Religion In Elie Wiesel's The Color Of Water

Religion plays a fairly big part in many people’s lives. Ruth in The Color Of Water comes to terms with her religion (to be precise her former religion) through several defining moments including being restricted to do things by her parents, converting to Christianism and finally going back to her old synagogue. Along the way, Ruth gets more and more comfortable in her own skin and with who she is.

While being a little child and teenager Ruth got influenced pretty heavily by Judaism. Her father was a Rabbi and therefore extremely involved in everything. There were early signs of Ruth showing a certain kind of dislike against her religion – or at least parts of it. She seems to be kind of embarrassed by her food restriction when she’s visiting Frances at her house. Since she could only eat food that was kosher, there were always going to be inconveniences for her. She talks with horror about the way she had to watch her father kill animals in a way their religion allowed which lead to Ruth not eating meat well into her twenties. On her graduation day, Ruth is fighting herself because she doesn’t know whether or not she wants to walk into the church with Frances. On the one hand, she wants

Dennis is different from the other men she has dated in her life, him being black is the biggest difference. He was more mature than other guys, a characteristic she really appreciated about him. The older she got, the more Ruth realized how important Christianity is to her. After moving to New York, she needed something to believe in, something that would take the guilt away from her and make her feel better. Other than having a religion forced on her, like her parents did it with Judaism, she discovered Christianism for herself and didn’t feel pressured into doing anything. She started dating James and as the years went by, they opened up their own church which was a major step for someone like