The Tale of a Niggun

by Elie Wiesel, Mark Podwal (Illustrator), Elisha Wiesel (Introduction)

Overview

Elie Wiesel’s heartbreaking narrative poem about history, immortality, and the power of song, accompanied by magnificent full-color illustrations by award-winning artist Mark Podwal. Based on an actual event that occurred during World War II.
 
It is the evening before the holiday of Purim, and the Nazis have given the ghetto’s leaders twenty-four hours to turn over ten Jews to be hanged to “avenge” the deaths of the ten sons of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, which celebrates the triumph of the Jews of Persia over potential genocide some 2,400 years ago. If the leaders refuse, the entire ghetto will be liquidated. Terrified, they go to the ghetto’s rabbi for advice; he tells them to return the next morning. Over the course of the night the rabbi calls up the spirits of legendary rabbis from centuries past for advice on what to do, but no one can give him a satisfactory answer. The eighteenth-century mystic and founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, tries to intercede with God by singing a niggun—a wordless, joyful melody with the power to break the chains of evil.
 
The next evening, when no volunteers step forward, the ghetto’s residents are informed that in an hour they will all be killed. As the minutes tick by, the ghetto’s rabbi teaches his assembled community the song that the Baal Shem Tov had sung the night before. And then the voices of these men, women, and children soar to the heavens.
 
How can the heavens not hear?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805243635
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

The author of more than sixty works of fiction and nonfiction, ELIE WIESEL was awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the French Legion of Honor's Grand Cross, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University for forty years, until his death in 2016.

MARK PODWAL has written and illustrated more than a dozen books, and has illustrated more than two dozen works by such authors as Elie Wiesel, Heinrich Heine, Harold Bloom, and Francine Prose. King Solomon and His Magic Ring, a collaboration with Wiesel, received the Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators, and You Never Know, a collaboration with Prose, received a National Jewish Book Award. His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prague's National Gallery, and the Jewish museums in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and New York, among other venues. Honors he has received include being named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Gratias Agit Prize from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

September 30, 1928

Place of Birth:

Sighet, Romania

Education:

La Sorbonne

Read an Excerpt

A ghetto,
somewhere in the East,
during the reign of night,
under skies of copper and fire.

The leaders of the community,
good people all,
courageous all,
fearing God and loving His Law,
came to see the rabbi who has cried and cried,
and has searched darkness for an answer with such passion that he no longer can see.

It’s urgent,
they tell him,
it’s more than urgent;
it’s a matter of life or death for some Jews and perhaps all Jews.

Speak,
says the rabbi,
tell me all:
I wish not to be spared.

This is what the enemy demands,
says the oldest of the old Jews to the rabbi,
who listens breathlessly.
The enemy demands ten Jews,
chosen by us and handed over to him before tomorrow evening.
Tomorrow is Purim,
and the enemy,
planning to avenge
Haman’s ten sons,
will hang ten of our own,
says the oldest of the old Jews.
And he asks:
What are we to do, rabbi?
Tell us what to do.

And his colleagues,
brave people though frightened,
repeat after him:
What are we to do, rabbi?
Tell us what to do.

We are afraid,
says the oldest of the old Jews,
afraid to make a decision—
afraid to make the wrong decision:
Help us, rabbi,
decide for us—and in our place.

And the rabbi,
their guide,
feels his knees weakening,
the blood rushing to his face,
his chest is ready to burst,
and the room is turning,
turning,
turning around him,
and so is the earth,
and so are the skies,
and soon,
he feels,
he will fall as falls the blind man,
a victim of night and its prowlers.

He demands an answer,
says the oldest of the old Jews,
the enemy demands an answer;
tell us what it must be,
our duty is to guide just as ours is to follow.

What should we do or say?
ask the leaders of the ghetto somewhere in the East under forbidden and cursed skies;
what can we do so as not to be doomed?

