Elie Weisel has a very descriptive style. He is able to describe the many possible interpretations of the characteristics of Adam, Cain, Abel, Isaac, Joseph, Jacob, Esau, Moses, and Job. Especially interesting is the description of how G-d created Eve. Why from the ribs as opposed to the eyes, head, neck, etc.. Interesting stuff and I won't spoil it by giving you readers the analogy. The snake's role in Eve leading Adam astray is dealt with from many interesting points of view. The punishment of Cain is quite unique according to Weisel's theory.

Anyway, the parables are a little hard to interpret and some of the stories ramble a bit without comming to a point. But there are many captivating parts and the beautiful imagery makes me rate this four stars.

Wiesel has conceived an amazing and important set of human beings from several Biblical figures. People, strong and weak, right and wrong, very much flesh and bones, are presented from the unique perspective of a Holocaust survivor who sees human natures in the extremes of good and evil. What was it like for Job? How flawed were the Forefathers? And how did their personal relationships with the Almighty lead to inner peace? Most remarkably, a portrait of the Lord emerges as few scholars have painted. The juxtaposition of, for example, Moses and Abraham, with their individualities crisply drawn is a new level in Biblical scholarship, and most relevent for us today. When faced with the challenges of life, the people of the Bible are as human as each and all of us. This book is truely a gift to mankind.

Elie Wiesel is one of the most important thinkers of the modern era. His insights into the human condition are possibly the most profound to come from the Holocaust

In Messengers of G-d, Wiesel takes classic characters using classic midrash and make them utterly modern. This book might be a surprise to those familiar with Wiesel only through his Holocaust texts, but it should also be a pleasant surprise. From Adam to Yitchak to Job, Biblical characters are infused with a universality largely forgotten by modern commentators.

While this is essentially a Jewish book, it should be enjoyable to anyone who's wanted to study either Classic or Biblical texts.

I received this book as a gift from my father a few years ago. I've just recently graduated from high school and found the time to read this book. I have always been interested in the atrocities of the holocaust, myself being Jewish; and after reading Wiesel's "Night" I've wanted to know more. I am reading Wiesel's memoirs right now and I can't say how much he is inspiring me to follow whims and dreams that I might have. I have a friend who is attending Boston University, and will have Prof. Wiesel for a Humanities professor. I have been so touched by Wiesel's words that I am forcing my friend to allow me to sit in on one of his classes. I will do anything just to meet, or even see the man who has suffered and survived so much.

In Elie Wiesel's beautiful book, Memoirs: All Rivers Run to the Sea, he again accomplishes what he has accomplished most perfectly in all of his previous works--translating the personal into the universal. Wiesel is also a master storyteller and he does his job flawlessly in this poignant and unforgettable book, relating his memoirs in a frame, both beginning and ending All Rivers Run to the Sea with a dream.

He beings with a dream about his father, and the haunting words, "Last night I saw my father in a dream." Of course, this is no ordinary dream, but a dream that reveals volumes about Wiesel's life and its ever-present themes. Imprisoned at both Buchenwald and Auschwitz, Wiesel, who shared the darkest moments of his life with his father, saw the man he never really knew die of starvation and dysentery, while his mother and youngest sister, the beautiful little Tzipora, were murdered in the ovens of Auschwitz.

In the second dream, Wiesel brings his memoirs to a close as he describes his joyous wedding day in the Old City of Jerusalem. Although a happy groom, Wiesel is by no means a traditional one. Retreating into a silent reverie, he tries somehow to include his parents and baby sister in the wedding festivities, thus rounding out the family circle he loved so much.

Between these two sad and haunting dreams, Wiesel, who often employs frames in relating a tale, tells us the story of the early years of his life.

Born in Sighet, Romania on 30 September 1928 to Shlomo and Sarah Feig Wiesel, Elie Wiesel lived the early years of his life happily, in the center of Jewish culture. Although his family was quite traditional, it was in Sighet that Wiesel began experimenting with more mystical lines of thought. Possessed with a passion for learning, he studied both Hebrew and Yiddish as well as delving into the ancient texts of the Jewish faith.

