2004.10.17
No answers can be found, and no amount of questioning will bring out those answers. We may continue to ask, but as Brown notes, one thing Wiesel's writing suggests is "that arguments justifying God in the face of evil are not only inadequate, they are diabolical." Any answer cannot come from man, but from God himself. This is what Moshe the Beadle had tried to tell Wiesel when he was a young boy in Sighet, before the terrors of the Holocaust destroyed his life. Moshe said, "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him...That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!" There can be no end to the questioning, even if there are no answers. To expect answers is a mistake, as Wiesel learned from the Wandering Jew, who told him, "When will you understand that you are living and searching in error, because God means movement and not explanation." That is his final discovery. His relationship with God does not depend on answers. We pray to Him. He handles those prayers in His own way. We can agree or disagree with that way. It's all very simple. In one of his prayers in The Six Days of Destruction, Wiesel writes, "We do not demand answers, God. But if this is the last page of the human chronicles, assure us that we had the right to ask." If we ask and accept God's answer, even if He answers in silence, then we will have reached the level of Elie Wiesel's relationship to God.It was one of the few Google hits for the "God means movement and not explanation" quote which we saw in front of a UU church in Needham the other week, but I thought it was a thought-provoking paragraph.
Photo of the Moment
 | --One cool part about dating someone from another country is stumbling on some tiny bit of Americana that you didn't realize is unique, but is also quite wonderful...yesterday it was Caramel Apples for Ksenia, not really known in Russia. |
| --Turns out Ksenia wasn't crazy about that last photo to persuade her to let me keep it there I said I'd put up a better picture of her...I like this one from legal seafoods. |  |