Night

It shattered a lot of my standard religious understanding, and I spent the rest of the year, 95% of the time, just reading feverishly Yad Vashem.

Sometime near the end of that year, sometime I think in early 1962, I came across this book called Night by Elie Wiesel, and I was, of course, very moved by it, but I had no idea who he was or where he was.

I decided to get the book.

I couldn't get a copy in Israel, and I came back.

Well, I expressed my appreciation in the introduction to Notre Dame Press.

I think, again, you know, that's one of the dangers.

Night is so moving and so powerful, you're tempted to stop reading Rizal with that one piece.

But he was not only prolific, but evolving.

Templeton remained in Canada for the rest of his life, working as a writer and news commentator.

In 1996, he published his final book, Farewell to God, My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith.

What happened to Charles Templeton? Why did he abandon the faith that had once been the cornerstone of his life? I was fascinated by his story, so in 1999, I called him at his home in Toronto.

I remember that he answered the phone with his very rich, deliberate voice.

And you'd better pay attention because if you don't, all of the ethical teaching of Jesus is not going to do you a good of good.

You have to respond to the good news about Jesus who's come into this world.

In his classic book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis explored the identity of Jesus and the popular opinion that while he was a great moral teacher, we cannot accept his claim to be God.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

For those of you who don't know, his father, Elie Wiesel, famously survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

He wrote a very famous book about this called Night, and he won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

So that's why there is a foundation sort of carrying on his legacy.

Given Elisha, his son's sort of dual role between, again, former CIO of Goldman Sachs and current chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation, we talk about lots of different things.

Mm-hmm.

He had a very specific reaction to a lot of this when he and I spoke about his legacy before he passed.

For example, he never wanted there to be a movie made about Night because he never wanted-

Oh, interesting

"They pulled every book that the school had added to its collection at the request of newly hired library assistant Quinn Krebsbach." [laughs] Ol' Quinn had an itinerary it sounds like [laughs].

Uh, "the assistant principal wrote in an email act, uh, last October, quote, 'I need to see the inventory of books that you ordered this year, and I need you to bring all the new books that you ordered to my room.' The inventory included Charlotte's Web, Gender Queer, The Bluest Eye, A Wrinkle in Time, uh, Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night, and the John Deere Farm to Table Kids Cookbook." Yeah, I could see where that one would really be, uh, uh, messing kids up.

Banned Books Week is an annual awareness campaign by the American Library Association to mark the event.

Last October, Krebsbach drew images of 10 frequently banned books like Gender Queer and set the display near the high-traffic checkout area used by all 500 or so students in the K through 12 school.

A brilliant, brilliant, brilliant concept.

All right, as we wrap it up right there, the good doctor is a published author.

He has The Little Book of Big Medical Emergencies, one that started it all, The Park Avenue Diet, The Invisible Worm That Flies in the Night, and his latest, The Mystery of the Neuromuscular Junction.

You can find him as the chief medical correspondent for the National Enquirer.