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Rabbi Lau: Elie Wiesel was a man of tremendous faith

06 Jul 2016

On Israeli Radio Kol Hai, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, eulogized Elie Wiesel, who passed away this week in New York:

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and Elie Wiesel participate in the first March of the Living in Auschwitz-Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day 1988.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and Elie Wiesel participate in the first March of the Living in Auschwitz-Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day 1988. Photo credit: Yad Vashem.

“For forty days he succeeded in putting on tefillin in Auschwitz, at tremendous risk.”

“People of his age went through a huge crisis of faith. [But when Wiesel] arrived in New York he immediately contacted an Orthodox Synagogue. For Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot he would come to Jerusalem. He gave his son, Shlomo Elisha a proper bar mitzvah.”

“This was a Jew who never denied the God of Israel. He turned to Him in all of his books and his talks.”

Read his full comments on Arutz-7. 

Wiesel wrote the foreword to Rabbi Lau’s memoir, Out of the Depths: The Story of a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last, published by OU Press.