How Elie Wiesel got married
N
ot many people know this, but Elie Wiesel did not want to get married and raise a family.
After experiencing the atrocities of the Holocaust, he wanted to dedicate his life to nothing but telling the stories: remember, and not forget. But the rebbe persuaded him otherwise.
Here is an excerpt, translated from the rebbe’s letter to him (the original is in Yiddish):
“I permit myself a personal remark, connected to our conversation when we met in the room…
“To remember and not forget, as the Torah says: Remember what Amalek did to you is clearly, without a doubt, a positive thing; in the language of our Sages of blessed memory, it is a positive commandment. Especially when one sees the growing trend and the efforts to forget and cause others to forget.
“But after all this, remembrance is only one part of the duty that rests upon us.
“The other part, and perhaps even more important, is to actively work and influence against what is called the Final Solution that Hitler, just like Haman, plotted.
“The response must be expressed through action in the direction of ‘the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.’
“To achieve this goal, the bitterness that stems from constant remembrance and non-forgetting, as important as it may be, will not suffice.
“It is necessary to increase and nurture the encouragement to rebuild the Jewish people, as a Jewish people, in the simple sense…
“Especially for someone like you who has himself experienced all of these things must certainly demonstrate that not only did Hitler (may his name be erased) not prevail, but on the contrary, in defiance of him and his helpers, to build a large family with sons and daughters and grandchildren.
“I permit myself to say with full force: regardless of how important it is to tell the current generation what happened to us, and no matter how difficult it may be to free oneself from those memories and experiences, the primary task, in my understanding, is to fulfill within ourselves ‘against your will, you live’ with emphasis on you live, meaning that the vitality should be felt.
“In other words: you must make every effort to detach yourself at this moment from those experiences and enter into an ordered life, a married life, to build a Jewish home and a Jewish family.
“This will certainly contribute to the defeat of Hitler, who did not succeed in causing there to be one fewer Vizhnitz chassid; on the contrary, you will raise children and grandchildren who are Vizhnitz chassidim until the end of all generations. And I do not mean this merely as a joke, though I do not insist that you be a Vizhnitz chassid or a Lubavitch chassid, or even an ordinary Torah-observant Jew. But if it can be so, it is certainly good.
“…if you truly wish it, you will attain this as well. And may the Blessed G-d grant you success.
Elie Wiesel married Marion in 1969. They lived together for 47 years.
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This coming Thursday is the rebbe’s yahrzeit. There is much to write about: his Torah teachings, his vision, the Chabad House network, his extraordinary love for every Jew. I’ll leave most of that for another time. With antisemitism rising, this letter felt like the thing to share.
Rabbi Mendy Kaminker is the rabbi of Chabad of Hackensack and an editorial member of Chabad.org. He looks forward to your comments at rabbi@chabadhackensack.com.
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