Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC of Burger's book Witness. I have read every book written by Elie Wiesel over the years and was fortunate enough to have heard him speak a number of times. Witness is beautifully written and I found that the use of the classroom discussions Weisel held with his students at BU was the perfect format to use to present the subject's innermost thoughts. As the reader you felt a part of these discussions. Burget presents Weisel exactly the way he chose to live his life......as a humble man of faith who wanted to just be a teacher........to teach humanity, empathy, compassion, and most of all tolerance. Having finished this book just a week after the tragedy in Pittsburgh, it has left a more profound effect on my thinking. With the political climate in our country today this book is a definite must read.

I got an ARC of this book.

I read Night when I was in middle school. One of the other boys on the bus was reading it and let me borrow it. I read it in a single sitting. It is a book I haven't forgotten yet. I doubt I ever will. 

This book follows like Tuesdays with Morrie. Except this book is a bit less accessible. The main chunk of the book takes place in a grad school classroom. Many people never step foot in grad school. So that alone can be off putting for some readers, but my biggest issue is that there was constant references to what the students were reading. They don't read things that most people will read. Some of the readings were things that at least are common themes and people know about them like Romeo and Juliet, but then there were long discussions of Kafka and other more advanced reads than the people I know who would like this sort of book would read for fun. So the discussions can be alienating, despite how amazing they were.  

There are a ton of references to Jewish traditions, which is to be expected. However they almost all focus on the author having no clue what he wants to do. He studies for over a decade in school while having no direction. It felt like this book was a masturbatory exercise in a "I'm special and unique. I wrote a book about someone else who was famous, but it really is about me". I had a bad taste in my mouth for a good chunk of the book because of this seemingly using someone else's amazing work in the world to tell the story of someone who seemingly has done nothing and is generally pretty much not someone I would want in my life (almost all of that is based on how he never seems to be with his family and he admits things like that near the end, so my opinion of him changes a bit to indifference). 

The ideas that this book is able to convey and how important the messages are feel bogged down with a story of a man trying to find his own way. I can very mildly see why this is, but not enough to justify why the book included the long sections of really plain "woe is me" type of story the author has. 

So, the passages in the classroom are beyond remarkable and I will never forget them. I needed more of those. If this book was solely those discussions this would be a thirty star book. Instead it is three, because all of the amazing lessons are bogged down with stories that I have no reason to care about and despite trying, just couldn't get into to. The sections in the classroom read so beautifully and were tremendously important messages to spread. I just wish that was more of the focus of the book.

“ If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.” (Elie Wiesel)

I was fortunate to receive an advanced copy of this book. It was before the horrific event last week at a Pittsburgh synagogue where eleven people were murdered because they were Jewish. I thought about the Holocaust and the hate of the anti semitism that murdered over six million Jews and thought how could this happen now ? I was planning on reading it soon, but I thought right now would be a good time. What I knew about Elie Wiesel was limited to my reading of [book:Night|1617] and having seen him on Oprah years ago. This book provides a bigger window into the man, his thoughts, his beliefs, his intellect, his empathy and understanding, an outlook on life that left me in awe considering his history. In this beautifully written book, Ariel Burger writes of the impact of his relationship with Elie Wiesel as a student of his, as his teaching assistant, and ultimately as a colleague. He writes of how his life was impacted as well as the students who came to Wiesel’s classes. Burger is also a teacher and the reader becomes his student as well as Wiesel’s.

This is of course a beautiful tribute to a mentor and beloved friend, but it is more than that. He challenges the reader as he tells of discussions that occurred in Wiesel’s classes as we read the questions that students asked, students who majored in journalism, theater not just religion. They asked questions that were intelligent and emotion filled, questions from students who were both Jewish and Christian. It’s as if I was present in that classroom listening to the discussions on the Old Testament, books by Kafka and Dostoyevsky, Anne Frank, stories, personal experiences, discussions of madness, mysticism, faith, listening, understanding, art, music, literature, philosophical questions, hatred, forgiveness and the importance of bearing witness. Burger says of Wiesel: “Most of his writing dealt with other subjects: examinations of literature, contemporary struggles for human rights and dignity, and Jewish legends and personalities. The Holocaust was not his subject; it was the lens through which he looked at all subjects.”

This book was such a profound reinforcement of so much that I feel and believe when I read Holocaust stories especially memoirs . The author lists a number of things about what it means to be a student of Elie Wiesel and this : “Most of all, it means remembering the past and understanding the link between past and future. It means choosing to care about others’ lives, their suffering and their joy. It means becoming a witness.” Burger based this book on his journals, notes, interviews, voice memos and twenty five years of friendship, being mentored by Elie Wiesel. I came away knowing much more about the wise and beautiful human being that Elie Wiesel was. I was awed, inspired, challenged. This book reinforced my personal conviction that we must read about the horrific times so we remember and bear witness. Highly recommended! There is so much that is relevant for this precarious time in our county.

“Listening to a witness makes you a witness.” (Elie Wiesel)

I received an advanced copy of this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through NetGalley.

Witness by Ariel Burger looks closely at Elie Wiesel and his teaching. Burger was a teaching assistant and friend to Wiesel and he writes this book with a loving hand and shares the brilliance of Wiesel in a way that is accessible and enlightening.

It is easy to think of Wiesel as the Holocaust Survivor, or as the author of Night, but Witness allows us to see Wiesel the man and intellectual. He is a multi-faceted man and always explored notions of morality and ethics. This book devotes chapters to specific areas of Wiesel's work such as activism, art, religion, belief and morality. It is helpful to be able to have the information presented in this fashion as it makes the information easy to find.

