Journal Entry: "Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being."-- Elie Weisel

Today, we are going to read our journal prompt together. Your ipads are at your desk, I would like you to go to the voice memos app (it has a picture of a microphone with a red background) and start recording. As soon as you press record, I would not like you to touch the ipad until our conversation is over, unless instructed to look something up. As I read the text to you, I would like you to raise your hand and share any connections or related ideas you have. You may also raise your hand and ask any questions if you don't know what a word means, or don't understand a particular concept.

I have printed a copy of the text for each of you. Please feel free to respond to the text in writing on the back of your handout. When we are finished discussing the passage, I would like you and your table partner to think about what indifference looks like. Once you have an idea of what it looks like, use your iPad to find an image that represents your description. Finally, I want you to email me the picture you found with your first names in the subject header, and in the message, I would like you to include, "Indifference looks like ________because________."

The passage below is a series of excerpts taken from Elie Weisel's speech, The Perils of Indifference, that he gave as part of President Bill Clinton's Millennium Lecture series held in the White House. The full text can be read by clicking here.

Elie Weisel has earned his wrinkles.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.

What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a [warm cup of hot cocoa], as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.