It was on 19 March 1944 that this idyllic boyhood with an intensely spiritual family came to an abrupt end. An unspeakable darkness fell upon Sighet's entire Jewish community as all of the nearly 15,000 residents were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, Poland.

Wiesel is chilling as he relates the horror and uncertainty of traveling in the cattle cars, of the painful separation of loving families and the violation and exploitation of human beings by...other human beings.

It was only after the liberation of the camps in 1945, that Wiesel discovered that his two older sisters, Hilda and Batya had survived. Although overjoyed at their reunion, the loss of his younger sister is something so painful, so beyond Wiesel's imagination, that even today, he cannot speak of it.

For a full ten years, Wiesel remained silent regarding his experiences in the death camps, wondering why he had survived while so many others had perished. He said, "In those years, it was very difficult to talk about the subject. I grew up in a mystical atmosphere, believing in silence, so I tried to use what I learned to purify the words, to purify language."

Relocated to France, Wiesel studied at the Sorbonne where he learned French, philosophy, literature and psychology while working at a variety of odd jobs. Eventually, he chose journalism as his career and he tells of his travels to Jerusalem, New York and many other places.

Although a dark and somber book, All Rivers Run to the Sea is not without its lighter moments. One of these occurs in New York after Wiesel was struck by a taxi, hospitalized and cornered by a somewhat overly-zealous attorney. As Wiesel lay in the hospital, immobilized, his French travel documents expired and he became a United States citizen.

Although it is Wiesel's own father who haunts his sleeping dreams, it is another Being who troubles his waking thoughts, a Being Weisel, through the teachings of his faith, calls God.

Evident in the quote taken from Ecclesiastes Wiesel chose as the subtitle of his memoirs, is the question that haunts his daily life: How could God, during the Holocaust, remain silent and watch the senseless death of six million human beings? Human beings, He, Himself, created?

Although Wiesel's observations have been brilliant, he has, by his own admission, failed to reach an answer. Like the Hebrew sage who wrote Ecclesiastes, Wiesel observes that, "All rivers run to the sea, yet the sea is never full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again."

Like the author of Ecclesiastes, Wiesel, in this book, makes a wide investigation of life, leading the reader from the happiness of his boyhood to the misery of his youth to the honors of his mature life (including the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize). And, like the author of Ecclesiastes, Wiesel finds no satisfying answer. For him, the joys of life are forever tinged with sadness; the specter of death is never far away.

In All Rivers Run to the Sea, Elie Wiesel makes full use of the piety and wisdom of Hasidism and his memoirs read like a novel of the highest order. Intended for those who have made, or want to make, their own investigation of life and its mysteries, most especially that of humanity's incomprehensible inhumanity, this is a superb tale of unvarnished truthfulness, humility and awareness.

Wiesel, in beautiful language that mingles sadness and joy, horror and triumph, writes for those of us who dare to look into the darkest moments of life, searching for a little light, a ray of the faintest hope. He writes, not so we know, but that we may hunger for more.

An incredible human being whose tragedy became the impetus for a life filled with the profoundest meaning, Wiesel, like Martin Buber before him, is ready to "hurtle down deep pathways, wander through invisible cemeteries, both seeking and fleeing solitude and receiving stories already told and those...yet to be told."

All Rivers Run to the Sea is more than just a supremely important book; it is one of the most important books in the literature of humankind.

How many people in this world, as they go about living out their lives, will ever come to an understanding of the human cost that was exacted in the Holocaust? Sure, there will always be the auto-pilot responses in which people quote the six-million figure while shaking their heads, but often their knowledge does not go beyond this point. In the pages of "All Rivers Run to the Sea," Elie Wiesel is willing to lay bare his soul in order to create understanding as a living, yet still wounded, witness of the Holocaust. Without this premise, perhaps this would be just another autobiography of a globe-trotting journalist, and the intrigue of international diplomacy. But it is much, much more than that. Indirectly, Wiesel shows himself as a man who is never able to be completely happy, completely alive...completely whole. When the Jewish people in his village were rounded up, shipped off, imprisoned, starved, and killed, a part of himself dies as well. Thus, there are constant flashbacks in the book to his parents who did not survive. As Elie experiences the events of life, and the decades pass on, the reality of what occurred to his family and so many others haunts his dreams and his writings. By and by, the reader is able to see that the human cost of the Holocaust is as close as their own mother and father. This is the subtle power of these memoirs.

