Levinas said: “Shoshani? there is no other subject”. (in the book of S. Malka in French “Monsieur Chouchani: L’énigme d’un maitre du XXe siècle”)
Levinas a dit: “Chouchani ? il n’y a pas d’autre sujet”. (source : dans le livre de S. Malka “Monsieur Chouchani : L’énigme d’un maitre du XXe siècle”)
פרופ’ לוינס אמר : “שושני ? אין נושא (סובייקט) אחר (מקור: מתוך הספר מאת שלמה מלכה “מר שושני”, שעדיין לא תורגם לעברית
Emile Sebban (zal) about his study with Mister Shoshani : “The first day, he explained the text that
we studied. The next day he undid what he had taught the day before and offered a completely new way to understand the text. He did the same the next day and so on, until we move to the next text. ”
Emile Sebban (zal) sur son étude avec Monsieur Chouchani : « Le premier jour, il expliquait le texte que nous avions étudié. Le lendemain, il défaisait ce qu’il avait enseigné la veille et proposait une manière entièrement nouvelle de comprendre le texte. Il faisait de même le jour d’après et ainsi de suite, jusqu’à ce que nous passions au texte suivant. »
Elie Wiesel wrote: “Even if all his disciples, everywhere, were to begin speaking about him – and nobody else – we would not know more about who he really was, about what shadows he fled or sought, or the nature of his power and torment.”
According to many witnesses in Uruguay, Jorge Luis Borges was secretly learning with Professor Shoshani in Montevideo.
Here is a short story about that:
http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/wp-content/files_mf/6680.pdf
Levinas says in an interview:
“I am extremely grateful for what I learned from him [Shoshani]. In a haggadic text of the treatise 
Pirke Avoth, there is this phrase: “The words of the sages are like glowing embers.” One can ask, why embers, why not flame? Because it only becomes a flame when one knows how to blow on it! I have hardly learned to blow. There are always great minds who contest this manner of blowing. They say, “You see, he draws out of the text what is not in the text. He forces a meaning into it.” But if one does it with Goethe, with Valery, with Corneille, the critics accept it. It appears more scandalous to them when one does it with regard to Scripture. And one has to have met Shoshani in order not to be convinced by these critical minds. Shoshani taught me: what is essential is that the meaning found merits, by its wisdom, the research that reveals it. That the text had suggested it to you.”
In an interview of Elie Wiesel in 1978:
INTERVIEWER
What about Rav Mordechai Shushani? Where did you and he meet?
WIESEL
We met in Paris and I stayed with him for several years. He was a strange man. A genius who looked like a bum, or a clown. He pushed me to the abyss. But he believed in that. One day I am going to write a monograph about him. His concept was to shock, to shake you up, to push you further and further. If you don’t succeed, too bad. But you must risk it. If I had stayed with him longer, I don’t know what would have happened.
INTERVIEWER
Did he push anybody over the abyss?
WIESEL
He did. I heard stories later when I began picking up pieces looking for him. He did it with the best of intentions. Few people have had such an influence on my life as he did.
INTERVIEWER
Who were the others?
WIESEL
Here and there a teacher, a friend. But he is probably the strongest. He’s the opposite of Professor Saul Lieberman, who is no longer alive, but whom I considered to be the greatest Jewish scholar of his day. One cannot study the Talmud without the help of his commentaries. He was my friend and my teacher. Shushani, on the other hand, was not my friend. Surely he possessed a certain strength and power; so did Professor Lieberman—but his was not frightening.
His disciple Emmanuel Levinas says about Mister Shushani that he was not impressed at first sight by the man. But after this first meeting he said “I don’t know what this man knows, but what I do know is that everything that I know – he also knows it.”
Levinas admired Shushani for the rest of his life.
תלמידו עמנואל לווינס מספר שכשראהו לראשונה לא גםהתרשם ממראהו, אך לאחר פגישה זו אמר “איני יודע מה האיש הזה יודע, אבל מה שאני כן יודע : כל מה שאני יודע – הוא גם כן יודע”. לוינס העריץ את שושני עד סוף ימיו.
Son élève Emmanuel Levinas raconte que lorsqu’il l’a rencontré pour la première fois, il n’était à première vue pas très impressionné par le personnage.
Mais juste après cette rencontre il a dit “Je ne sais pas ce que cet homme sait, mais ce que je sais c’est : tout ce que je sais – il le sait aussi.”
Levinas a admiré Chouchani jusqu’à la fin de sa vie.
Our movie about Mr. Shoshani / Monsieur Chouchani / מר שושני
חידת שושני - הנווד שידע הכול
סרטו של מיכאל גרינשפן
THE SHOSHANI RIDDLE
The Wanderer Who Knew It All
A film by Michael Grynszpan
If you want to contact us, please send an email to contactfilm AT chouchani.com
contactfilm STRUDEL chouchani.comאם רצונכם ליצור קשר איתנו, אנא שלחו אימייל ל