Jew's Faith example essay topic

In the horror of the Nazi death camps portrayed in Night, Elie Wiesel and his fellow Jews had to struggle to maintain their "faith in life". This battle that they waged against "icy winds" in camps where "death was all around [them]" was a constant necessity for them to continue to survive. Harsh as it was many Jews failed, and losing their faith in life died; yet many more, like Elie, found the strength to sustain that faith and live on. By sustaining their tenuous links to a makeshift Jewish community within the camps, taking comfort in their religion where possible, and at all costs attempting to keep hope alive, Elie and his colleagues found the strength to endure and shelter what meager faith they still had in life, and to survive. For the Jews in the death camps of Auschwitz, Buna, Bir kenan and Gleiwitz, faith in life was one of the few values the Nazi's could not strip from them. As much as the Nazis attempted to dehumanize the Jews by stripping them of their possessions, identities and lives, a process which for Elie "turned [his] life into one long night".

For many their faith in life was still undiminished. On a long forced march, Elie's body begins to succumb to the cold, and yet at the same time " [Elie] felt something inside [him] revolt" against dying. Even then deprived of nutrition and humanity, Elie's primal instinct keeps him alive, providing an unspoken force to drive him onwards, fuelled by an un-named, unjustified desire to live. Such faith in life, an unquestioning faith in the need to simply live and to continue to strive to live even against all odds, burned within every Jew as they fought for their survival by themselves or with others in a world of death.

The intimate bonding between the Jewish community served to assure many Jews of the worth of life. Such community strength was a foundation laid by their culture, their everyday life that linked community and religion inextricably. For many Jews, having lost all else, they could turn to others for comfort, even as Elie did when discussing Yossi and Tibi "dreams of going to Haifa... if granted [their] lives until the liberation". The young Polish head of the block of Elie's first camp encouraged the Jews to bond together, speaking "the first human words" as he established his own semi-community within the camps. It was to these in their darkest hour, and find in that humanity the strength to go on. Even for some of those who have lost their religion such as Elie, he could turn to his father or his friend Yossi and Tibi, and in the face of their compassion, re-affirm his faith in life.

Moreover, the communities not only provided such humanitarian enforcement of faith in life against the death camps, but in granting structure to an otherwise destructive world, promoted a stronger faint in the capability of life to continue beyond the camps. This, perhaps, combined with the Jews pervading sense of hope to sustain their faith in life's capability to improve. As Elie "dreams of going to Haiti" with Tibi and Yossi, he has created the subconscious hop that they will be "granted [their] lives until the liberation". Even that statement implied his strong belief and hope that there will be an end to the torment, and the beginning of a new life. Indeed, the entire camp seems rife with hope, as signaling the Jews' attitude towards a future of freedom and relief. This inner hope sustained by the Jews served as a guiding light in their darkest hours, where they could look to the future and hope for an end to the torment even when the "world [was] silent" to their suffering.

It is a constant affirmation of their faith in life to those who keep hope itself alive; they keep hope but, in doing so, also their faith in life to reassert itself over death. Within the camps, such hope, and attitude, proved strong enough for many Jews to defiantly stoke the fires of their faith in life and push back the darkness with faith that such darkness was not absolute. The Jews imprisoned in the Nazi death camps, fought for survival, and in doing so, had to maintain their faith in life and life's capability to re-establish its course. Only then could they find the strength to continue surviving. Not all Jews could do this; many succumbed to a loss of faith, or simply to the conditions of the camp life of ill-weather and ill-treatment. However, for those who did not fall, faith in life was preserved through the sheer will to survive, and the aid of the communities established inside the camps.

Perhaps above all, hope drove many Jew's faith that life would improve, and such faith in life, fuelled by hope, preserved long against the death that surrounded the Jews in the camps..