Elie Wiesel is one of the fore­most Jew­ish authors of our time, known pri­mar­i­ly for his lit­er­a­ture describ­ing the Shoah, the Holo­caust, and for con­vey­ing knowl­edge of the Jew­ish and Hasidic her­itage. Open Heart opens a com­plete­ly new chap­ter in Wiesel’s oeu­vre. Faced with a diag­no­sis that will require open heart surgery, he reflects on his life and his career. The chal­lenge of seri­ous surgery brings him to eval­u­ate what he has achieved in a remark­able life, and to come to grips with the work that he still wish­es to com­plete. Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, Wiesel writes with humil­i­ty and in a voice that res­onates for us all as we face our mor­tal­i­ty. In many of Wiesel’s works, he writes of Hasidic mas­ters and rab­bis who are known not only for what they teach but for how they live. In this book the author lives up to being a mas­ter role mod­el as he shows us how to eval­u­ate our lives to date and how to look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our life’s work and mission.