Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Elie Wiesel: Jew­ish, Lit­er­ary, and Moral Per­spec­tives (Steven T. Katz and Alan Rosen, eds.), pub­lished by Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty Press in May, explores the var­i­ous aspects of Wiesels mul­ti­fact­ed career, includ­ing his texts on the Bible, the Tal­mud, and Hasidism as well as his lit­er­ary works, his teach­ing, and his tes­ti­mo­ny.” We asked Janet Rabi­now­itch, for­mer direc­tor of IU Press, to share the back­sto­ry behind the paint­ing on the book’s cover: 

Artist Mark Podwal’s jack­et paint­ing depicts works by Elie Wiesel. The works illus­trat­ed, as described by Pod­w­al, are, from left to right and row by row: One Gen­er­a­tion After (a sto­ry about a watch belong­ing to EW that was buried in Sighet); The Oath (about a burned shtetl); The Jews of Silence (Russ­ian Jew­ry); Souls on Fire (Rab­bi Nachman’s chair); King Solomon and His Mag­ic Ring (a pome­gran­ate, based on one of Podwal’s illus­tra­tions for an edi­tion of this work); Ani Maamin (a sho­far, since one of the 10 rea­sons the sho­far is sound­ed is that one day it will sound when the Mes­si­ah comes); A Beg­gar in Jerusalem; Night; Mes­sen­gers of God (a Torah); The Golem (Prague’s Alt­neuschul); and A Passover Hag­gadah.. The orig­i­nal paint­ing was com­mis­sioned by Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty as a gift to Elie Wiesel. It hangs framed in his home.


View past Book Cov­er of the Week” posts here.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor and now CEO, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.