The Theme Of Faith In Elie Wiesel's Night

As Hamaoui translates from the memoir Night “The passage uses the poetry and language of faith to affirm a shattering of faith”(Hamaoui 128). The Jewish people struggling to survive the Holocaust are using faith and religion to keep themselves alive. Over time the Jews begin to question God’s willingness to stop the Holocaust. The loss of faith is hard for Elie to keep moving forward in the fight for freedom. Elie starts to believe God has left them to die, so they begin to abandon religion. In Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, faith and religious beliefs start to fade as the Jews struggle for their life during the Holocaust. While in the ghettos, the Jewish people, including Elie, have faith and continue praising God. As a child Elie wants to devote his life to religion and live by the rule of God. Praising God gives the Jews hope of being free again. Even if they have a bad day, they maintain faith in God. They believe He will save them, so they even fast. At the end of a hard day, Elie said, “We spent the day fasting. But we were not very hungary. We were exhausted” (Wiesel 15). In the Jewish religion on certain days men and women do not eat from dawn until dark. Elie and the others were working all day, but they still have enough time to praise God. The Jewish civilians go on praising God because they know He will save them from horrible place. These civilians all have a common religion which brings them closer together in the struggle for life. For instance, Naperkowski gathers from Night “ It is shared faith in God which binds the Jews of Sighet together, and it is faith in each other which makes those relationships viable and strong”(Naperkowski 244). Since the Jews of Sighet share the belief in God they use each others strength while going through struggling times. Knowing God will come save them, the Jewish people help each other survive. Additionally, the seeing the altar in pieces upset Elie and some of the Jews. The prisoners had to spent the night at the church which made them very uncomfortable. The Jewish people at the synagogue are uncomfortable because the altar is in pieces and there is no space for them to move freely. When Elie was staying there he says, “The altar was broken, the hangings torn down, the walls bare. There were so many of that we could scarcely breathe”(Wiesel 19). Being so close together in the ruins made Elie believe that God is still there. Elie believes there is still hope in God and seeing the synagogue makes him realize he needs to continue praising God. However when the conditions continue to decrease, Elie loses some faith in God. Elie does not understand why God is treating people in this manner. Elie believes God will not save them if He did not save them already. At the camp he still believes in God but he did not want to praise him because Elie thinks God is not coming. Elie concludes, “ I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted His absolute justice” (Wiesel 42). Elie still trusts God, but Elie does not accept that God is not helping the Jews because …show more content…
The Holocaust led many people to believe God is not there for them. Elie went from devoting himself to religion to avoiding the thought of God leaving the prisoners for dead. For instance Roth introduces the idea that , “A Holocaust universe can be the outcome of no God” (Roth 35). The Jewish population have no one to look to for guidance because they believe God left them to die. In the beginning Elie and every other person went to God for guidance, but God has vanished. The Jew’s faith in anything has disappeared and by the end they are corpses. They gave up on religion because they did not have the energy to praise Him; they barely have enough energy to survive. The prisoners believe God is pushing them, so they start to resent Him. The only thing that matters to the Jews is surviving to the next day. When going through a hardship, people tend to cling on to something, for the Jew’s they begin to cling on