Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership [Hardcover]

Mark Chmiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 2001

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate, Elie Wiesel has long opposed the silence of bystanders that allows atrocities like the Holocaust to occur. Nevertheless, since the 1980s, Wiesel has come under criticism for his refusal to speak out about the State of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people. Mark Chmiel's thoroughly researched and penetrating study is the first book to examine both Wiesel's practice of solidarity with suffering people and his silence before Israeli and American power. Drawing on Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's studies on "worthy and unworthy victims," the author analyzes Wiesel's initiatives of Jewish and universal solidarity with groups ranging from Holocaust survivors and Russian Jews to Vietnamese boat people and Kosovar refugees. Chmiel also critically engages Wiesel's long-standing defense of the State of Israel as well as his confrontations and collaborations with the U.S. government, including the birth of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the 1985 Bitburg affair with President Reagan, and U.S. intervention in the Balkans. Throughout, the author probes the nuances and ambiguities of Wiesel's human rights activism and shows the various uses to which his Holocaust discourse has been put, both in the Middle East conflict and in issues involving U.S. foreign policy. "Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership" provides a provocative view of one the most acclaimed moralists in recent American history and raises important questions about what it means to be a responsible intellectual in the United States. Author note: Mark Chmiel is Adjunct Professor of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at Webster University.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ever since he electrified the world with Night, his memoir of a young Jewish boy's suffering and loss of innocence in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel has testified continually to the horrors of the Holocaust and insisted upon the power of society's collective memory as a force against recurrences of such events. Yet, apart from a few appreciative, almost hagiographical, studies (Robert McAfee Brown's Elie Wiesel: Messenger to All Humanity and Harry James Cargas's Responses to Elie Wiesel), no biography or critical study of Wiesel's life and work has appeared to date. Chmiel, who teaches (Christian) theology at St. Louis University and Webster University, offers the first serious critique of this modern-day Jewish prophet's life and work. Wiesel publicly proclaims solidarity with Jews who died in the Holocaust as a model of solidarity with victims of other oppressive regimes. But Chmiel contends that Wiesel's strong moral stance against victimization devolves into ambivalence, at best, when confronted with Palestinian victims of Israeli violence or victims of brutal Third World governments supported by the United States. Such ambivalence, Chmiel argues, arises in large part from Wiesel's resistance to political discourse in favor of moral statements. Rather than directly challenging American support of repressive governments, Wiesel cannily acts as a prophet whose moral pronouncements are validated by his experience as a Holocaust survivor. Thus, to Chmiel, in spite of his silence in the face of oppression, Wiesel's voice encourages a "dangerous remembrance" of the Holocaust in collective cultural memory that leads to resistance and solidarity. Chmiel's profile of Wiesel provides a stirring portrait of the role of the public intellectual in contemporary America.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Mark Chmiel offers a bold and much-needed analysis of the moral pretensions of one of our country's most prominent public intellectuals. His thoughtful and measured examination of Elie Wiesel's ideas and actions reaches beyond the subject of this book into the heart of what is moral behavior in a troubled world." --Howard Zinn "In this courageous book, Mark Chmiel details the ambiguity of Elie Wiesel's moral witness. On the one hand, he has been a powerful voice calling the Western world to account for the Holocaust and intervening in other social tragedies. On the other hand, he has been consistently unwilling to respond to the plight of the Palestinians, victims of the Jewish state. In conclusion Chmiel calls those concerned with a consistent moral witness today to pay particular attention to the politically disregarded victims, whose victimization exposes the imperialism of the dominant powers." --Rosemary Radford Ruether, author of Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family "Chmiel offers the first serious critique of this modern-day Jewish prophet's life and work." --Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: Temple University Press (May 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566398576
• ISBN-13: 978-1566398572
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,615,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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