09/10/2018
Burger, a teacher and rabbi, gives readers a glimpse into the wisdom of Elie Wiesel in this chronicle of his years as Wiesel’s student and teaching assistant. Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, writer, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was also a skilled educator, as Burger’s admiring account shows. The unpacking of Wiesel’s teaching methods is the book’s best contribution to Wiesel’s legacy. Current, former, and future educators will love the glimpses into Wiesel’s practices, such as the way he guided discussions on difficult but important topics—the tensions between faith and doubt, the relationship between rebellion and madness, and effective strategies for activism—and the personal attention he lavished on students. The book is weaker, however, when Burger tells his own story and when it rehashes elements of Wiesel’s philosophy and wisdom that can be better found in Wiesel’s own words in the many books he wrote. Still, Burger’s love for Wiesel, both professional and personal, shines through, and the reader will walk away with renewed admiration for this remarkable scholar, writer, survivor, and teacher. (Nov.)
Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom
Narrated by Jason Culp
Ariel BurgerUnabridged — 8 hours, 1 minutes
Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom
Narrated by Jason Culp
Ariel BurgerUnabridged — 8 hours, 1 minutes
Overview
The world remembers Elie Wiesel-Nobel laureate, activist, and author of more than forty books, including Oprah's Book Club selection Night-as a great humanist. He passed away in July 2016.
Ariel Burger first met Elie Wiesel at age fifteen. They studied together and taught together. Witness chronicles the intimate conversations between these two men over decades, as Burger sought counsel on matters of intellect, spirituality, and faith, while navigating his own personal journey from boyhood to manhood, from student and assistant to rabbi and, in time, teacher.
In this profoundly hopeful, thought-provoking, and inspiring audiobook, Burger takes us into Elie Wiesel's classroom, where the art of listening and storytelling conspire to keep memory alive. As Wiesel's teaching assistant, Burger gives us a front-row seat witnessing these remarkable exchanges in and out of the classroom. The act of listening, of sharing these stories, makes of us, the listeners, witnesses.
Editorial Reviews
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Biography An Indie Next List Pick A Publishers Lunch Buzz Book "A beautiful, deeply moving memoir...[a] complex, multilayered book...Burger’s honest depiction of doubt — both Wiesel’s and his own — is a great strength of this memoir, and its constant concern with the limited power of the individual is timeless. While Wiesel privately worried about the power of one person’s words in the face of hatred, this book of questions and memories makes a case for the power of teaching, and for words as perhaps the ultimate teachers of how to live." —Chicago Tribune "Burger transports the reader to those salons of learning on the Charles River, where Wiesel's students over the years ranged from the granddaughter of a Nazi SS officer to a Korean minister in training...Unlike the best-selling 'Tuesdays with Morrie' – which highlighted author Mitch Albom's relationship with another Boston-area professor – Burger's book has a protagonist who was already world-famous. Witness does have a Wednesdays-with-Wiesel feel. Burger intersperses bits of his own life and background as he shares an album's worth of snapshots from Wiesel's time at BU. Burger's tone and execution are exactly what his title promises – and in keeping with the way Wiesel lived his life." —USA Today, "New book shares Elie Wiesel's powerful classroom lessons from the Holocaust" "Any reader of Witness can now become another student of Wiesel’s, and another witness, as it is clear that Ariel Burger has become a teacher with its publication." —Tablet Magazine "Inspiring and substantive...Amid all the Wiesel wisdom, Burger interweaves bits of his own autobiography, including his childhood and an account of the years he spent in Israel before his doctoral studies. Neither irrelevant nor self-indulgent, these strolls into memoir help establish Burger as a trustworthy and likable guide, a fellow learner who has invited us to sit next to him as we absorb hard-won knowledge about the shape of a good life from a sage. An insightful and winsome love letter—and, for newcomers to Wiesel, a good introduction." —Kirkus Reviews "Current, former, and future educators will love the glimpses into Wiesel’s practices, such as the way he guided discussions on difficult but important topics—the tensions between faith and doubt, the relationship between rebellion and madness, and effective strategies for activism—and the personal attention he lavished on students...Burger’s love for Wiesel, both professional and personal, shines through, and the reader will walk away with renewed admiration for this remarkable scholar, writer, survivor, and teacher." —Publishers Weekly "A student of Wiesel's, Burger recounts how Wiesel lit his mind on fire. He later became Wiesel's teaching assistant and colleague, and this book parts the curtain on Wiesel's stimulating and lively classes, which challenged students...Readers will find their own preconceptions called into question, as though they were in class, too." —Booklist “Burger, a compassionate heart, fiery soul, and sharp religious mind in his own right, presents a personal side of Wiesel that we normally didn’t see. This is the humane Wiesel, the Wiesel who nurtured students and who shook the foundations to demand mo —
Narrator Jason Culp deftly gives voice to both sides of a dialogue between a student and a teacher that focuses on Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s storied life and unparalleled career as a human rights advocate. Culp subtly brings out Wiesel’s distinct Eastern-European accent, contrasting it with the devout and curious tone of the young American Ariel Burger, who first met Wiesel as a rabbinical student at age 15. How was Wiesel able to survive the Holocaust, which took his parents? Where was God? Who will stand up for those caught in the next humanitarian crisis? For Wiesel, the answer lay in teaching the world to bear witness. This audiobook is insightful, life affirming, and life changing. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
2018-07-31
Life lessons from Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), as recounted by his longtime student.
Debut writer Burger, an artist and rabbi, was just 15 when he first met Wiesel. He didn't know then that his college and doctoral work would be organized around Wiesel's classroom. Here, the author brings readers into the classroom, sharing with us Wiesel's readings and analyses of Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and others. Such a book could seem exploitative, sentimental, or cheesy, but Burger has managed to craft something both inspiring and substantive. He recounts the profound moral insights Wiesel scattered abundantly through his classroom discussions and his one-on-one conversations with students—e.g., "superficiality is the enemy of everything," or how faith can be an act of protest. Wiesel's reading of the book of Job illustrates his compassion and profundity: "Job is…included in the canon…to ensure that we do not take the earlier theology of reward and punishment too far, that we do not make it a weapon." In response to a student's question about literature that depicts madmen, Wiesel opines that some people are so possessed by the vision of a world without hatred and cruelty that they "raise the alarm" whenever anything threatens peace. The rest of us, comfortably squirreled away writing the occasional letter to our elected officials, label the messianic visionaries "mad"—but it is by paying attention to them that we learn how "to effectively resist evil." Amid all the Wiesel wisdom, Burger interweaves bits of his own autobiography, including his childhood and an account of the years he spent in Israel before his doctoral studies. Neither irrelevant nor self-indulgent, these strolls into memoir help establish Burger as a trustworthy and likable guide, a fellow learner who has invited us to sit next to him as we absorb hard-won knowledge about the shape of a good life from a sage.
An insightful and winsome love letter—and, for newcomers to Wiesel, a good introduction.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169915372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/13/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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