory
9) Inhumanity of Targeting Civilians in War
10) Imperative to find Non-military Solutions to War
11) US Responsibility to Intervene in Foreign Wars
12) Deep-seated Hatreds – an Unexpected Result of the Breakup of Communism (1989)
13) Power and Morality
14) Beauty in Judaism
15) Power of Learning
16) Ger, Nochri, and Zar – Three Hebrew Words for “Stranger”
17) Jewish Honor
18) Wiesel’s Ten Years of Silence
19) Holocaust Deniers and Revisionism
20) Wiesel on ‘the Right to Die’
21) Wiesel on His US Citizenship
22) Judaism and Loving the Stranger
23) American Jews and Israel
24) Wiesel and Ahavat Yisrael
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