The Trial of God: (as it was held on February 25, 1649, in Shamgorod)

The Trial of God: (as it was held on February 25, 1649, in Shamgorod)

<b><i>The Trial of God (as it was held on February 25, 1649, in Shamgorod)<br /></i>A Play by Elie Wiesel<br />Translated by Marion Wiesel<br />Introduction by Robert McAfee Brown<br />Afterword by Matthew Fox<br /></b> <br /><i>Where is God when innocent human beings suffer? This drama lays bare the most vexing questions confronting the moral imagination.<br /></i> <br />Set in a Ukranian village in the year 1649, this haunting play takes place in the aftermath of a pogrom. Only two Jews, Berish the innkeeper and his daughter Hannah, have survived the brutal Cossack raids. When three itinerant actors arrive in town to perform a Purim play, Berish demands that they stage a mock trial of God instead, indicting Him for His silence in the face of evil. Berish, a latter-day Job, is ready to take on the role of prosecutor. But who will defend God? A mysterious stranger named Sam, who seems oddly familiar to everyone present, shows up just in time to volunteer.<br /> <br />The idea for this play came from an event that Elie Wiesel witnessed as a boy in Auschwitz: “Three rabbis—all erudite and pious men—decided one evening to indict God for allowing His children to be massacred. I remember: I was there, and I felt like crying. But there nobody cried.”<br /> <br />Inspired and challenged by this play, Christian theologians Robert McAfee Brown and Matthew Fox, in a new Introduction and Afterword, join Elie Wiesel in the search for faith in a world where God is silent.<br /><br /><br /><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>