The Lost Notebooks of Elie Wiesel’s Mysterious Mentor

In more than one of his works, Elie Wiesel mentions a “Mr. Shushani” (or Chouchani), whom he knew in Paris after World War II. Wiesel describes him as a polymath of extraordinary erudition and intelligence, who “looked like a hobo turned clown, or a clown playing a hobo” and who kept his personal history shrouded in mystery. Yet Wiesel considered himself Shushani’s student, as did the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. No less a figure than Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook praised Shushani’s intellectual abilities. The National Library of Israel has recently acquired some 50 notebooks that belonged to Shushani, in which he recorded his reflections on Jewish theology and numerous other topics. Zack Rothbart writes: