response

This entry is a response to the comment that was made below, which was in turn a response to my most recent blog entry:

I don't know who you are. I may know you, but I don't know who you are based on your screen name. It really doesn't matter. I don't know whether to thank you, or to apologize. I would thank you for reading Wiesel and for allowing it to touch you so profoundly. I would apologize for being the catalyst that led you to read Night and for inviting you into such a dark and evil place and time.

Years ago I was having dinner with my best friend. I was so excited about teaching the evil and suffering course. She told me that for years she has been trying to figure out why I had such a fascination with the topic and why I insisted on teaching this particular course. Then she said, "Finally I have figured it out." I said, "You have? Then please tell me." She said, "You are committed to teaching that course because you have tremendous faith." I said, "Who? ME?" She said, "Yes. You have tremendous faith in your students; that when they encounter suffering, they will be moved to compassion. And that when they are confronted with evil, they will recognize it and will not tolerate it." And because she knows me better than any other person in the world, of course she was right. And my faith in humanity is affirmed again and again by people like you and by my students, who consistently and repeatedly prove my other friend wrong; the one who said that compassion and altruism were rare traits in human beings. He was just wrong.