We’ve bleated until our ears bled about the elements of apology: Acknowledging the offense, acknowledging its effect, expressing genuine remorse, explaining why and how said bad thing won’t happen again, and making reparation. Can you apologize well without doing all these things? MAYBE! Here’s a case in which the acknowledgement of the offense was really lacking, but all the steps thereafter were excellent. As a result, I say it qualifies as a good apology. (However, the Russian judge gives it a six.)

In 1838, a fellow named Charles Dickens wrote a delightful book called Oliver Twist.

The book’s portrayal of Fagin — the thieving, cheap, opportunistic old man who forces street urchins into a life of crime — is, shall we say, not a sympathetic depiction of a Jew. (The character Bill Sykes, himself not such a mensch, calls Fagin “the infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew.”)

Ron Moody, né Moodnick (really), center, in Oliver!

Fast-forward to 1860. Dickens’s home, Tavistock, was rented to a Jewish man named James Davis, whose wife, Eliza, began an epistolary relationship with Dickens. In 1863, she let Dickens know that Oliver Twist “encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew.” Dickens replied, NOT AT ALL DEFENSIVELY:

Friday Tenth July 1863

Dear Madam,

I hope you will excuse this tardy reply to your letter. It is often impossible for me by any means to keep pace with my correspondents.

I must take leave to say that if there be any general feeling on the part of the intelligent Jewish people, that I have done them what you describe as “a great wrong”, they are a far less sensible, a far less just, and a far less good tempered people than I have always supposed them to be. Fagin in Oliver Twist is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true of the time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew. But surely no sensible man or woman of your persuasion can fail to observe – firstly, that all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians; and secondly, that he is called “ The Jew”, not because of his religion, but because of his race. If I were to write a lie, I should do a very indecent and unjustifiable thing but I make mention of Fagin as the Jew, because he is one of the Jewish people, and because it conveys that kind of idea of him, which I should give my readers of a Chinaman by calling him a Chinese.

The enclosed is quite a nominal subscription towards the good object in which you are interested, but I hope it may serve to shew you that I have no feeling towards the Jewish people but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public, or in private, and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions as I ever had with them. And in my “Child’s History of England” I have lost no opportunity of setting forth their cruel persecution in old times.

Faithfully Yours
Charles Dickens

Letter from Dickens to Eliza Davis, University College London Library

Translation: But there are bad Christians in the book too! I love Jews! I wrote a book about how they used to be persecuted “in old times”! I have no issue with Fagin’s religion, only his race! (Uhhh…) Something something Chinaman, which I do not understand, but probably Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld would say the Jews and Chinese are the same anyway so this is really irrelevant! (But email us if you can explain what Dickens was talking about!) Also, here’s some money! (Presumably Mrs. Davis had asked him to donate to a charity in the letter Dickens was responding to. Nice multi-tasking, Eliza.)

So, presumably not a satisfying response for Mrs. Davis. (And not an apology at all.) But then Dickens actually took action. When the book was reprinted in 1867, Dickens began making changes in the text. Dickens cut approximately 180 references to “Fagin the Jew” (changing them to just “Fagin” or “he” or “him”). And in his next big book, Our Mutual Friend (written in 1864-5) Dickens wrote a nice Jew, Mr. Riah. Riah manages a money-lending establishment but is not a usurer or anything yucky like that, and as a character he is so saintly and marvelous that critics point out he’s as flat as a matzah. (I paraphrase.)

Eliza Davis felt that editing out many of the “Fagin the Jew” references from Oliver Twist was a form of apology. She gave Dickens a Bible, written in both Hebrew and English, inscribed, “Presented to Charles Dickens, in grateful and admiring recognition of his having exercised the noblest quality men can possess-that of atoning for an injury as soon as conscious of having inflicted it.”

Dickens was a product of his time. This doesn’t excuse racism or antisemitism, but it does provide context. And as we’ve written on this blog before, the 12th-century Jewish sage Maimonides (aka Rambam) felt that true repentance required humility, remorse, forbearance and reparation. It seems to me that Dickens responded to Davis with all these things.

Consider yourself our mate, Chuck.

Spawn of Snarly, in pink socks, in the 2010 Brotherhood Synagogue Hebrew School production of Oliver!