Lessons from an oracle: Elisha Wiesel reflects on his childhood

How do you grow up in the shadow of a renowned father who survived the Holocaust, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and inspired millions?

This was the reality for Elisha Wiesel, the only child of the famed author, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Raised in Manhattan, New York City, Elisha learned much from his father throughout his life, and although the great man passed away in 2016, the lessons he imparted remain as relevant as ever.

Wiesel reflected on these lessons in an online discussion hosted by Rabbis Yossy Goldman and Yehuda Stern of Sydenham Shul this past Thursday.

“Growing up with a father who survived the Holocaust wasn’t easy,” Wiesel told his Zoom audience. “It often meant not having a sense of where I fit in the world.

“I would go to the playground with friends, and one would say, ‘My father is a pilot’, another would say that his father owned a pharmacy. I would say, ‘I think my father is a victim of something really bad and I still don’t understand it fully.’”

Nonetheless, Elie Wiesel never really shared his harrowing ordeal with his son at first.

Said Wiesel, “My father never hit me over the head with Holocaust education. He tried to protect me as much as he could as he felt that there was a big burden on me not just because of the Shoah, but because I was an only child. He felt pressure that he was the last of his line, concerned that I should continue with the faith, and he saw the pressure that put on me.

“He didn’t want to give me a burden I would run away from.”

Because his father never sat him down to tell him the story, Wiesel learned about his family’s history in other ways.

“It was all ambient,” he said. “My friends would be going to the Hamptons on vacation, and I would be flying to Poland to visit camps. For me, I picked a lot up myself because my father couldn’t bring himself to burden me.

“I was 14 when he won the Nobel Prize. I attended a modern Orthodox school, and it was difficult to have my own identity distinct from my father. People looked at me and didn’t see Elisha Wiesel. They saw the son of Elie Wiesel.”

This came with a large amount of expectation, something which Wiesel resented and sought to escape.

“I wasn’t a happy kid, and I made a decision to do things that would get me further from my father,” he said. “I found friends beyond the Orthodox Yeshiva world, and I used the early chat rooms online to connect with people from around the country who weren’t necessarily Jewish and who didn’t know who my father was.

“It was a great relief. I spent my teenage years trying to escape, to run away and explore the world on my own terms.”

It was only after college that Wiesel finally felt comfortable with his father’s identity and story.

He recounted, “I took a trip after college with my father, who had been saying he wanted to visit his hometown of Sighet one last time. We flew with a cousin, and it was powerful trip for me.”

“I saw my father in a new light. I saw him vulnerable, at a loss for words, and really saw the child within him. I saw someone other than the confident adult.”

Wiesel didn’t always see eye to eye with his father, however, telling him in the 1990s that he wanted nothing to do with Judaism, that he wanted his father to accept that he didn’t see things the same way.

“My father was very patient with me,” said Wiesel. “A lot of parents might have yelled, got depressed, or sat shiva. My father just loved me, and kept loving me more. He never yelled or got into an argument. It wasn’t about convincing me about something.”

Elie Wiesel’s outlook and teachings remain apt in our time, his son said, especially for us as Jews.

“Before he died, my father asked me to do two things. The first was to sit shiva for him, and the other was to marry Jewish. I realised later that those things weren’t for him – they were for me.

“We can talk about the right political outcome or what the Jews should do, but it’s all based on whether there is a Jewish people to begin with. Jewish people need to be Jewish, not run away from their people, marry out, or turn their backs.

“We need to live Jewish, not just through observance but how we treat people,” said Wiesel, who learned this lesson first-hand from his father.

“He saw each person as the emanation of a divine spark. My father treated a head of state and a taxi driver with equal respect. He gave people his time.

“My father was a Jew who had his feet fully in the Jewish world and also walked fully in the world of human affairs. He saw no contradictions, but embraced and lived in both worlds.”

It’s imperative that we maintain our sense of Judaism at all costs, Wiesel said, adding that his father tied his identity as a Jew to his identity as a human being.

“My father was raised by a loving family who gave him an identity,” said Wiesel. “He knew where he was in the world and even when the Nazis came and ripped it apart, it wasn’t enough to break the structure he had.

“He taught me that I’m part of Am Yisrael, that we’ve been around for thousands of years, and that while we have and will continue to see tragedy, we’ve persevered. We have a role to play.”

Wiesel concluded, “He knew each of us has to find a place, and that each Jewish family needs to give their child a sense of who they are. This isn’t just a badge you wear on a hat – you are Jewish.”