Rereading Night and rethinking baptism

I had work to do the other day, but I set it aside to reread Elie Wiesel’s Night as a way to mark the great man’s death and remember his life.

While I was struck by passages I anticipated, like his account of how his belief was shattered upon seeing the furnaces of Auschwitz—“Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever”—it was an unexpected line that caught me, given a current news story I’d been following.

Donald Trump recently tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton among piles of $100 bills and a six-pointed star bearing the words, “Most Corrupt Politician Ever.” Unsurprisingly, many have seen anti-Semitism in this image. The use of the six-pointed star suggests what one commentator called a “classic trope” of Jews and money and their influence in politics. It suggests that Hillary is not with us, but with them. She’s on their side, and (everyone knows) they’re corrupt.