Editorial Reviews

A short nar­ra­tive poem with dev­as­tat­ing impact, beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed and accom­pa­nied by a help­ful glos­sary con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing ref­er­ences to his­toric rab­bis, cities, and con­cepts, includ­ing that of the nig­gun, a mys­ti­cal song that one rab­bi called ​‘the pen of the soul.’ ”
—Jewish Book Council
 
“The tale and its lesson are classically Wiesel. Human and beautiful, it empowers the powerless. It’s traditional for Jews to place stones on graves; this story, based on several examples from history, places a pebble on an already insurmountable pile of rocks. The Tale of a Niggun is, of course, a Jewish book, but also not a Jewish book. Jewish stories, even in the present tense, are ancient stories, and the question and lesson central to the book are as present now as they’ve been since Eve left Eden . . . Frequent Wiesel illustrator Mark Podwal’s watercolor paintings are lovely.”
—New York Journal of Books

“Accompanied by Mark Podwal's quietly haunting full-page illustrations, Wiesel’s spare language cuts to the heart of human loss while the rhythms of the poetry capture the sad, endless march of inhumanity through history. At the same time, this poem sings out the power of belief and community and love.”
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-09-02
A narrative poem explores a ghastly dilemma faced by Jewish ghetto dwellers during World War II.

Written in the late 1970s and included in a long-out-of-print collection of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Wiesel's essays, the poem is set on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Purim. That's when the "enemy" (the word "Nazi" is never used) announces they will massacre everyone in the ghetto unless 10 Jews are turned over for hanging—this to avenge the killing of the 10 sons of Haman, the anti-Semitic scourge of the Purim story. Overwhelmed by this unthinkable dilemma, the ghetto rabbi feels "his knees weakening, the blood rushing to his face." Searching for answers, he consults the great religious thinkers through their writings. Maimonides, the Rambam, states that a community should perish before handing over one of its members to the enemy, but pressed by the rabbi, his talking spirit concedes that he can't be of help because he never could have foreseen such a predicament. The Baal Shem Tov, or Besht, the founder of Hasidism, teaches the rabbi a special niggun, or song, that confers hidden powers "to break the chains of evil and malediction." But the Besht is so overcome by sadness that he can't infuse the song with the joy it needs. Ultimately, when the niggun is sung by the ghetto community, it conjures a miraculous coming together of Jews—not only from all over Europe, but also from the pages of the Talmud. Accompanied by Podwal's quietly haunting full-page illustrations, Wiesel's spare language cuts to the heart of human loss while the rhythms of the poetry capture the sad, endless march of inhumanity through history. At the same time, this poem sings out the power of belief and community and love.

A modest but affecting work with timeless relevance.

Kirkus Reviews

This audiobook by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel may not be wonderful poetry, but it is a wonderful story that goes to the core of Jewish moral identity. When the Enemy decrees that the Jewish community must provide 10 people to be hanged—or else the entire community will be wiped out—the Rabbi must figure out what to do. Narrator John Rubinstein provides subtle voices for the Rabbi, his people, and the great sages whom he consults. He deftly conveys the Rabbi's frustrations, sorrows, and joys in his search for a solution to the community’s terrible problem. There is no traditional happy ending here, but there is a triumph of sorts. The text includes a glossary of Jewish thought and thinkers at the end. (Some may want to listen to the end first.) D.M.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

This audiobook by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel may not be wonderful poetry, but it is a wonderful story that goes to the core of Jewish moral identity. When the Enemy decrees that the Jewish community must provide 10 people to be hanged—or else the entire community will be wiped out—the Rabbi must figure out what to do. Narrator John Rubinstein provides subtle voices for the Rabbi, his people, and the great sages whom he consults. He deftly conveys the Rabbi's frustrations, sorrows, and joys in his search for a solution to the community’s terrible problem. There is no traditional happy ending here, but there is a triumph of sorts. The text includes a glossary of Jewish thought and thinkers at the end. (Some may want to listen to the end first.) D.M.H. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile