Volume 67, Issue 7

Is it Worth Reading? I’ll Be the Judge of That!
by Jesse Mandell

The Judges: A Novel
By Elie Wiesel
Knopf, 2002
Hardcover; $24.00; 224 Pages

Sentimental homme de letters Elie Wiesel reaches new levels of flawed rhetoric and novel depths of nebulous moral mêlée in his latest book, The Judges.  Wiesel’s latest attempt at exploring the nature of humanity is at least insufficient and at most a failure.  That’s disappointing, because the majority of his thirty-nine other books and plays are, for the most part, brilliant works that reflect the incredible mind of a man who walked through hell and lived to tell about it.  The book is pedestrian in nature and has none of the relevance or intensity of, say, his breathtaking memoir Night or the morality play The Beggar of Jerusalem.

In The Judges, Wiesel crafts an implausible and unrealistic story about a plane en route to Tel Aviv that is forced, due to inclement weather, to land in a small, snowbound town in Connecticut.  The kindly townsfolk host the passengers of the plane in their homes for the evening, where a strange, mysterious man, who refers to himself as simply “The Judge,” and his hunchback disciple, receive five particularly unlucky souls. Yes, a hunchback – à la your favorite midnight movie.

These five characters live turbulent and tragic lives, and are forced by the judge to reveal – both to him and to the other four guests – personal details about their wretched history.  The judge then tells them that they must adjudicate and decide, by the following morning, which one of them is the “least worthy” and deserves to die.  The guests thereupon reflect on their lives, whether or not they are happy and what they would have liked to do differently.

The guest that occupies most of the book’s attention is Razziel, a former political prisoner with no knowledge or memory of his life before he was incarcerated, and who is now the head of a yeshiva in Brooklyn. He mourns deeply over the loss of his wife, Kali, and, before his plane landed in Connecticut, was on his way to meeting an enigmatic figure named Paritus who claims to have information concerning his former life and who may or may not be an immortal Talmudic scholar of the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, however, Wiesel never fully explains or develops the details of this relationship, rendering it vaporous and inscrutable, even though it constitutes a central facet of the plot.

The supporting cast is also relatively flat, with their characters verging on clichés at best and paper dolls at worse. They include Bruce, the seducer and playboy who has made a career of ruining relationships with women and, in turn, their lives; George, the boring archivist who recently discovered a document revealing the Nazi past of a prominent European politician; Yoav, the terminally ill, perpetually forlorn, yet stern Israeli army officer; and Claudia, a press agent who has left her husband to find a new man.

Strangely, though there is extensive discussion among the guests concerning what they consider the most prudent course of action, they all resign themselves to the judge’s mysterious goals, and do not even attempt to escape because of the snowstorm outside.  Instead, they simply decide to talk and wait out the night, allowing Wiesel to place assorted philosophical musings in their mouths that no normal person would ever say.  In so doing, The Judges attempts to provide an intense and personal discussion of life and death on the one hand, and good and evil on the other; the resulting product, however, is trite and confusing, examining standard moral issues that would have already been discussed thoroughly by anyone who has taken an introductory philosophy course.

Considering Elie Wiesel’s proud literary history, The Judges hopefully constitutes nothing more than an aberration. ♦

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