Essay Diminishing Faith

Submitted By elakahe
Words: 300
Pages: 2

Diminishing Faith Elie Wiesel struggled with his faith due to his experience from the Holocaust in memoir, Night; Elie Wiesel shows his difficulty in maintaining his faith of a benevolent god in the face of extreme adversity. For the reader to comprehend the tribulation of keeping ones faith in the face of adversity, the reader must understand Jewish religious customs. In the memoir, Wiesel’s tells of his great commitment to the Jewish religion and of his thirst for greater knowledge of his religion, and of the wonderful almighty. Elie preformed all the traditional spiritual customs; of prayer and respecting the Sabbath, bur his faith is shaken by the darkness brought by the Holocaust. Elie’s belief that the Almighty is everywhere is slow diminished by the cruelty and horrors from the camps. Others in the camps tried to cling to God as their light. The holiday “Yom Kippur”, the Day of Atonement, would usually serve as a spiritual day of fasting as thanksgiving to the Almighty (Ellwood 246). Elie was filled with such hopelessness, that once strongly spiritual, god filled boy fades away. Others in the camp fought on whether or not to fast based whether they would starve, however they weren’t arguing over faith but of survival. Elie chooses not to fast, saying he “no longer accepted God’s silence” (Wiesel 69). Instead he ate and “turned that act into a symbol of rebellion, of protest against Him” (69). Elie was once a strong believer in his benevolent God, once believing in