Joseph Berger > Quotes

“The atmosphere in the hall is electric with anticipation, as it might be for Bruce Springsteen at a sold-out concert or at a public appearance at Buckingham Palace by the queen of England. Indeed, this hall is also packed with breathless and enthusiastic devotees. But the star the audience is waiting for is not a musician or a queen, but a simple-living, elderly rabbi—the Rebbe or grand rabbi of the exclusively Hasidic village of New Square, New York. And what he will do is not entertain but simply light a Chanukah menorah.”
― Joseph Berger, The Pious Ones

“It would not be an exaggeration on my part if I were to say that they greatly helped the genocidal nation prepare the psychological background for the disaster,” Wiesel said in the Hebrew manuscript, speaking of innocents like his relatives and some community leaders. “In fact the professional optimists meant to make the present easier, but in doing so they buried the future. It is almost certain that if we had only a little of the truth—dozens of Jews or more would have fled.”14”
― Joseph Berger, Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence