How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck) by Wex, Michael (summer reading list txt) 📕

should be read like this: I was wrong? You were right? I should apologize?” The Jew is shot on the spot.

This type of ironic question, the kind that does not expect—or deserve—an answer, comes straight from the Talmud, and the tone of voice in which it is always delivered is redolent of Talmudic study to any native speaker of Yiddish.

A final example, one that takes us back to the origins of the ironic resignation that is so pronounced in Yiddish, involves the same Hillel whose words we have been looking at:

The school of Shammai and the school of Hillel disputed for two and a half years. The former said, “It would be better for human beings had they not been created,” and the latter said, “It is better for human beings to have been created than not to have been created.” It was finally decided: “It would have been better had human beings not been created, but since they have been created, let them examine their acts.”

(ERUVIN 13B)

It’s the typical ironic compromise. “It would have been better if you weren’t here, but since you are, you might as well feel bad about it.” This is the ancestor of such punch lines as “Steaks only cost a dollar at Schwartz’s, but he’s run out? Nu, when I run out, I sell them for fifty cents.” There is a kind of logic at work here that cannot be described as universal. We’re looking at a culture in which anybody can, and often does, say, “Sleep faster, we need the pillows,” or understand and repeat something like the following Hasidic story:

Rabbi Leib Dimimles of Lantzut was a wealthy merchant, and very learned in the Torah. It happened that he lost his money and was reduced to poverty. Rabbi Leib paid no heed to this calamity and continued his studies. His wife inquired: “How is it possible for you not to show the least anxiety?” The Rabbi answered: “The Lord gave me a brain which thinks rapidly. The worrying which another would do in a year, I have done in a moment.”

The difference between the cultural elite and the rest of the people was a matter of degree rather than kind, in this respect at least. Although a certain natural endowment might have been needed for someone to grow up to be a rabbi, this endowment was considered to be the common property of just about everybody—which is not the same as saying that everybody made use of it. Aside from such obvious exceptions as the mentally handicapped, these intellectual attainments were felt to be within the theoretical reach of everyone; prolonged study was thought to depend more on economics and disposition than innate ability, which was generally taken for granted—an opinion that seems to have been borne out by the rapid progress of the children of working-class Jewish immigrants in the learned professions in the United States and elsewhere. Aside from access to a university system, the decisive factor was time to study: Tsu a gutn kop muz men hobn a gutn okher, for a good head, you need a good behind. This is the Yiddish version of Blaise Pascal’s remark that all human unhappiness stems from the inability to sit still in a room. The patience to labor over a problem until it is solved, the self-discipline to sit and concentrate on a book, help to train our innate seykhl by sharpening the ability to infer and work things out.

“If a guest coughs, it means that he needs a spoon.” This proverb provides a nice example of the kind of seykhl that mentshn use. The guest, someone passing through town who has no place of his own to spend a Sabbath or holiday, can do nothing with the soup that is sitting in front of him because there’s no spoon at his place. Inviting a guest home for a meal is still considered one of those mitzvahs that is its own reward (especially if you get a really interesting guest who’s got some good stories to tell), and the competition to get one on a Friday night could be fierce. The guest is therefore mindful of the embarrassment that even a polite request for a spoon could cause the householder and his wife. Not wishing to whiten the face of his host by calling attention to a failing, he chooses to cough instead.

The householder, who is as well versed in this way of communicating as the guest, knows that the cough is a way of not speaking. If the guest won’t talk, there must be something that he would prefer not to say. The host looks to where the guest is sitting, tries to figure out what’s wrong, and finally says, “Darling, why don’t we give our guest a spoon.” The problem is solved with almost no words being spoken.

The premium put on intelligence could lead to near-Holmesian powers of working things out. Menachem Mendel, the Rebbe of Kotzk in Poland, once had a very beautiful esreg, the lemonlike citron that is used in the ritual of Sukkes, the Feast of Booths. People go far out of their way and often well beyond what they can comfortably afford to get themselves the most beautiful esreg they can find, especially since an esreg with any kind of flaw is not valid for ritual use; even the ugly ones are beautiful, and the beautiful, it is said, are sublime. The Kotzker was so proud of this esreg of his that he showed it to all his students. They praised it and agreed with the Rebbe that it really was unusually beautiful. Noticing that one of his more prominent students, Wolf Landau, was absent, the Rebbe sent the esreg off for his inspection. Landau, who later became the Rebbe of Strykov, looked the esreg over and pronounced it flawed.

Checking the esreg again, the other students finally noticed a tiny flaw that they had