Who is rosh hashanah in the book night

Following Tibi and Yossi, Elie runs past Dr. Mengele to demonstrate his strength and healthy resilience. Days after the selection, the Blockaelteste, the leader of the block, calls Elie's father and nine others from Block 36 for a second examination.

Fearful that he will never see Elie again, Chlomo bequeaths his son a knife and spoon, a pitiful inheritance. At the end of the workday, the old man jubilantly reclaims his belongings. Enfeebled by camp life, Akiba loses hope because he realizes that he cannot pass selection and requests that his friends recite the Kaddish in his memory. Three days later, work and punishment become so insufferable that Akiba's friends forget their promise.

In winter, authorities provide warmer clothes, but work conditions and night temperatures torment inmates. In the middle of January , Elie enters the hospital to undergo surgery to drain pus from the sole of his right foot. A Hungarian Jew warns Elie to leave the ward before the sickest patients are selected for death. To Elie's apprehensive questions, the kindly Jewish surgeon promises that Elie will recover in two weeks. Two days after the surgery, rumors and the sound of guns indicate that the Red Army is approaching.

The next day, the SS evacuate inmates to central Germany. Hindered by swelling that won't fit into his shoe, Elie consults with his father. Winter arrives and the prisoners truly start to know what it is to be cold. Christmas and New Year's pass. In January, Eliezer 's foot swells. He goes to see a doctor—a Jew and a fellow prisoner.

The doctor tells him he needs an immediate operation or else amputation will soon be necessary. This doctor seems to have Eliezer's best interests at heart, unlike the dentist who examined him earlier. The surgery is successful, and two days later Eliezer hears a rumor that the Red Army is only hours away and that the camp is being evacuated and the invalids will be left behind. However, Eliezer 's neighbor in the hospital tells him that the invalids will be killed and sent to the crematorium.

Eliezer doesn't know what to believe, but doesn't want to be separated from his father. He and is father confer—the doctor could enter his father onto the hospital roll as a patient and they could wait for the Russians. Eventually, they decide to leave with the evacuation. Eliezer and his father are again forced to make what could be a life-or-death decision without having reliable information to work with.

Their decision not to stay behind seems reasonable—since the Nazis are continually killing and burning people who are no longer useful to them, they might dispatch with the invalids. After the war, Eliezer learns that those who stayed in the hospital were liberated by the Russian Army two days later.

Once again, it seems as if God has played a cruel trick on them. Eliezer spends the night back in his block. The prisoners are given bread and margarine for the trip ahead. The next morning, the prisoners, wearing every layer of clothing they can find, are about ready to leave when the head of the block orders them to clean their living space, to show the liberating army that "there were men living here and not pigs.

The prisoners make an effort to assert their humanity In Jewish tradition, the High Holidays are the time of divine judgment.

According to the prayer book, Jews pass before God on Rosh Hashanah like sheep before the shepherd, and God determines who will live and who will die in the coming year. In the concentration camps, Eliezer hints, a horrible reversal has taken place. All the prisoners pass before Dr. Mengele, the notoriously cruel Nazi doctor, and he determines who is condemned to death and who can go on living. After losing his faith, Drumer resigns himself to death.

Wiesel seems to affirm that life without faith or hope of some kind is empty. Yet, even in rejecting God, Eliezer and his fellow Jews cannot erase God from their consciousness. Though he has supposedly lost his faith in God, Akiba Drumer requests that Eliezer say the Kaddish on his behalf; clearly religion still holds some power over him.

That was an understatement. Several days pass and they learn that a new list of prisoner numbers has been selected for death. His father is rushed, trying to tell his son everything he wants to say before he dies. As they say goodbye that day, his father gives him a knife and a spoon—the family inheritance.

But at last, he takes them and marches off with the construction group. That night, he returns to find his father is still alive, having passed the second selection. Eliezer gives the knife and spoon back to his dad. Akiba Drumer, one of their fellow prisoners, is selected. He asks them to remember to say the Kaddish for him after he dies. They promise… but they forget to say the Kaddish.