SOURCE: Roth, John K. “Images of God: Reflections from Elie Wiesel's Four Hasidic Masters and A Jew Today.” Thought: A Review of Culture and Idea 54, no. 215 (December 1979): 419-23.

In the following essay, Roth explores the images of God found in Four Hasidic Masters and A Jew Today.

Elie Wiesel is a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. He is also a storyteller struggling relentlessly with the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. Author of nearly twenty books, Wiesel employs varied forms of prose and poetry, fact and fiction, to interrogate the Holocaust in ways that honor the victims and teach the living. Drawing extensively on Jewish legend and tradition, he creates literature of lasting power and moral authority. Two recent examples are Four Hasidic Masters and A Jew Today. These works can be read in many ways, but we shall focus here on the “images of God” they reflect.

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