This book was recommended to me as a sequel to Night. If you're looking for a traditional sequel in Dawn, you'll probably be disappointed. Dawn is a sequel to Night in that it reveals another chapter in the life of the Jewish community that survived the Holocaust. Weisel raises serious questions of right and wrong by placing a Holocaust survivor "on the other side of the gun." If you like struggling with difficult moral/ethical issues, this book would be a great choice. If you like the different aspects of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, you'll also want to read The Accident, the third book in the Night Trilogy.

This book keeps a fairly slow reading pace, but perhaps it is to allow the reader to soak in everything the author is trying to say. Dawn is an amazing look into the mind of a holocaust surviver, and the difficult questions that many were plauged with. Is it morally okay for the once tormented victim to become a killer in the name of justice? Where does God play a role in the life of a surviver? Eli Weisel empties his soul into the novel and makes the reader truely think. This book is well worth the 2 hours it takes to read it.

The book it's self as a work of fiction is not the best. Mainly it is just Mr. Weisel's thoughts on how his life could have turned out otherwise. But this is not the book's purpose, only it's becoming. The book looks into the human mind, specifically that of a soldier, and sees how this soldier can be brought to do what they do. It also raises an idea that we are only an acumulation of what people and events have ocurred in our past. Therefore the book has a psycological presence. And as books are intended to do it stimulates the mind and prevokes thought. It also can be read in a couple of hours. It is like economy psycology, more bang for your buck.

The vast majority of the book has no relation to the title. There are great passages, but they are largely buried under dozens of pages of yammering prelude, silly bickering, and attempts at drunken humor. James Morrow's Blameless in Abaddon covers the same theme with much greater depth and breadth.

While interred in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel witnessed a trial. While such things are not unusual, this trial was. It was unusual because of the defendant: God. God was tried for violating the covenant by turning his back in silence on the Jewish people in their greatest hour of need. God was tried in absentia, without anyone present being willing to take on the role of God's defense attorney. God was declared guilty, after which the "court" prayed. Contradiction? Perhaps. But this incident, which served as the inspiration for *The Trial of God*, is part of the long Jewish tradition of arguing with God. While Job is God's most famous interlocuter, we cannot forget the dispute the founder of the Jewish people, Abraham, had with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The trial of God is really a trial of faith; this is why the "court" prayed. They are torn between their devotion to God and their complete disappointment in God's silence. This struggle of faith is the story of *The Trial of God*, in which it is the least faithful of all, Satan, that comes to God's defense. Wiesel is fond of retelling a story about two Holocaust survivors, one a rabbi, who meet after liberation. The survivor asks the rabbi how, after all that has happened, he can continue to believe in God. The rabbi retorts by asking how, after all that has happened, can the other *not* believe in God. Wiesel has often echoed this paradox in his own sentiments. This is the paradox which *the Trial of God* presents us; it is a story of doubting trust and trusting doubt which, as Wiesel suggests, might be reconcilable only in protest. Perhaps *The Trial of God* is Wiesel's act of faith; perhaps it is an act of condemnation. I suspect that for Wiesel it is both. Anyone who pays careful attention to this work will be highly rewarded by it, not because of the answers it gives (for it gives none), but (in good Wieselian style) for the questions it raises.

The trial of god by Elie Wiesel is a stunning play about mans relationship to God and trying to understand him. The book deals a lot with the subject of faith and the trials of the Jewish people. It is a play worth reading more than once.

The Fifth Son is a novel about a son who grows close to his father over a long period of time. I thought that it was a good book because it was told from a couple points of view. This is what also made it a tough read. The story is told through a jewish boy who wants to get close to his father. The father remains distant, but he writes these letters to his son, which to me makes the book confusing because the point of view tends to switch between the father and the son. Each wanting to grow close to one another but not knowing how to express themself in the right way. The story also gets confusing because the setting always switches back to Europe during WWII in this Jewish ghetto of which the jewish boys' father is the president of a Jewish council. Over all it was a pretty good book and I would recomend it.

