I feel so much better about the world after reading the 25th chapter of The Machiavellians, James Burnham’s 1942 masterpiece. He points out that the struggle for social power, not the common good, is the proper subject of political science; that words cannot be taken at face value; that logic plays a minor role in political and social change; that what’s most important is the division between the ruled (the non-elite) and the ruling class (the elite), whose primary object is always to maintain its own power and privilege. Yes, it is a relief to see things as they are; now I can get on with my life.
To be sure, Burnham doesn’t claim that all systems of government are the same. The liberty to criticize the elite, upward mobility, and guarantees against arbitrary treatment distinguish a free society. While he points out that “democratic” self-rule is hooey, he acknowledges that suffrage can sometimes run one set of rascals out of power.
Now that I’m done with politics, I can move on to one of the fundamental duties of being an erring human, an obligation so important that it is enshrined in the holiest day of the Jewish year: the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. On this day, good people apologize to everyone they have harmed or offended--and in the Eastern European tradition, to share a piece of torte. Sholom Aleichem, peace be with you, has some wry stories about Yom Kippur. Here, from “The Day Before Yom Kippur: Sketches of Disappearing Types,” is the tale of Noah-Wolf the Butcher.
If the day before Yom Kippur were three times as long as it is, it would not be long enough for Noah-Wolf the butcher to finish his work in time for the evening services.
And this is his work: he has to apologize to a townful of people for his year’s misdeeds. He has to go to all the customers who buy meat from him, all the neighbors who live in the same street with him or have their shops near his, or sit close to him in the butchers’ synagogue.
There is not a person in our town with whom Noah-Wolf has not had an argument at one time or another. Not that Noah-Wolf is such an evil person, but he undoubtedly has, as he himself says, an ugly temper. He simply has to fight with people.
If you come into his shop for some meet, you are met with a pailful of cold water. And he cannot even tell you why.
A housewife comes in. “Reb Noah-Wolf, do you have any fresh meat today?”
And he answers: “How should I have fresh meat? If you want rotten meat, you can get it.”
Or, “Noah-Wolf, give me a good portion.”
“I’ll give you just the kind of portion you deserve.”
Or this: “What kind of carcass are you giving me, Noah-Wolf! Look at it!”
“What does a carcass like you know about carcasses?”
That is how Noah-Wolf treats his customers, the housewives themselves. So how would you expect him to treat the servant girls? When one of them has to go to his shop, she curses her fate. She knows what a greeting she can expect. Either he will slap her across the face with a beef tongue, or he’ll fit her market basket over her head, or he’ll simply chase her out.
“Get out of here! Go to some other shop! There are enough butchers without me!”
Nevertheless one thing has nothing to do with another. Noah-Wolf the butcher may be stubborn and eccentric, and yet his customers won’t go anywhere else, because they know that he is the most honorable butcher in town. If he tells you that the meat was slaughtered yesterday, you know that it is so. And if he promises you some sweetbreads, or a piece of lung, or a neat’s foot for Saturday, you can sleep in peace. The lung or the foot is as good as yours. Furthermore, he will never connive with your servant girl to rob you behind your back. And he won’t combine with other butchers to raise their prices. That is why the servant girls slander him, and the other butchers would like to drown him in a spoonful of water. He sticks in their throats like a bone. He is a stubborn man. If he makes up his mind on anything, he’s like an ox being dragged to slaughter. You can’t make him budge.
And he even looks like an ox. He is tall and broad and red-faced, and his hands are enormous. When he raises his cleaver to split a side of meat, he does it so ferociously as if the ox or cow had committed some crime and had been condemned to be chopped to pieces by him in person.
“That man is a murderer!” they say in our town, and there are grown people who are actually afraid of him.
But if all year long he gets under your skin, he changes with the coming of the New Year. Then you would hardly recognize him. He becomes someone else, pious, God-fearing, virtuous, and sees omens in everything. He stops fighting with the other butchers, becomes soft as butter toward his customers, is considerate to the servant girls, becomes so unctuous you could almost spread him over a boil. Even when he chops his meat, now he does it differently, not murderously as before, but gently, mercifully. A different Noah-Wolf altogether.
The day before Yom Kippur he locks up very early (he had said his morning prayers when most of us were still asleep), puts on his holiday gabardine, and goes from house to house, to all his customers and neighbors, friends and acquaintances, to offer his apologies, to ask for pardon for the year’s misdeeds.
“Good yom-tev,” he says. “If anything I have said offended you, I want to apologize, and wish you a happy New Year.”
And they say to him: “The same to you, Noah-Wolf. May God pardon us all.”
And they invite him to sit down and they treat him to a piece of holiday torte.
— Favorite Tales of Sholom Aleichem. (New York: Avenel Books, 1985.) Translated by Julius and Frances Butwin. (Previously published separately as The Old Country and Tevye’s Daughters.)
Here’s a great little treatise on the art of apologizing.
Readers, if I anything I have said offended you, I want to apologize and wish you a happy New Year.
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