"New Year, No Faith"

I chose the title "New Year, No Faith" for chapter five because in the beginning of the chapter Elie expresses the way he is truly feeling about God. In the beginning of the novel, Elie is extremely religious, always studying the Talmud and going to temple with his family. As the cattle car wheels begin to spin and the Jews find themselves in concentration camps controlled by the Germans, Elie's feelings towards God begin to change. After a year of being in these camps and going through such torturous conditions, Elie finds himself surrounded by Jews who are still praying to God in the new year. As if praying is going to change anything for them, as if it is going to bring them home. Elie feels that there is nothing left to pray to God for, or bless Him for. Should he really be thanking God for allowing his eyes to see such sights? The sight of the burning children and the smell of the flesh all around. All Elie wants to know is if there really is a God who loves him and the Jews that have always had faith in Him, why would he be letting the Germans treat them in such a horrible way?
As Elie is surrounded by the Jews who are praying to God on the eve of Rash Hashanah, he refuses to proclaim his faith like the other Jews. "Why, but why should I bless him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because he had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematories working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death?" (Wiesel 64) In this quote Elie is expressing the way he now feels about God. He is asking why God, if He loved him so much, would create such factories in this world, and why He would allow the Jews to live like this. If God was truly there for each and every one of the Jews, He would not allow them and their families to be killed and burned in the crematories. He may not even allow a crematory to exist. None of this would exist in Elie's world if God existed, not the factories, crematories, or camps. Elie has lost complete faith in his God and in ever being saved from the nightmare he is living in called the Holocaust.