tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post2219489190249941073..comments2024-01-12T18:45:52.043-05:00Comments on The Weekly Sift: Dogma and StormDoug Muderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04666144843949850394noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2342100421756914597.post-27990326978604345522016-07-08T00:34:17.743-04:002016-07-08T00:34:17.743-04:00Doug - I thought this piece on Elie Wiesel perfect...Doug - I thought this piece on Elie Wiesel perfectly captured the generous approach that you found lacking in Avishai's piece:<br /><br />http://religiondispatches.org/searching-in-vain-for-a-pure-elie-wiesel/<br /><br />From the closing passage:<br /><br />To search for a pure Wiesel is to search for a world in which humans do not err, in which they are politically consistent and correct in every way. That search repeats the sin of Oprah, the sin that expects redemption in just a few moments. It leads to the self-aggrandizing bemoaning of others’ faults, the hasty demand that others agree with me now because I have the answer, the quick naming of holy men and women who might free us from our own burden of making difficult decisions, and the premature end of deliberation.<br /><br />If we were to truly defer redemption, as Wiesel did with Oprah, we would not cease to call one another to task. But we would expect all of us (including Wiesel!) to betray our better selves on a regular basis. For those of us who are humanists or social scientists, we might research how such betrayals—or, for those of us who love jargon, “dialectical reversals”—occur as a matter of course when we live out our commitments among people who disagree with us.<br /><br />And all of us might come to realize that our acts of solidarity, whether with some of the living or with some of the dead, are not innocent. They all cause pain to someone, somewhere. Perhaps that pain can be minimized over time, but the magnitude of the labor needed is far more immense than we might suspect. It was at times too immense for Wiesel. Yet if we read him again, perhaps it will not be too immense for us.Michael Fesslerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01788198252467491484noreply@blogger.com