The highly respected Greek philosopher Aristotle, born in 384 BCE and died at age 62 in 322, was a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. In his Poetics. he states that the principal effect of good tragedy literature is the purging of emotions, especially pity and fear. He called this catharsis.

Catharsis is a metaphor derived from the Greek medical term katharsis, which means “purgation” or “purification.” Aristotle contended that tragedy arouses terror and pity and thereby affects the catharsis of these emotions. A reader of a tragedy or observer of a tragic play or film enjoys a good drama and then feels good and at ease.

The German playwright Bertolt Brecht, born in 1898 and died at age 58 in 1956, disagreed. He was a Marxist who hated capitalism. He is considered the most influential playwright of the 20th century. He felt that if audiences experienced an extreme emotion followed by a release of stress, as Aristotle claimed, it would benefit no one. The well-controlled and well-behaved citizen has neither improved himself nor society.

Brecht felt the drama should do the opposite. It should build tension, moral concern, and outrage and prompt the audience to take action to resolve the social problems that produced the tragedy. Viewers should be prompted by what they see or read to question life and the world. His plays are called “epic theatre,” performances that encourage viewers to think objectively about the issues presented. One of his most famous statements should surprise no one: “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good.”

His 1939 play Mother Courage and Her Children is considered his most acclaimed play and one of the best plays ever written. It is a perfect anti-war presentation. It raises questions about capitalism. The play describes the Thirty Years’ War during the first half of the seventeenth century. It tells of the many deaths and hardships and explains how neutral countries profited from the war. It insists that conflicts lead to disasters and a coarsening of humanity. Rather than leaving its audience feeling good, the play raises many questions, such as: Was the mother really courageous? What is courage? Why didn’t she help her children? What is a mother’s responsibility?

The famous 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Elie Wiesel, who also deserved a Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in 1928 and died at 87 in 2016. He also wrote his 57 books to stir the imagination and acts of his readers. He suffered in some Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The Nazis murdered his family. His most famous quote is: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.” His goal to encourage questions, concerns, anger, and action earned him the Nobel Prize and many others. People should read his books. They are masterpieces.

I agree with Brecht and Wiesel that tragedies should not relieve emotions, as Aristotle claimed. I interpret the Torah in my many books with this idea.

The purpose of the Torah is to raise questions and provoke thinking and action, not answers. The goal of the acts is the betterment of the world, of respect for all humans, animals, plants, and all that God created or formed.

In short, when we read good literature, we should question what we read and why something is happening. We should seek to be stimulated by our reading to change and improve ourselves and everything. Is what we read proper? Should it have been done differently? Just as the patriarch Abraham questions God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. Should he have also asked God why He planned to kill innocent children? Why was Lot’s wife killed when she turned to see the destruction of Sodom?

This is not easy. The more we know, the more questions we have. But study is necessary. Formal schooling was never meant to end learning when we leave the school building. Schools teach only the basics, even to PhDs. What we learned when we were younger must be added to. In less than forty days, I will be age 89, and despite having many post-graduate degrees, I study daily.