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    The Elie Wiesel Living Archive

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

    The Urgency of Hope

    Building an architecture of hope: Jewish collective hope for Israel, the climax of hope the Messiah's awaited arrival

    Mar 05, 1998

    In this lecture, Professor Wiesel constructs an architecture of hope. He outlines that all religions are rooted in hope; the human being is defined by his or her hope; messiansim is the climax of hope; Israel is the embodiment of Jewish collective hope; indifference is the opposite of hope and chaos is the enemy of hope. Professor Wiesel draws for us a well-tested blueprint: when offered by friends, hope is always good; when handed to us by the enemy, it is always evil.

    Download the transcript

    Selected Quotes:
    “
    Just as the body cannot live without dreams, the mind or the soul cannot endure without hope. (00:01:30)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    God for the believer is the embodiment of hope, but even He is waiting for redemption, which means even the creator of the universe needs hope. (00:02:00)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Hope represents an affirmation of mans’ right to impose meaning on creation and his triumph in the name of reason. Despair is human, so is its antidote. (00:02:55)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Thus hope emerges as a presence that accompanies and envelopes my challenge and my comfort, my question and its answer, my desire and its fulfillment. (00:04:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    In other words, the death of hope is the death of change, of renewal, of redemption too. (00:04:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Religious writings that appear to carry no hope were either censored or hidden by the sages who composed the canon. (00:10:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    It is the ultimate hope all creatures will be wise, all curses removed from them. (00:12:30)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    The enemy of hope is tohu wa-bohu, chaos. (00:14:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Our perception of despairing people may at times be wrong...For them a second has the weight of eternity. (00:18:50)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Hope necessarily implies an act of faith... More than faith, hope implies a projection in the future. (00:19:00)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Their hope was dangerous, and indeed terminal, because it was based on delusion and falsehood. (00:25:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Hope may at times be a consequence of fear, a remedy to fear, and they are uniquely related. (00:26:50)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Since Abraham, we are commanded to believe that hope is an essential part of life and faith. (00:32:45)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    The opposite of hope, as of everything else, is indifference. (00:35:30)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Because they realized that, having survived tragedy, it was their singular duty to do something with their experiences. So, they invented hope in order to pass it on to others. (00:39:45)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    But I belong to a tradition that considers despair as a question, not as an answer. There is quest in question, and it keeps us motivated. (00:41:55)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Hope being the key to freedom and fulfillment, without it life would be a prison, for hope is a gift that a wounded memory can bestow upon itself. (00:43:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Until the last breath, we are commanded to believe that hope is there. (00:44:15)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Created in the image of God, who has no image, it is incumbent upon our contemporaries to invoke and create hope where there is none. (00:49:30)
    Elie Wiesel
    “
    Only human beings can move me to despair, but only they can help me vanquish it and call it, with great eloquence, compassion and sometimes, with a smile, they will call it hope. (00:50:05)
    Elie Wiesel
    Subthemes:
    1) Hope and hopelessness
    2) Hope and redemption/change in ancient texts
    3) Hope in Scripture
    4) Hope in Talmudic literature
    5) Hope and hopelessness in modern events/global society
    6) Hope as an act of faith
    7) The uses and misuses of hope
    8) Hope in troubling times (e.g. The Holocaust)
    9) Fear, pain, hope, and revolution
    10) Hope as a response to indifference & trauma
    11) Hope and prayer
    12) Memory, hope, and justice
    13) Hope, despair, and humanity
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