An Unusual Exploration of the Holocaust
Some spoilers may follow.
Professor Raphael Lipkin receives a series of midnight phone calls that question his perspective on Pedro, a member of the briha - the underground railroad for Jews out of Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Raphael has written a book, briefly mentioning Pedro and depicting him as almost superhuman and of unalloyed goodness. Raphael hero-worships Pedro. He blames himself for Pedro's capture by the Soviet police while trying to rescue his brother from a Moscow hospital. Decades have passed, and he doesn't know if Pedro is alive or dead.
The midnight caller challenges Raphael's views about Pedro so much that he agrees to go to the Mountain Clinic (the blurb says it's 'upstate New York,' but either I missed that detail or I had a different edition as it seemed to be in an unnamed, alpine, and probably European location) to learn more.
Once there, he organizes the clinic's library and listens daily to people who - almost universally - have a mania that makes them believe they are some biblical personage. Adam, Cain, Abraham, the Messiah - each with a unique perspective on their own case, a different way of looking at it, and a challenge to conventional interpretations.
Ultimately, the book is Wiesel's struggle with God. Echoing Jacob's struggle with an angel to get a new name, Wiesel doesn't reach the point where he refuses to let go unless he can obtain a blessing from on high. Instead, he interprets the nature of God through the events of the Holocaust, rather than examining the nature of the Holocaust in light of God's revelation about Himself. Ultimately, he concludes that the old blind madman he befriended during his childhood - the same mysterious man who constantly offers himself to save others and reappears at impossible times in impossible places - might well be God.
