Telling the Tale : A Tribute to Elie Wiesel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday - Essays, Reflections, and Poems [Paperback]

Elie Wiesel (Author), Harry James Cargas (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1993

This book is a tribute to Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner, that features essays and poems by twelve renowned scholars, artists, and commentators. Exclusively for this book, Elie Wiesel has contributed seven original works previously unpublished in English: a sequence of three poems, two interviews, and three personal reflections on the things he most values.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Any festschrift to Elie Wiesel chances blasphemy: it may read like a hymn to God. Since Night (1958), this bearer of witness to humankind's capacious inhumanity has received as many hosannas for his agony as plaudits for his writing. And he suffers them with apparent modesty. But no danger: these tributes are mortally uneven--ranging from a researcher's prep notes for a TV interviewer, to an apology by a German who thanks him for teaching her the true Christ, to Wiesel's own praise of Yiddish. Evil to Wiesel is absence of feeling. Challenging evil--as vowed to his mirrored corpse at the end of Night --has been holy work allowed him by chance. One cannot but be moved by this life of justifying a sometimes guilty survival through holy confrontation or by the gratitude of those graced by its light. For public libraries.
- Alan Cooper, York Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Cargas may be best remembered for his 1976 book In Conversations with Elie Wiesel, and earlier this year, he wrote Voices from the Holocaust--one of those voices being that of Wiesel. Now comes this tribute to the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Included in this imposing book are two Cargas interviews with Wiesel; three pieces by Wiesel (on Yiddish, on saying Kaddish for his father, and on Jerusalem); three poems by Wiesel; a piece by Cargas on Night, Wiesel's memoir of Auschwitz; l2 poems of the Holocaust by Louis Brodsky; a philosopher's "reading" of Wiesel by John Roth; and essays by theologian and philosopher Emil Fackenheim, theologian Dorothee Soelle, and professor of religion Franklin Littell. George Cohen --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: Time Being Books (September 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568090072
• ISBN-13: 978-1568090078
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,206,113 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Words of tribute for a great moral teacher of Mankind, February 11, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Telling the Tale : A Tribute to Elie Wiesel on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday - Essays, Reflections, and Poems (Hardcover)

Elie Wiesel wrote the book which more than any other perhaps, brought home to mankind the horror of the 'Shoah' His work 'Night' was one of the eternal classics of witnessing.

This commemorative volume opens with an interview by its editor Harry Cargas with Wiesel. Wiesel as always speaks in a fascinating and moving way. He talks about his being primarily a teacher and writer, and explains how he after surviving the 'Shoah' chose that path instead of one in business. He tells the story of how he after the War wandered in New York hungry most of the time even though he was employed by an Israeli newspaper as a reporter.

Wiesel speaks of how he has to be his own Rebbe, and how he spends much time thinking of those teachers and friends who were lost in the Shoah.

He is the person of remembrance, and he speaks of how with the years the memories have not grown less or diminished but rather intensified.

The volume also contains a number of moving writings by Wiesel including a concluding piece on his relation to Jerusalem.

Among those who provide essays in tribute are one of the great Jewish thinkers of the century, Emil Fackenheim, and the Christian theologian and friend of the Jewish people, Franklin Littell.

Wiesel truly deserves to be honored as the courageous witness of the Shoah, and its evil. He also deserves to be honored as a moral voice for Mankind who has repeatedly spoken out against Man's inhumanity to Man.