Wiesel writes with the voice of a poet in this complex novel. It is told from the point of view of a Jewish young man who is trying desperately to understand his father, a Holocaust survivor. The young man, who is never named, wants to know everything he can about his father's experiences, and he slowly begins to gain information through his father's friends and through the letters he discovers, written by his father to his son Ariel. The book begins in a sequence that is confusing in the manner of a poem; it eventually becomes clearer as the themes of the book are developed. The young man is going to visit Germany to meet up with his father's past and somehow come to terms with it. He struggles with hate and forgiveness, and ultimately meets up with his father's past, and his own obsession, in a confrontation that tests his courage and helps him approach some sort of peace.

The book was almost too well researched, giving every minor detail of Korczak's life as well as those of his companions. It was, however, worth learning about a national hero from Poland.

After visiting Israel this summer I decided to read up on the philosophy of Janusz Korczak. I had never heard of him until I went to Yad Yayeled (The Children's Memorial) at the Ghetto Fighter's House. I found this biography to be a bit tedious in its approach to Mr. Korczak. It was at times overly wistful and non-critical. On the other hand, it is a great introduction to the subject. Janusz Korczak should be remembered for his commitment to the rights of children. As a high school teacher I found that his approaches to dealing with young people were profound, practical, and moving.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel tells tales, his wife provides translations, and Dr Podwal includes his magical drawings. Wiesel's commentaries are printed in red (for example, for the Four Sons, he comments on the idea of Four Generations and the transmittal of heritage from knowing (wise) to not-knowing(cant even ask the question)). The classic Hebrew and English text of the traditional haggadah are in black ink. The Haggadah is in Right to Left format. While in English and Hebrew, there are no transliterations.

fantastic! a true eye opener! a cute book with really neat and fun information! this book will explain a lot about tradition and passover!

From the moment I started reading this book, I was captivated by the series of events that occurred. It's amazing that anyone survived the grasp of the Nazis and their willing collaborators. However, Mr. Halpern's recounting of his experiences puts the reader right into the action. The vivid descriptions of the constant life and death struggle give the reader an appreciation of all series of events that separate the survivors from the six million of his fellow Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. I would recommend this book for people who are studying the Holocaust and those looking for inspiring stories of people whose faith helped them to survive against high odds.

This book is a collection of four lectures delivered at Northwestern Univeristy in 1977. It takes four different approaches to the Holocaust: The Holocaust as literay inspirartion, as history, as living memory, and as a problem in moral choice. Elie Wiesel's lecture, like his novels, is very poetic and gripping--however, he doesn't really say very much, instead, he asks a great many "why" questions--which is perhaps all anyone can do. The lectures of Lucy Dawidowicz and Dorothy Rabinowitz are interesting in that they reveal the depth and breadth of the historical and personal record of the Holocaust as well as the extreme importance to the Jews of recording and remembering. Robert McAfee Brown confronts the difficult issue of potential Christian complicity in the Holocaust and the great question of theodicy--how can we believe in God after the Holocaust? He also provides some good analysis of Elie Wiesel's novels, which he sees as a pilgramage.

Wyman wrote this book in the mid 1980's. Since then, many other historical studies have shown the same shamful findings:FDR and the State Department and many segments of the American public, including most of the Jewish leaders, not only suppressed the news on the extermination of the European Jews, but did their best to hinder efforts of rescue. Wyman includes undisputed sources for every fact, but being a gentile, he is too soft on the American Jewish leaders who looked at FDR as a God, and in order not to upset him, kept quiet. For those who still worship FDR, consider this: A million Americans are stranded in Europe during War World II and the Germans are systematically shipping them to concentration camps, torturing and gassing them. What would FDR and his administration have done? Conduct the war in a gentlemantary manner with taking of prisoners, etc., (a quarter million Axis prisoners were shipped to the US while a common American and British response to the abandonment of the Jews was no ships available), or immediately start a military operation to rescue them. Readers who still believe that saving the Jews was not possible because of the war effort, should read historical books on Great Britain during the war. While the British refused to consider any plan of saving the Jews they deployed more than 100,000 troops and a large armada in Palestine and the Med Sea for the sole purpose of capturing Jews who escaped the European hell. In 1940, the British had elaborate plans to attack would be German invaders with low flying planes dropping gas on the invaders, despite the Geneva agreements that the German kept (except with respect to the Jews, of course,who were gassed by the millions). This book is a Noble Price material because it reveals the truth about the darkest period in human history, a truth hiden because too many people still cannot confront the sicknening facts: The leaders of the free world in the 1940's were cowards, anti-Semites, and liers. Only a handful of brave men such as Hecht, Rogers, and a few Irgun members fought against overwhelming odds to bring about some response to the terrible plight of the Jews.

