SOURCE: Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. “The Holocaust as a Jewish Tragedy 2: The Covenental Context.” In By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature, pp. 116-48. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Ezrahi examines the way several Hebraic writers treat the Holocaust in their works, emphasizing the trauma and great personal and religious cost of turning such an experience into art.

Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer: from Reality to Legend

The major tensions which the Holocaust activated in Jewish beliefs and ethics as well as the engagement of traditional elements in the search for appropriate forms of expression are discernible in a body of European literature encompassing diverse languages and audiences. The novels of Elie Wiesel are perhaps the most widely read fictional representations of the clashes between inherited religious and moral values and the enormity and inscrutability of contemporary reality.

With the exception of his...