4.0
The Tale of a Niggun
By Elie Wiesel & Mark Podwal &Publisher Description
Elie Wiesel’s heartbreaking narrative poem about history, immortality, and the power of song, accompanied by magnificent full-color illustrations by award-winning artist Mark Podwal. Based on an actual event that occurred during World War II.
It is the evening before the holiday of Purim, and the Nazis have given the ghetto’s leaders twenty-four hours to turn over ten Jews to be hanged to “avenge” the deaths of the ten sons of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, which celebrates the triumph of the Jews of Persia over potential genocide some 2,400 years ago. If the leaders refuse, the entire ghetto will be liquidated. Terrified, they go to the ghetto’s rabbi for advice; he tells them to return the next morning. Over the course of the night the rabbi calls up the spirits of legendary rabbis from centuries past for advice on what to do, but no one can give him a satisfactory answer. The eighteenth-century mystic and founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, tries to intercede with God by singing a niggun—a wordless, joyful melody with the power to break the chains of evil.
The next evening, when no volunteers step forward, the ghetto’s residents are informed that in an hour they will all be killed. As the minutes tick by, the ghetto’s rabbi teaches his assembled community the song that the Baal Shem Tov had sung the night before. And then the voices of these men, women, and children soar to the heavens.
How can the heavens not hear?
It is the evening before the holiday of Purim, and the Nazis have given the ghetto’s leaders twenty-four hours to turn over ten Jews to be hanged to “avenge” the deaths of the ten sons of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, which celebrates the triumph of the Jews of Persia over potential genocide some 2,400 years ago. If the leaders refuse, the entire ghetto will be liquidated. Terrified, they go to the ghetto’s rabbi for advice; he tells them to return the next morning. Over the course of the night the rabbi calls up the spirits of legendary rabbis from centuries past for advice on what to do, but no one can give him a satisfactory answer. The eighteenth-century mystic and founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, tries to intercede with God by singing a niggun—a wordless, joyful melody with the power to break the chains of evil.
The next evening, when no volunteers step forward, the ghetto’s residents are informed that in an hour they will all be killed. As the minutes tick by, the ghetto’s rabbi teaches his assembled community the song that the Baal Shem Tov had sung the night before. And then the voices of these men, women, and children soar to the heavens.
How can the heavens not hear?
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities6 Reviews
4.0
Lenore
Created almost 3 years agoShare
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Sanexiah
Created over 3 years agoShare
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Dipcarroll
Created over 3 years agoShare
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“I liked the addition of a small glossary in the back. This was an easy read and the illustrations enhanced the book and did not detract from the story.”
Jess_mango
Created almost 4 years agoShare
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“Elie Wiesel is best known for his Night trilogy, in which he tells of his experience as a Jewish young man in nazi camps during WWII. Night is one of my all time top reads. It is very powerful.
Wiesel's The Tale of a Niggun is a narrative poem about the WWII experience of Jews in the ghettos of Europe. On the eve of the Purim holiday the leaders of a Jewish ghetto are trying to grapple with the demands of the Nazis that 10 Jewish be handed over to by hung in order to avenge the death of the 10 sons of Haman, the villain from the Purim story. The rabbi in this poem calls on spirits of past rabbis to help guide him in this difficult decision. This is a story of morality, faith, religion, loyalty, and preservation. Lovely, emotional, and powerful.
Thank you to the publisher for the review copy.”
Sandra Harnum
Created about 4 years agoShare
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“Thanks to the publisher for the e-ARC. It is a lengthy read, but an important one. A poem of great importance to teach empathy and respect. It has a great introduction which sets the tone and the illustrations accompany the poem well. This poem would be good for a suggested reading list while reading one of the author's other pieces of literature too. It is important to never forget the struggles that we face as human beings and the historical events that have shaped our world today. We must never forget. Readers will enjoy this book - and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to read it. Thanks, NetGalley!”
About Elie Wiesel
The author of more than sixty works of fiction and nonfiction, ELIE WIESEL was awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the French Legion of Honor's Grand Cross, an honorary knighthood of the British Empire and, in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University for forty years, until his death in 2016.
MARK PODWAL has written and illustrated more than a dozen books, and has illustrated more than two dozen works by such authors as Elie Wiesel, Heinrich Heine, Harold Bloom, and Francine Prose. King Solomon and His Magic Ring, a collaboration with Wiesel, received the Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators, and You Never Know, a collaboration with Prose, received a National Jewish Book Award. His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prague's National Gallery, and the Jewish museums in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and New York, among other venues. Honors he has received include being named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Gratias Agit Prize from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
MARK PODWAL has written and illustrated more than a dozen books, and has illustrated more than two dozen works by such authors as Elie Wiesel, Heinrich Heine, Harold Bloom, and Francine Prose. King Solomon and His Magic Ring, a collaboration with Wiesel, received the Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators, and You Never Know, a collaboration with Prose, received a National Jewish Book Award. His art is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Prague's National Gallery, and the Jewish museums in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, and New York, among other venues. Honors he has received include being named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Gratias Agit Prize from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Other books by Elie Wiesel
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