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Laughter and smiles

Above all else, it is through his smile that I best remember Elie Wiesel from a decade in his classroom at Boston University.
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July 7, 2016

Above all else, it is through his smile that I best remember Elie Wiesel from a decade in his classroom at Boston University.  For 10 years I merited to take part in his seminars which were always titled “Literature of Memory.” First I was a student, then an undergraduate assistant, then a teaching fellow and doctoral advisee (now I am back to student, as I will be for life).  We read literature by holocaust survivors and victims, we read world literature written by German soldiers, Muslim mystics, Jewish women, Chasidic masters, Talmudic masters, scholars of Christianity, Dostoevsky, and the book of Job; among others. We read books written by desperate and desolate writers who had gone on to end their own lives, some of them Professor Wiesel’s friends.

You might think the mood of these seminars was heavy, dark, and depressing.  There were certainly tense moments, moments of painful self-revelation and –discovery, and moments near the abyss of despair.  There were somber moments as he recalled his last phone call with Primo Levi, recounted his trip to the killing fields of Bosnia, returned from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral.  There were painful moments, as a student learned what the crusaders in Europe did to Jews in their pathway and how different that was from the image of her Catholic high school football team’s mascot.  When through tears, a student searched for words to describe what it’s like to go through a white world in black skin.  When the Professor and another student, herself an Auschwitz survivor, exchanged knowing glances that the rest of us could not possibly understand.

But there were even more moments of open-heartedness, of profound collegiality and support, and genuine humanity.  Friendships were formed in that seminar, and others were deepened.  A marriage or two at least traces its origins to that seminar.  Respect was modeled and learned, and the ability to listen to the voice of another was taught and practices. The highest watermarks in the seminar of this Professor of the Humanities was his humanity as it showed through in his smiles and his laughter.

He once remarked in class that no one knows how to experience joy better than a survivor. They who lost everything know the depth of what it is to experience joy at a wedding or a bar mitzvah or other happy occasion. Our teacher took this to new heights and breadths, though. His joy at seeing a student come up with a novel insight into a text showed in the light in his eyes.  His joy at hearing someone share with shyness and trepidation a poem that they had written for the occasion of a first presentation of a last class showed in his empathetic smile, probably aware of his own shyness.  His delight in seeing a new mother who had given birth the week before reappear in class the following week occasioned a smile and a kindness that radiated from the depth of his soul. On a few occasions, he put a fist or a finger over his mouth to suppress what probably would have been a belly laugh if left unchecked.

Once a relative asked me how I could sit in his class week after week; wasn’t it the most depressing place to be. Whenever Professor Wiesel made the news, it was usually admonishing a president, calling the world’s attention to the plight of a persecuted minority, or crying out at the threat of more violence, more hatred, more killing, more indifference.  As a result, I have to say that Elie Wiesel’s public persona as represented in mainstream American media was incomplete.  While he had the stern countenance befitting his role as witness for humanity, conscience for the world, messenger from the flames; there was just so much more to him than the Jeremiad.

He loved poetry. He loved fiction.  He loved memoir. He loved sacred text, both his own and those of other faiths.  He loved sincere seekers, and he was bemused by insincere ones.  He loved a good story, and could tell tales with the best.  He once wrote that “G-d created man because he loves stories,” and asked us to put aside political correctness in pronouns to appreciate the ambiguity in the aphorism—was it G-d who loves stories, or man?

And like the truly generous soul that he was he delighted in sharing his passion for words and ideas with others.  He spent a good portion of the class going around asking people for their impressions , their reactions to what we’d read; a character’s thought, a plot twist, a weak resolution of a conflict.  He’d formulate a question and just go around the room, sometimes getting almost all of the 50 students in the seminar to put their thought out into the square, and to feel validated and worthwhile for having done it.

For someone who delighted in literature, and who delighted even more in introducing young minds to great works of literature, to say nothing of introducing them to each other, and most importantly introducing them to parts of themselves that they had not previously been aware of or ready to acknowledge; serving for 35 years as a Professor of the Humanities must have brought Elie Wiesel great satisfaction.

As far as I could tell, the smile on his lips, the laughter emanating  from his soul, and the light sparkling in his eyes was sufficient witness to all this.  Those of us who were privileged to see this eminently qualified man teaching Humanity will probably never forget the delight he took in his task.  I for one will be forever encouraged and uplifted by his smile and his laugh.

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