Of all the titles and appellations appended to Elie Wiesel at his passing, there is one that I have not seen mentioned in the headlines. It was his most important quality and his salient trait, and hopefully the one for which he will be remembered: human being.
Every headline noting his passing is true. Holocaust survivor, Nobel Laureate, author of dozens of books and countless articles, confidant of presidents and prime ministers. But we will never be those things. None of us will be Holocaust survivors, thankfully. Very few of us will ever advise heads of state; fewer still will win a Nobel Prize. If any of us manages to write 60 books, they will not have the impact that one of his books had in 128 pages.
And, yet, the most important thing he did should be an example to every one of us. He was an exemplar of a human being.
He was passionate. He was hesitant and shy sometimes, but bold and forthright and courageous at other times. He sought to empathise, to commiserate and to comfort. He never ceased asking, he never stopped learning, he never stopped teaching, he never stopped being concerned for a world that makes the same mistakes over and over again, and he never threw up his hands in despair and said, "there is nothing more I can do".
I once asked his neighbour from Sighet and fellow survivor David Weiss-Halivni what he meant by a comment he made about Mr Wiesel being made of different stuff. He explained to me that he "is the best example of a human being that we have".
In that moment, a number of things connected for me. Mr Wiesel's title at Boston University was "Andrew W Mellon Professor of the Humanities". I also understood in that moment that Mr Wiesel always insisted that when he was a more profound Jew, he was a more profound human being. I also understood his insistence that Judaism, as he understood it, did not demand that the Christian become a Jew or that the Muslim become a Jew. Rather, his hope was that the Christian and the Muslim fully live up to the ideals of their own faith and through that, make their contribution to humanity and to our coexistence on this planet.
More than a survivor, which he certainly was; more than an author, at which he succeeded; Mr Wiesel taught us from his study in New York, from the White House, from the rostrum of the Bundestag, from a visit to Gorbachev, from a minyan for a yahrzeit kaddish for his father on the Cambodian border. Engaged. Not indifferent. Caring. Supportive. Unafraid. Courageous. Profoundly himself. Morally outraged. And, all the while, a friend, a teacher, a mentor, a confidant, a husband, a father, a son.
Rabbi Kanofsky was Elie Wiesel's student at Boston University from 1987-1998
