Elie Wiesel touched so many with his writings and his witness. I saw how the American Jewish community slowly began to understand his unique genius.

As a student rabbi from 1960-65, I was offered a summer job in the library of the Baltimore Hebrew College. The president of the college, Dr. Louis L. Kaplan, was my teacher. (He also had taught Rabbis Jerome Grollman and Bernard Lipnick.) Some of the student rabbis who worked in the library were invited to study with Kaplan for a few hours a week.

One day, he came to me with a thin, hardcover book in his hands. 

“Jeffrey,” he said, “You have to read this book. I’ve befriended a young Holocaust survivor who has written a memoir that is going to change the Jewish world. It’s out-of-print, so read my copy. I’m hoping to get a publisher to print more copies.”

The book was “Night.” The author was Elie Wiesel. In the course of time, I read his first five books and was moved by them.

In my second year as assistant rabbi of Shaare Emeth, I gave two High Holy Day sermons based on Wiesel’s writings. He was unknown at the time. The reaction was very positive. Being a young, naive rabbi, I sent copies of my sermons to Wiesel. I received a very complimentary letter, evidence that he had read the sermons thoroughly. He said we had a special bond through Kaplan.

A few months later, Lucy Lopata called and invited us to join her husband, Stanley, and her at a Hadassah dinner for major donors at the Chase Park Plaza. The speaker would be the author about whom I had preached: Elie Wiesel. 

What a shock to see him in person. He still looked gaunt, haunted, the essence of a survivor. We talked for a few moments that evening about Dr. Kaplan, our teacher. His speech to the group that night touched my soul. 

But not everyone agreed. On the way out, some people whom I didn’t know said they didn’t want to go to a dinner to be reminded of such horrible stuff. 

“We have to move on from dwelling on the Holocaust!” one person said. 

I was crushed by those words.

Then Wiesel became well-known. His books were published in large quantity. Jews and Christians alike began to be able to speak of the Holocaust and its effects on humanity. 

A little more than one year after the Hadassah speech, the Jewish Federation of St. Louis engaged him as the speaker for its annual meeting, also at the Chase. The Khorassan Room was filled. Wiesel gave basically the same speech that he had given before. There was a deep silence at the end of his remarks, and then a thunderous standing ovation. Hundreds of people lined up to buy his books and thank him for his witness. 

Wiesel, as was his manner, looked a little embarrassed by the adulation, yet was pleased that his message was being heard.

He had not changed. We had changed. He still spoke of the unspeakable and overcoming evil in the world. We finally realized that he was telling the truth that we needed to hear.

Wiesel became the voice of conscience for the world. Even a Nobel Peace Prize did not change his basic nature. He continued to remind us of the sin of indifference, of the need to remember.

He did not change. We did. We can never turn back from the path he set for us. His memory will then become an eternal blessing.