"Is God the Enemy? A Comparison of the Book of Job and Elie Wiesel's The Trial of God."
             Where is God when innocent human beings suffer? This question plagues the minds of people everywhere following disasters and the death of innocents. After the 9/11 attacks, people wondered to themselves why did these people have to die. This type of contemplation is nothing new, for people have been suffering for centuries, often needlessly. Elie Wiesel was a fifteen-year-old Jew who was sent to Auschwitz, a death camp in Nazi Poland. While he was there, he witnessed three Jewish scholars who put God on trial for crimes against humankind. Even after they convicted him, they all said their evening prayers. This duality of mankind's perception of God is what influenced Wiesel to write his play, "The Trial of God."
             This play was set in a 1649 Ukrainian village known as Shamgorod, shortly after a murderous pogrom. The survivors hold their own trial of God as a play in honor of the Jewish feast of Purim. Three minstrels, an innkeeper and his mental wreck of a daughter, along with a slut servant, an Orthodox priest, and a mysterious man in black make up the motley crew of participants in this tragic farce of a trial.
             The first problem these people encounter is the fact that nobody wants to play the role of God's defendant. The mysterious man in black, Sam, is the only one who takes up this challenge. At first, everyone in the play is eager to convict God of these crimes. However, the eloquent Sam makes a good case on God's behalf, giving excuses as to why God let these atrocities take place. As the trial progresses, the consensus changes and the jury leans toward acquitting God of his crimes against humanity.
             After the crowd makes its decision, Sam reveals himself to be Satan, and the townspeople charge into the inn and finish off the surviving Jews (This goes to show, never trust a man in black
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