ABSTRACT
Elie Wiesel studied the language, went to the equivalent of high school, began to write, became a student of literature at the Sorbonne, and, importantly, continued to study Talmud with a very mysterious Lithuanian Talmudic genius named Rav Mordechai Shushani. In 1948, on the eve of the founding of the State of Israel, Wiesel volunteered for the Haganah but was rejected because of his physical condition. From 1966 to 1990, Wiesel devoted himself to the cause of Soviet Jewry, speaking throughout the world on behalf of the Jews of the Soviet Union. Wiesel formed a close friendship with another rising star in the American Jewish community, Rabbi Irving Greenberg. In 1976 President John Silber of Boston University, one of the most controversial figures in American higher education, heard Wiesel lecture in New York City. Wiesel’s activism also included major involvement in almost every major Holocaust-related scholarly and political initiative in North America, Europe and Israel.
