MENDEL: What shall we play? BERISH: Can I choose? MENDEL: Of course; it’s your theater. MARIA: Long live theater...What’s theater? BERISH: When you d… - Elie Wiesel

What I don't like today is, to put it coarsely, the phony Hasidism, the phony mysticism. Many students say, "Teach me mysticism." It's a joke.

When a state declares war on individuals, that means that something is wrong with that state. Then we have to find another concept of sanctuary. What is it ? Here again I come to my Jewish tradition, and with delight I discover that when we speak of sanctuary in the Jewish tradition, it refers to human beings. Sanctuary, then, is not a place. Sanctuary is a human being. Any human being is a sanctuary. Every human being is a dwelling of God — man or woman or child, Christian or Jewish or Buddhist. Any person, by virtue of being a son or daughter of humanity, is a living sanctuary whom nobody has the right to invade.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.