For anyone who has wondered whether there was something the allies could have done to obstruct the Nazi holocaust, Wyman presents the troubling answers. They are very consistent with similar investigations of the British record by Wasserstein and Gilbert. This book had to be written, as part of a truth-telling process essential for a society to understand itself. A person of conscience, as well as a painstaking historian, Wyman does not accept the bureaucratic excuses for inaction at face value. It is an unpopular line of investigation, because it upsets the myths that the USA was on the side of the angels, fighting the war to save the Jews, and that FDR was a near saint. Wyman remains cool and balanced, never forgetting that the Allied culpability was on an entirely different level from that of the Germans and their helpers, but not sugar-coating Allied indifference, obstruction and lack of imagination about trying to stem the extermination program. For example, the simple step of broadcasting to the European countries, where Jews were being rounded up, to tell them what would happen at their destination, might have slowed down the deportations by stiffening the resistance. A healthy reminder that our historical record has plenty of which to be ashamed, and that governments, even in enlightened democracies, often perform in ways that don't stand up to moral inspection. A call to vigilance.

The reader will not want to believe what is being read.

The evil, satanic Nazi regime and it's methods intent on the slaughter and genocide of the European Jews is well documented elsewhere.

Little is written or heard about the passive accomplices....I hesitate in using the latter word, but none other can really suffice in this context. The author has provided an extremely valuable service with this work in bringing this subject to our attention.

It is difficult to estimate how many of the six million murdered Jews could possibly have been saved through a concerted, determined Allied rescue campaign. However, suffice to say no such measures were taken and all the victims perished.

The author documents that the US State Department and the British Foreign Office has absolutely no intention of rescuing large numbers of European Jews from the Nazi genocide machine.

Indeed, the author shows that the Allies actually feared that the Nazi regime would release tens of thousands of Jews into Allied hands and the inherent responsibility that such a move would impose upon them.

Such a move by the Nazis would have inevitably placed immense pressure on the British to open Palestine to increased Jewish immigration, and the US to admit even larger numbers of Jews to their own shores.

A situation that neither Government wanted to face. The British, although allowing virtually unhindered Arab immigration from surrounding Arab nations into Palestine, had their own reasons for refusing increased Jewish entry into what is now Israel. Instead, the British provided concentration camps of their own on Cyprus for those Jews seeking what they perceived as 'illegal' entry to Palestine. A damning historical indictment, which being British and a non-Jew, I still find difficult to stomach.

The author shows that there was clear, authenticated documentation available to the US State Department in 1942, that revealed unmistakable evidence that the Nazis were pursuing a systematic extermination of European Jewry. However, it is shown that nothing was done for some 14 months, and only then were limited measures eventually adopted. Even so, the US record of action is still far better than that of the British.

These limited measures of assistance adopted by the US are shown to have been impeded by rampant anti-Semitism throughout US society and the US Congress, plus the mass media's failure to publicise Holocaust details and the virtual near silence of the Church and it's own leadership.

The author also shows that appeals to bomb the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers, railroads and bridges were refused outright amidst claims that such military action would divert essential air-power. Yet, at the very same time numerous heavy Allied bombing raids were still taking place within 50 miles of Auschwitz, only a few minutes flying time away. The value of saving Jewish lives was not worth a single Allied bomb.

This is a disturbing book about a disturbing period of history and a disturbing analysis of the integrity of our leaders together with our foreign policies & agendas during the war years. There is so much information here. Read this and Sir Martin Gilbert's 'Auschwitz and the Allies' for differing approaches to the same subject, but which reveal the same conclusions. Recommended.