乔·弗洛姆是一个卓尔不群的人，但他也许不是你想象当中的那种卓越者。

By the end of the chapter, in fact, we'll see that it is possible to take the lessons of Joe Flom,

在本章的后面部分，乔·弗洛姆的人生故事或许能给我们上几堂颇有教益的课，

apply them to the legal world of New York City, and predict the family background, age,

我们将从这些故事里面了解纽约城的法律世界，从而可以在不知道任何额外的单一的信息下，

and origins of the city's most powerful attorneys, without knowing a single additional fact about them.

推想这座城市最具实力律师的境况，他们的家庭背景、年龄和出身。

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

我们的进度会越来快。

成为犹太人的意义.jpg

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

成为犹太人的意义

One of Joe Flom's classmates at Harvard Law school was a man named Alexander Bickel.

亚历山大·比克尔（AlexanderBickel）是乔·弗洛姆在哈佛法学院读书时候的同班同学。

Like Flom, Bickel was a son of eastern European Jewish immigrants from Brooklyn.

像弗洛姆一样，比克尔是一位住在布鲁克林的来自东欧的犹太移民的儿子；

Like Flom, Bickel had gone to public school in New York City and then City College.

像弗洛姆一样，比克尔先是进了纽约的一所公立学校，随后在城市学院读书；

Like Flom, Bickel was a star in his law school class.

像弗洛姆一样，在法学院读书的比克尔，是班里的“名角”，

In fact, before his career was cut short by cancer,

事实上，如果不是因为癌症缩短了他的职业生涯，

Bickel would become perhaps the finest constitutional scholar of his generation.

他很可能成为那一代人当中最好的宪法学学者。

And like Flom and the rest of their law school classmates, Bickel went to Manhattan during "hiring season" over Christmas of 1947 to find himself a job.

像弗洛姆和其他同班同学一样，比克尔也在1947年圣诞节期间的“应聘季节”来到曼哈顿，希望谋到一份工作。

His first stop was at Mudge Rose, down on Wall Street, as traditional and stuffy as any firm from that era.

工作的第一站是默基·罗斯律师事务所（MudgeRose），和当时那些事务所相似，

Mudge Rose was founded in 1869.

这是一家创办于1869年，位于华尔街的传统而又乏味的律师事务所。

It was where Richard Nixon practiced in the years before he won the presidency in 1968.

在理查德·尼克松1968年赢得总统大选之前，这里曾是他工作的地方。

"We're like the lady who only wants her name on the newspaper twice when she's born and when she dies," one of the senior partners famously said.

“我们就像一些女士一样，希望自己的名字在报纸上只出现两次出生的时候和死去的时候，”事务所一位高级合伙人曾用这样一句话极其恰当地说到自己。

Bickel was taken around the firm and interviewed by one partner after another,

比克尔被带着到事务所转来转去，见了一个又一个事务所的合伙人，

until he was let in the library to meet with the firm's senior partner.

最后他被带到一间藏书室去会见事务所的高级合伙人。

You can imagine the scene: a dark paled room, an artfully frayed Persian carpet,

你能够想象当时的情景：一间摆放着暗色书架的房子，地上铺着边沿已经磨损的波斯地毯，

rows upon rows of leather-bound legal volumes, oil paintings of Mr. Mudge and Mr. Rose on the wall.

书架上一排一排全是皮革包起来的法律书籍、文件，墙上挂着默基先生和罗斯先生的油画。

"After they put me through the whole interview and everything," Bickel would say, many years later,

“当他们让我完成了所有的面试和其它程序之后，”比克尔在很多年之后说到，

"I was brought to the senior partner, who took it upon himself to tell me that for a boy of my antecedents" and you can imagine how Bickel must have been paused before giving that euphemism for his immigrant background.

“我就被带到了那里（去见高级合伙人），他竟然自己先开口谈到我的”你可以想象，当比克尔听到别人委婉地说到自己的移民身份时，他是怎样的惊讶。