Change In Elie Wiesel's Night

Over the course of the book Night, Elie Wiesel’s religious views change drastically. He goes from craving religious knowledge and wishing to study religious texts to being angry with God. He says he doesn’t believe but also resents God for allowing the horrors of the Holocaust inflicted on the Jewish people. In the beginning, Wiesel looks up to Moishe the Beadle as a religious mentor. He desires to study the Kabbalah, even though his father doesn’t want him to, and Moishe will teach him. He weeps as he prays and it is important to him. When Moishe asks why he prays Wiesel thinks, “Why do I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?.” He looks up to Moishe, “And in the course of those evenings I became convinced that Moishe

When they celebrate Rosh Hashanah in camp, he’s angry that his fellow Jews are celebrating a God who allows these horrors. “What are You, my God? How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance?”, Wiesel thinks angrily, “What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people’s wounded minds, their ailing bodies?” He refers to himself as a “former mystic”, and says man is greater than God and that God has betrayed them. “But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what did they do? They pray before You! They praise Your Name!”

In summary, over the course of Elie Wiesel’s Night, his religious views change vastly during his time in concentration camps. Before he’s taken by the Nazis he craves religious knowledge, and finds a mentor to teach him the Kabbalah against his father’s wishes. Starting in his first night in camp he begins to be angry with God. He resents him for allowing the crimes committed against the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and betraying the Jewish