Who is Moishe the Beadle to Elie Wiesel?

Moshe the Beadle is an indigent Jewish man working in a Hasidic synagogue in the town of Sighet. Moshe is the first person to raise the alarm about the persecution of the Jewish people during WWII. However, the townsfolk do not believe him, thinking he is deluded.

Detailed answer:

In Night written by Elie Wiesel, the character of Moshe the Beadle is a poor man from the small town of Sighet. Moshe is not native to Sighet but is of Jewish descent, as are most of the people living in the town. At the beginning of the story, Moshe works at the local synagogue. He helps with small tasks and teaches the Kabbalah. Although he is respected in the town for his teachings, he is expelled for being an immigrant.

During his expulsion from Sighet, Moshe the Beadle is captured by the German army. Afterward, he is placed into one of their Nazi concentration camps. He is the first person in the town of Sighet to experience the horrors of the Holocaust. His time in the camps shows him that no Jewish person is truly safe in the war. Despite the inhumane treatment he undergoes in the camp, Moshe manages to escape. He decides to return to Sighet to warn others.

Once he returns, Moshe the Beadle becomes the laughing stock of the town. World War II continues. Nazi Germany slowly gains more control over the territories of other European countries. Yet, the people of Sighet remain blissfully unaware of the strive and terrors of the conflict. Moshe tries to warn the Jewish community of the Holocaust and the dangers of concentration camps. However, people prefer to believe that he has lost his mind rather than believe in his tales. In the end, Moshe’s warnings remain unheard, and the war finally reaches Sighet.

Moshe is important to Wiesel. He allows the Nobel Peace Prize-winning author to depict Jewish persecution during WWII. Wiesel begins the story with him as his unprecedented experiences in a concentration camp allow the author to use Moshe for exposition for the readers. Through him, the writer shows the oppression of the Jewish people in the war. When Elie

Wiesel thinks of Moshe, he also remembers his Kabbalah lessons. The character is important as through his conversations with Moshe, Wiesel explores Judaism. his beliefs and convictions, and how they influenced him during the time of great suffering and trials. Moshe teaches Elie that searching for the right answers is meaningless, and it is better to ask God the right questions. Overall, Moshe the Beadle’s lessons and example help the young Elie Wiesel endure his detention by the Germans and approach his experiences during the war from a spiritual and philosophical perspective.

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IvyPanda. 2022. "Who Moshe the Beadle is, and why does Wiesel begin the story with him?" April 21, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/q/who-moshe-the-beadle-is-and-why-does-wiesel-begin-the-story-with-him/.

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Detailed answer:

Moishe the Beadle, a minor character in Elie Wiesel’s Night, proved to unexpectedly have significance in the book. He was a poor foreign Jew who resided in Sighet, a Transylvanian town in modern-day Romania. The townspeople of Sighet, composed of Jews, helped those who were underprivileged but they didn’t necessarily develop a fondness for them. However, in the case of Moishe the Beadle, despite the fact that he lived in dire poverty, the townspeople liked him. His incredible awkwardness coupled with his timidness and reserved personality brought joy to people. This was due in part to his actions which never troubled anyone. Wiesel first describes him in favorable terms; “he was poor and lived in utter penury…while [the town] did help the needy, they did not particularly like them. Moishe the Beadle was the exception. He stayed out of people’s way. His presence bothered no one”. However, after fulfilling his prophecy, he is described as “only wanting pity…and was imagining things. Others flatly said that he had gone mad”.

Moishe the Beadle was Elie’s mentor in studying Kabbalah. Together Moishe and Elie would read for hours on end for many days. In the course of that time, Elie became convinced that Moishe would help him enter eternity, into that time when question and answer become one. At first, Elie is optimistic about life, reality to him is like that of any child. One day all foreign Jews in Sighet and that included Moishe were expelled. They were crammed into cattle cars and sent away to Poland. Moishe fled from death. He only returned to Sighet to express his death so that people could ready themselves while there was still time. He wanted to come back to warn people but no one listened to him. On the seventh day of Passover was when the curtain rose, Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on everything happened abruptly. Elie and his family along with the Jewish community were put in ghettos.

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Moishe the Beadle in the Essays

Author: Wilma Daniels

Moishe the Beadle is the first character introduced in Night, and his values resonate throughout the text, even though he himself disappears after the first few pages. Moishe represents, first and foremost, an earnest commitment to Judaism, and to Jewish mysticism in particular. As Eliezer’s Cabbala teacher, Moishe talks about the riddles of the universe and God’s centrality to the quest for understanding. Moishe’s words frame the conflict of Eliezer’s struggle for faith, which is at the center of Night.

In his statement “I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions,” Moishe conveys two concepts key to Eliezer’s struggle: the idea that God is everywhere, even within every individual, and the idea that faith is based on questions, not answers. Eliezer’s struggle with faith is, for the most part, a struggle of questions. He continually asks where God has gone and questions how such evil could exist in the world. Moishe’s statement tells us that these moments do not reflect Eliezer’s loss of faith; instead they demonstrate his ongoing spiritual commitment. But we also see that at the lowest points of Eliezer’s faith—particularly when he sees the pipel (a youth) hung in Buna—he is full of answers, not questions. At these moments, he has indeed lost the spirit of faith he learned from Moishe, and is truly faithless.

Finally, Moishe may also serve as a stand-in for Wiesel himself, as his presence evokes an overarching purpose of the entire work. As has been stated previously, Night can be read as an attack against silence. So many times in the work, evil is perpetuated by a silent lack of resistance or—as in the case of Moishe’s warnings—by ignoring reports of evil. With Night, Wiesel, like Moishe, bears witness to tragedy in order to warn others, to prevent anything like the Holocaust from ever happening again.

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