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 Wiesel​’s 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.