Rabbi Wolpe: Remembering Elie Wiesel’s Greatest Words

“I have never met anyone whom so many considered a close friend. All over the world people tell me how close they were to this extraordinary man. Considering his constant stream of obligations, his writing and speaking, his family and of course his symbolic presence as the voice for those who had died, it is a mystery to me how he made and kept so many friends.

I remember the first time I met Wiesel. My father invited him to speak at Har Zion in Philadelphia, the synagogue where my father was a Rabbi. The two of them were friends (of course) having bonded in the course of their mutual work in the Soviet Jewry movement, the movement to free the Jews that culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union. My father had invited his children to come that evening, so we could meet and hear this already legendary voice of conscience. I was seven or perhaps eight years old.”

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