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A Beggar in Jerusalem: A novel

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1986 Nobel Prize Peace Winner Elie Wiesel is one of the great moral figures in the modern era. His classic work 'Night' perhaps more than any other work made horrifically clear the pain and suffering of the Holocaust. He has written over fifty works of literary and moral testimony, a number of which are not simply classics of literature but which changed the course of history. One of those was his 'Jews of Silence' on the fate of Russian Jewry.
This present work is written about the Six- Day War of June 1967. It is written with the same humane quality, the same mystical lyricism that pervades much of his work. It expresses something of the relief felt in the Jewish world in 1967 when Israel overcame the threat of destruction from the Arab world initiated at Nasser's closing of the Suez Canal.
The work moves back and forth from the Jerusalem of the present to the small Eastern European village world Wiesel lived in before the Holocaust. The work despite its poetic and revelatory qualities is confusing in its narrative line, and in my judgment far from one of Wiesel's best. Yet it does express something of the longing of hundreds of Jewish generations to return to their ancestral home in Jerusalem, and the land of Israel - and to dwell there in peace with their neighbors. It is a book written in the same humane and generous spirit ( And thus follows the ancient Jewish adage- that the greatest triumph is to make a friend of a former enemy) of all Wiesel's works.
This work does give some feeling of that great exaltation the Jewish world felt in 1967 at its escaping existensial danger and returning to its holiest places.

Elie Wiesel has always had the uncanny ability to compassionately bring to life the horrific history that the Jewish people have suffered. His personal accounts and his novels return time and again to the mysteries of the Holocaust and the impact it has had on its survivors and the world in general. His novels are always lyrical in nature and disjointed in structure, moving between time and place with little distinction. "A Beggar in Jerusalem" may be the most unstructured novel that Wiesel has written, for it is a tale of a beggar who does not know any longer what is real and what is imaginary.

"A Beggar in Jerusalem" is narrated by David, a beggar who has witnessed numerous events that he relates to the reader along with stories of his people and friends he has lost. His closest friends are the local madmen who populate the street. Through his ramblings, and the stories that these other madmen tell, the reader is given a tour of what ties Jewish history with the present and the future. Wiesel himself said that in this book he attempted to show "what cannot be shown, to explain what is not to be explained, to recapture an experience that cannot be relived." If that is possible, Wiesel has achieved it, showing the effects of the Holocaust, explaining the dreams of the dreamers, and portraying scenes of the Six-Day War.

At times throughout the novel, it is difficult to tell who is doing the telling, since the narrator seems to shift between various characters, and the narrator himself seems to change identities, especially at the end of the story. This makes for a very disjointed reading as the novel skips from one event to the next, so while it is a short book it is not necessarily an easy read. With "A Beggar in Jerusalem" Wiesel seems as much a prophet as his main character, bringing to life the overwhelming peace that is possible in the end, or perhaps even in the beginning.

a powerful trip across the mind of a holocost surviver wandering the haunted and enchanted streets of the old city in search of a lost friend. rich with emotion and stunning prose, this narration tells the story of the beggars and madmen who gather at dusk in the shadow of history, allowing the narrator to question his very memories. this is a text which lies on your table demanding to be read again and again, revealing bits of its mystery.

As i watched Elie Weisel on the Oprah show i cried..when ivbought his first book Dawn** i cried, and with every purchase i intend..i will cry and say thank you GOD!! and Mr Weisel..
I am a descendant of slaves, and i can now look back on what was done by MLK, Nelson Mandela, and others who have dedicated thier lives to freedom..for all people and dedication to our own cultures..Thank you Mr Weisel..Thank U..
U have opened my own eyes to the fact..that there is something i can do..
I also thank the Jewish people of this world who have survived to tell thier stories..

Elie Wiesel is stuck in Buchenwald. The book keeps harking bsack to his days in the concentration camp. This is understandable, but his musings about the past interrupt the flow of his writing which was smooth decades ago in "Night." It is not smooth here. I stopped reading after about 50 pages because Wiesel had trouble getting into the story.