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Violin teachers were hard to come by in Sighet, Transylvania, but Elie Wiesel's father, Shlomo, wanted his boy to play. The shopkeeper had dreams of a musician son, so he got creative, enlisting a policeman to act as a teacher. Each week, he'd send his young son to his "lesson," a violin tucked beneath one arm, a bottle of slivovitz, plum brandy, snug beneath the other.
"He began to drink, and I began to play. And when he finished, I finished," Wiesel says. When Shlomo Wiesel wanted his only son to play more, he simply sent larger bottles.
With stories like this, Wiesel, the man often credited with doing more to raise Holocaust awareness than any other, invites people to laugh. Even as some listeners can't help but cry.
Wiesel, 77, walks onto stages and before applauding audiences the image of humility. When towering Snow College trustees and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff step before the crowd to present him with an honorary doctorate, and forget to bring the honoree with them, Wiesel comes through the door belatedly, a smile across his face. He has received honorary doctorates before - "110 or 115, I can't remember," he says - but never stops being grateful.
The police escort from the airport, the private plane - courtesy of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. - to Ephraim, the stretch limousine to ferry him around Salt Lake City, seem to leave him unfazed.
Those who introduce him call him "a living legend," one of the greatest men alive. He's "the prince of his people . . . a true son of God, a voice of humanity," says Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. "Ladies and gentlemen, for the rest of your lives, you will remember this evening."
Indeed, Wiesel's words and presence have a prophetic feel.
"You just heard the word of God," Edwin Firmage, a University of Utah law professor, says while leaving a luncheon, featuring Wiesel, in Salt Lake City. "The humility, the huge self-effacing word of God . . . speaking directly to us, through a sacrificed one."
Wiesel hears such comments and is quick to dismiss them. He mentions a psalm that warns against idolatry. If idols are so wrong, "you should not have an idol in you," he says. "C'mon. . . . Don't take yourself so seriously."
Out of the ashes of the Holocaust, which wiped out a third of the Jewish people, Wiesel made a decision. Rather than remain steeped in suffering, he chose to live his life helping others. Standing by in silence has never been an option for him. He speaks for those who can't.
Wiesel's humanitarian work and activism have benefited Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Cambodian refugees, war victims in the former Yugoslavia, Argentina's Desaparecidos, the Kurds, those who suffered under apartheid in South Africa or from famine and genocide in other parts of Africa.
Today, his voice is for those in Darfur, Sudan.
"To be free is essential," he says. "But to give freedom to those who have no freedom is a greater gift."
Only a few of Wiesel's books - he thinks he's written about 47 of them - deal directly with the atrocities of the Holocaust. "After a while," he explains, "there are no words."
The memories never leave him, though, nor do the questions. Where was God? That one can still keep him up at night.
"The question is still a question," he says. "But we can also ask, where was man? Where was the humanity of man?"
And what of his faith? How, if ever, did he find it again?
"I didn't lose faith. It was broken, it was wounded," he answers. "I didn't desert faith. Faith didn't desert me."
Every morning, he prays. Every Sabbath, he goes to synagogue. And three times a year, he goes to Jerusalem. He says the yearning for Jerusalem never leaves him.
For 10 years after the war, Wiesel took a vow of silence - refusing to share his wartime experiences. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and became a journalist. While interviewing François Mauriac, winner of 1952's Nobel Prize in Literature, he was pushed to write down his story. The result was Night, Wiesel's haunting Holocaust memoir, first published in 1960.
Sitting back in a white stretch limo as it winds toward Utah's Capitol, Wiesel explains that between his words, he wrote silences. So when Orson Welles approached him, wanting to make a film out of Night, Wiesel refused. In film and in television, there is no room to write in silences. And without those silences, he believes, the book would have lost meaning.
"These words needed to be read," he says.
As a young, perhaps naive, author, Wiesel gave a French publisher "worldwide rights" to his book. So as Night flies off bookshelves, he gets no financial benefit. Not that he cares enough to do anything about it, he says.
A friend riding along pipes in, "The Talmud says if you don't understand a contract, it's not valid."
Wiesel laughs and answers, "The Talmud says don't sign contracts."
