Religious Crisis

The struggle to maintain faith can be a very troublesome topic to speak about in the presence of the religious people, but it is a topic that is needed to be discussed. Not all of us have a “faith” or a “religion” but we all have to believe in some kind of afterlife, don’t we? Who’s to say there’s a God; or Gods for that matter? Many people struggle with their faith and question the very thought of whether or not their “god” is real. I myself have had these struggles, but no one has suffered more with this internal battle more than the Jewish people during the time of the Holocaust from 1941-1945. They fought for their very lives when in their most desperate times they asked themselves, “Where is God now?”

In the book Night, Eliezer struggles to maintain his faith while going through the concentration camps. The pure evil in the personal hell they were thrown into caused a deep rupture in the way he believed in such God. The Jewish faith is a part of study teaches them at a very young age to believe that God is everywhere and everything happens because of God. Growing up in this kind of Jewish faith, Eliezer was led to believe everything that ever happens reflects God’s holiness and strength. With all that happens during the Holocaust, Eliezer begins to lose his faith and trust in his “higher power” he knows as his God, and only regains some of it in certain situations throughout the book. Moshe the Beadle is a true believer and he is one of those people who can’t go on living without knowing there is a God. In the very beginning of the book Eliezer asks Moshe why he prays to God, and Moshe simply replies, “Why did I pray? … Why did I live? Why did I breathe?” (pg.2) Though Eliezer doesn’t quite understand why Moshe answers the way he does, he continues to question his faith but also still wants to believe there’s something good in everything.

The daily presence of death and the terror of selection force the issue of faith on once-devout Eliezer and on all of the prisoners victimized because they are Jews. The fact that every single day they faced a new obstacle that would block them from their survival. Battling hunger, disease, malnutrition, being brutally killed in the gas chambers and burnt alive furnaces. These kinds of things are what made Eliezer and many of the other Jewish people question things like how their God could allow such evils to happen to such innocent people. If they truly were the “Children of God”, then how could He allow such torture and atrocious things to happen to them? Of course, even in desperate times like these, there were many of the Jews that continued to love, pray, and worship God because they had it thought out that He would save them sooner or later. It’s a matter of how strong a person is internally and matters on just how long they can hold onto something before they have to let it go. In Eliezer’s case of his faith, he struggled to hold onto it but somehow managed to keep even the smallest grip on it through the toughest of times, even near his own death.

So what if the Jewish people had struggles maintaining their faith during tough times throughout the Holocaust? Well, it does matter because they aren’t the only ones who have battled this internal war, but they were most greatly affected by it due to the harsh conditions of the Holocaust. It is these kind of struggles that make us who we are today, because we all need to fight a battle every once in a while to really know where we stand in this world we live in today. Not all of us may study or believe in a religion or faith, but we all should believe in some kind of afterlife, don’t you think? I myself have had troubles with my faith as a Christian and thought that this essay topic would be a good choice to write about since I can easily relate to Eliezer and his internal struggle with believing in God.

Author's Note

ACC English FINALS Essay.