I am delighted to tell you that as a historian and librarian this book is an important addition to the literature on Elie Wiesel.

Elie Wiesel as always been a hero of mine someone iLoked up to from the time I read Night.My mother went to a yearly lecture he gave in Manhattan .He is a true survivor and this book it’s format gives us insight to this amazing mans mind thoughta survivor extraordinnare. thanks #netgalley#hmh

Egil Aarvik, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, once said "Eli Wiesel is a messenger to mankind. His message is one of peace, atonement, and human dignity. His belief that the forces fighting evil in the world can be victorious is a hard-won belief."
Eli Wiesel was a father, husband, friend, humanitarian, author, Holocaust survivor and a teacher. Somehow the word teacher doesn't do justice to someone whose words continue to help us learn what being a better human being is. I have read a few books by Eli Wiesel and jumped at the chance to read Ariel Burger's book, Witness: Lessons from Eli Wiesel's Classroom. Ariel was Wiesel's teaching assistant at Boston College. He writes a book that gave me the feeling of sitting in one of Wiesel's classes myself and letting Wiesel's stories and life lessens envelop me. I felt like I was back in college sitting in the lecture halls as Wiesel tells the stories and parables from Kafka, the Bible and other great works. These are stories hat sometimes will make you angry or leave with a an aching sadness but always stories that have a meaning and purpose. I felt like that kid again in college inspired to fight the good fight and wanting to back to the days of sitting with my fellow classmates talking about current events, challenging the status quo and ready to take on the world.
Burger's book is filled with Wiesel's lessons and also the impact that Burger and others had on Wiesel. Burger based this book on twenty years worth of journal entries, interviews and five years of classroom notes. He takes the reader on his own spiritual and intellectual journey starting as a young boy and then the conversations with Wiesel spanning decades.
It's not hard to read this book but it is hard to hear what this book says if you truly listen. It is then that this book or really Wiesel will bring the gamut of emotions to the forefront and a wish that we as human beings can one day find a way to stop the hatred and destruction of humanity.
Eli Wiesel said, "Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures: peace is our gift to each other." Eli Wiesel would be proud of his student, Ariel Burger and the beautiful book that he wrote.
Thank you to NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. #NetGalley #Witness

Having taught Night, Elie Wiesel's first book chronicling his horrific time in Auschwitz, for many years as a high school literature teacher, I could not wait to get this book into my hands. Ariel Burger was Wiesel's student for more than two decades and had a front row view of his teacher: his philosophies, his faith, and his extraordinary ability to open a classroom wide for his students. What I would have given to be a member of one of Professor Wiesel's classes - what a gift he was to this world. Admittedly, at times I got a bit bogged down in the story of Burger's search for his life direction, but I could understand those diversions better as the ending developed. Ariel Burger did outstanding research, and gave us a very personal look at this heroic man, giving him some feet of clay and reminding us that Wiesel was human. This book is a 'must-read,' 'must-have,' in a teacher's hands who usesNight in their classroom, as well as anyone who wants to see the power of learning, the power of love through forgiveness, and the power of the search for meaning through the questioning of life.

”If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing”
-- If It Be Your Will, Leonard Cohen, Songwriters: Leonard Cohen / Patrick Leonard

Instructions for life, or at least for living a life with meaning, words of thoughtful counsel shared through the mentorship, friendship and affection that Elie Wiesel had with his student and teaching assistant, Ariel Burger, along with many other students through the years. This was profoundly lovely, and reflective, with perhaps just a dusting of something along the lines of Tuesdays With Morrie added, without being overly sentimental. This isn’t a book of sadness, but rather of the joy that his wisdom can bring us.

Twenty-five years of journal entries, five years of notes from the classroom, interviews with Wiesel’s students from around the world all went into this book. Burger met Elie Wiesel when he was a fifteen year-old young man, and most of the years that followed were spent with them in contact with one another. Sometimes often, other times, not as often. But since that first meeting, Burger considered him to be ”my mentor, my guide, and eventually my friend. He helped me steer my way through complex questions of identity, religion and vocation to a life of meaning I did not know was possible.”

If you’re not familiar with Elie Wiesel, he was a professor at Boston University, a journalist, a writer – best known for his book Night – about the atrocities he lived through during the Holocaust, when he was young. Later in life and living in New York City, he taught at City College of New York, and then eventually at Boston University, where he was a professor, and where, eventually, Burger would also attend as a student.

This manages to walk that fine line between overly sentimental and a somewhat quietly shared, honest and genuinely loving look at Wiesel’s life, the wisdom he shared, and how through this relationship both changed from knowing the other. There is so much respect, love, and genuine admiration in Burger’s sharing – but there are the stories of Eli Wiesel, as well. Not the ones he wrote about in his books, word for word, but his life, irrevocably changed, after the Holocaust, how it shaped him, and how he used that to teach us all how to be better at this thing called life.

I’ve watched, and listened to interviews of Wiesel on television, in audio books, and much of this book is in his words, conversations, writings, but there is that other side from Burger that shows what a blessing learning from a man like Wiesel can bring, not only just to him and his students, but to everyone that takes the time to listen to what Elie Wiesel has to share.

So many reasons to read this book, but let me leave you with this one, a quote that starts off the first chapter of this book:

”Listening to a witness makes you a witness. –Elie Wiesel”

Be a witness.


Pub Date: 13 NOV 2018


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

More applicable for educators, some of the information resounded with me but overall I think that those in the education field would find this more interesting.

Great idea for a book but anecdotal structure lacks focus and presentation is underwhelming. The reader does not feel the commanding presence of Wiesel, a man who lead an incredible life.