Wiesel urges tolerance and respect

Over 2,000 University students, faculty, staff and community residents gathered in Irvine Auditorium last night to hear Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel speak. Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and author of over 30 books, spoke for 90 minutes at the invitation of the Steinhardt Jewish Heritage Program. Wiesel did not focus on one particular topic, but interwove Talmudic tales with messages of tolerance. He began his talk with the Talmudic story of a Jewish martyr in Roman-ruled Judea, who cried under torture until he heard a voice that told him that "should you shed one more tear, I shall restore the universe to its primary chaos." "I didn't understand this story," Wiesel said sadly. "Since when is God afraid of Jewish tears?" But he said the story held an important message. "I understood later that the ultimate punishment in Jewish thought is not the end, but chaos," Wiesel said to a silent audience. "That is when everything will enter into a nebulous atmosphere in which?good and bad will have the same face. "That is the punishment. Call it indifference, call it whatever. When we no longer know what to do to save men from decadence, that is the greatest tragedy that can befall a society." Wiesel said he believes chaos is setting into the world, and if people act in accordance with their religion, whatever they may believe, that chaos can be mitigated. "My priorities are Jewish priorities," Wiesel elaborated later in the speech. "We must open our hearts to the suffering and pain of other people. I feel it is our duty as Jews to help victims [of all countries] to suffer less." In addition to religion, Wiesel said, every part of a person is enhanced by the many roles he or she plays. "The writer in me is a teacher, and the teacher in me is a writer," he said. "Like you, I am a student." Wiesel briefly spoke of the Holocaust in his speech, wondering why he among all its victims was fortunate enough to survive. "I don't know the answer," he said. "If God wanted to perform a miracle, he should have performed a miracle by saving more worthy people than I." Wiesel said he became more religious after his concentration camp experience, in order to affirm his existence through study, and affirm his own sense of good and evil. While he voiced reluctance to compare anything to the Nazi regime, he spoke of this century as seeing "the birth and downfall of ideologies that were the resurgence of paganism," placing Nazism and Communism under that definition. "The S.S. were a religious order," he said. "Communism was also a religion. And God was evacuated from both." Wiesel, who visited the former Yugoslavia last year, spoke of his fears for the future of that part of the world. "It is in the moral interest of the United States to have moral values," he said. When the floor was opened to questions, many students asked Wiesel how he would respond to those who would deny the Holocaust and to the rise of neo-Nazis. "The most hateful and hated of all are the so-called deniers," Wiesel said. "I would never grant them a debate." Wiesel, throughout his speech and questions, recommended education as a remedy to bigotry fueled by ignorance. "You must educate so well, with so much passion and compassion, that?those deniers would be shamed into silence," Wiesel said. "The key is in education."

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