When I was a sophomore in high school, I read Elie Wiesel’s Night. I had lost my grandmother that summer to cancer but even before her untimely death, I struggled with reconciling my faith as a Jew with the unfathomable reality of the Holocaust. Personal tragedy compounded my inability to believe in a “higher power” or have faith in something beyond the physical world around me. I received a battered copy of Night a few months later, and was immediately enthralled by Wiesel’s hauntingly beautiful writing, his experiences, his ability to describe the indescribable. Wiesel wrote: “Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never ... I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.” Night radically changed my perspective on faith and Jewish spirituality in light of the Holocaust, pushed me to reconcile my own faith, and opened my eyes to the intimate horrors endured by Holocaust survivors. The difficult subject matter I first encountered in this novel inspired my Appel Fellowship, which examined the relationship between faith and tragedy, using the Holocaust as a case study, and has fundamentally changed the way I relate to religion, family, and human values. As an avid reader, I have read hundreds of books over the course of my lifetime, but few have shaped my identity and pursuits like Wiesel’s Night.
We all have that book, or perhaps books, that made us who we are. The books we read challenge us and comfort us, frustrate us and soothe us. The books we read broaden our perspective, and alter the way we view the world and ourselves. Books appeal to a part of us that we have hidden, that we have repressed, that we did not know existed until the words on the page beckon it forward. My passion project explores the books that made my peers who they are today; I will solicit books that my peers believe helped shape their beliefs, identity, or understanding of the world and read them myself. Reflecting on why the particular book resonated with them, I will write blog posts about how the book impacted me and the insights I have gained. I believe this passion project will help me challenge my current views, broaden my perspective of those around me, and help me connect with my peers. Literature offers an intimate understanding of how others think and I hope to use this project as a way to promote empathy, reflection, and learning. To quote Elie Wiesel, “[t]here is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth… The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.”
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