In his left lapel, he wears a small pin bearing a red rosette. Patting it with his hand as he walks up the stairs to the Capitol Building, he explains that it was given to him when he was honored with the rank of Grand-Croix in the French Legion of Honor.
He speaks five or six languages, but he writes in French. France has special meaning to him. For one, it was there that he found his older sisters. Or rather, it was there that they found him.
While in an orphanage after the war, some journalists came to visit. He says he pursued journalism, in part, because of what happened next. A photograph taken at the orphanage, which included Wiesel, ran in a newspaper - and one of his sisters spotted his face. Though one sister died of cancer 25 years ago, the other remains in France.
So even though he's lived in the United States for most of his adult life, he thinks of France - the country that became his first home after the war - and wears the pin with pride.
Standing outside Huntsman's office, Wiesel admires a piece of art on the wall. It was given to the governor after he adopted daughter Gracie Mei and features Hebrew lettering, in fact a line from the Talmud: "He who saves one life, it is as if he saves an entire universe."
Huntsman reaches out to his visitor and says, "I shook your hand in 1982 at a gathering of Holocaust survivors. . . . It was a true honor then. It's a true honor now."
They sit at a table in the office, sharing photographs. Huntsman brings out the framed picture of the daughter his family will soon adopt from India, telling Wiesel that one look at her picture - even though he has not met her yet - offers him perspective. Wiesel, in turn, pulls out his wallet, introducing the governor to his son, Elisha, and his infant grandson, Eliyahu David.
Then they turn to heavier issues - talk of Darfur, Iran's president, matters of war.
He will never say he's for war, Wiesel explains, but for the sake of human rights, intervening is sometimes necessary. "Don't call it war," he says. "War is a political option. Intervention is a moral option."
Huntsman smiles, nods in understanding, then asks Wiesel to speak about his biggest concern for this century.
"Governor, this century is not mine. It's yours and the children's," he begins.
Fanaticism within all religions, those who "speak [and act] in the name of God," coupled with suicide terrorism - that's the gravest danger, he continues. It used to be soldiers were the ones putting their lives at risk; now "all of us . . . are on the frontline."
When Wiesel thinks of the Islamic world, and his Islamic colleagues who "live in fear," he says Jews and Christians - over the past few decades - missed an opportunity. While they were busy dialoguing, they left one group out.
"Never have relations between Jews and Christians been better. But we forgot the third party, Islam," he says. "If you study together, you learn together. And now it's a little bit late."
This century may not be his, but he shows no signs of slowing down. You might call it a sense of urgency.
On Monday, alone, Wiesel spoke in the morning at Stanford University in California, addressed a luncheon at Salt Lake City's Jewish Community Center, met with Utah's governor and then gave an evening lecture in Ephraim. Not bad for 77.
He says he's always working on a book, but refuses to divulge details about his current project, even when a Tribune reporter promises she won't steal his idea or tell anyone.
"Superstition," he answers with a smile.
He holds a person's hand with both of his, and stays that way an extra beat after shaking it. He pats the seat of a car when he wants someone to sit next to him. He's happy to stand close for pictures and sign copies of his books, even if the pages have yellowed from the years.
Indeed, there's a warmth to Wiesel. The memories he carries and the current inhumanities he thinks about have not stopped him from living or loving.
With Marion, his wife of 37 years who is also a survivor, he started anew.
"We rebuilt a family," he says.
And he's found his greatest passion in teaching, bringing people together to question, learn from and respect one another.
"Mozart said, 'I love to write notes that love each other,' " he says. "I love to bring students together who love each other."
But it's children who bring Wiesel the most joy. Their honesty, their inability to play psychological games, their open enthusiasm - all of these are gifts.
"I need their love," he says. "And I need the love I have for them."
Wiesel has covered a lot of ground since his violin-playing days in Sighet. He didn't become the musician his father once dreamed about, but Shlomo Wiesel would most definitely be proud of his boy.
Contact Jessica Ravitz at jravitz@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">jravitz@sltrib.com or 801-257-8776. Send comments to religion editor at religioneditor@sltrib.com" Target="_BLANK">religioneditor@sltrib.com.