Among Potok’s papers—which are housed in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, at the University of Pennsylvania—he kept a copy of Elie Wiesel’s 1966 article “My Teachers” and underlined the following lines in red ink: The “Shelishter Rebbe” told me one day: “Be careful with words, they’re dangerous. Beware of them. They beget demons or angels. It’s up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as to give free rein to words.”
