SOURCE: Sherwin, Byron L. “Jewish Messianism and Elie Wiesel.” Notre Dame English Journal 11, no. 1 (October 1978): 33-46.

In the following essay, Sherwin discusses Wiesel as a Jewish author and examines his “utilization of the sources and themes which constitute classical Jewish Messianism.”

Jewish Novelists and Their Judaism

There are three varieties of Jewish authors. One kind writes neither out of his Jewish experience nor out of his Judaism. This type of writer rejects what he is an sometimes will write anti-Semitically and with distinct Christian symbolism in order to flaunt his “liberation” from geneological ties. An example of this variety would be Nathanael West.¹

A second variety of Jewish author writes out of his Jewish experience but not out of Judaism. This is the dominant category in America. An example of this kind would be Philip Roth.² Members of this class are often characterized as “Eastern, liberal, academic—in...