Israel Zangwill
Encyclopedia
Israel Zangwill was a British
humorist and writer.
, to Moses Zangwill from what is now Latvia
and Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill from what is now Poland
. He dedicated his life to championing the cause of the oppressed. Jewish emancipation
, women's suffrage
, assimilationism
, territorialism
and Zionism
(a Jewish liberation movement) were all fertile fields for his pen. His brother was also a writer, the novelist Louis Zangwill
, and his son was the prominent British psychologist
, Oliver Zangwill
.
Zangwill received his early schooling in Plymouth and Bristol. When he was nine years old Zangwill was enrolled in the Jews' Free School
in Spitalfields
in east London, a school for Jewish immigrant children. The school offered a strict course of both secular and religious studies while supplying clothing, food, and health care for the scholars; today one of its four houses is named Zangwill in his honour. At this school young Israel excelled and even taught part-time, moving up to become a full-fledged teacher. While teaching, he studied for his degree in 1884 from the University of London
, earning a BA with triple honours.
Zangwill married Edith Ayrton, a gentile feminist and author who was the daughter of cousins Matilda Chaplin and William Edward Ayrton
.
In later life, his friends included well known Victorian writers such as Jerome K. Jerome
and H. G. Wells
.
Zangwill wrote a very influential novel Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People (1892). The use of the metaphorical phrase melting pot
to describe American absorption of immigrants was popularised by Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, a hit in the United States
in 1908–1909. The play received its most recent production at New York's Metropolitan Playhouse
in March 2006.
When The Melting Pot opened in Washington D.C. on October 5, 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt
leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play." The hero of the play, David, emigrates to America in the wake of the Kishinev pogrom
in which his entire family is killed. He writes a great symphony called "The Crucible" expressing his hope for a world in which all ethnicity has melted away, and falls in love with a beautiful Russian Christian immigrant named Vera. The dramatic peak of the play is the moment when David meets Vera's father, who turns out to be the Russian officer responsible for the annihilation of David's family. Vera's father admits his guilt, the symphony is performed to accolades, David and Vera live happily ever after, or, at least, agree to wed and kiss as the curtain falls.
"Melting Pot celebrated America's capacity to absorb and grow from the contributions of its immigrants." Zangwill, who had already left Zionism, was writing as "a Jew who no longer wanted to be a Jew. His real hope was for a world in which the entire lexicon of racial and religious difference is thrown away."
Zangwill wrote many other plays, including "Nurse Marjorie" (1906) for American actress Eleanor Robson.
His simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest. He also wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery, and social satire such as The King of Schnorrers (1894), a picaresque novel. His Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898) includes essays on famous Jews such as Baruch Spinoza
, Heinrich Heine
and Ferdinand Lassalle
. Jules Furthman
adapted one of his plays for the 1931 Janet Gaynor
film Merely Mary Ann
, about an orphan and a composer.
The Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room murder novel. It has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.
Another widely-produced play was The Lens Grinder, based on the life of Spinoza.
Zangwill is incorrectly known for coining the slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land
" describing Zionist aspirations in the Biblical land of Israel. What Zangwill actually wrote, in the New Liberal Review
in December, 1901, was “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country.” Zangwill, who had visited Palestine, knew that it did contain a population, although a relatively small one. What he meant by calling it a land without "a people" is that there was at that time no people or ethnic group identifying itself as any particular national group and that it was underpopulated as most travelers at the time agreed. The people then living in Palestine under the rule of the Ottoman Empire
thought of themselves as Arab, Greek, Circassian, and so forth. Those identifying as Arabs identified with their cities, villages or tribe, or with the wider region of Syria, Bilad al-Sham, encompassing what are now Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Zangwill, however, did not invent the phrase; he acknowledged borrowing it from Lord Shaftesbury
. During the lead-up to the Crimean War
in 1854, which signaled an opening for realignments in the Near East
in July 1853, Shaftesbury wrote to Foreign Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was “a country without a nation” in need of “a nation without a country... Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” In his diary that year he wrote “these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other... There is a country without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country.” Shaftesbury himself was echoing the sentiments of Alexander Keith, D.D.
After having for a time supported Theodor Herzl
and the main Palestine-oriented Zionist movement, Zangwill, a British Jew, broke away from the established movement and founded his own organization, called the Jewish Territorialist Organization
in 1905. Its aim was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever possible territory in the world could be found (and not necessarily in what today is the state of Israel
). Zangwill died in 1926 in Midhurst
, West Sussex
after trying to create the Jewish state in such diverse places as Canada
, Australia
, Mesopotamia
, Uganda
and Cyrenaica
.
"At the centennial of his birth, even some of those who recognized the continuing relevance of his efforts to define the Jew in the modern world separated the compelling nature of his struggle from the Victorianness of his writing and the insufficiency of his solutions: territorialism, universal religion, assimilation into an American 'melting pot.' As John Gross
wrote in Commentary
Magazine "one honors the writer, and puts aside his books."
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
humorist and writer.
Biography
Zangwill was born in London on January 21, 1864 in a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist RussiaRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, to Moses Zangwill from what is now Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
and Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill from what is now Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. He dedicated his life to championing the cause of the oppressed. Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
, women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
, assimilationism
Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
, territorialism
Territorialism
Territorialism, also known as Statism , was a Jewish political movement calling for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory , not necessarily in the Land of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous.-Development of territorialism:Before 1905 some Zionist leaders took...
and Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
(a Jewish liberation movement) were all fertile fields for his pen. His brother was also a writer, the novelist Louis Zangwill
Louis Zangwill
Louis Zangwill was an English novelist; born at Bristol, England. He was educated at Jews' Free School, and for a time acted as teacher there, but left together with his brother, Israel Zangwill, and set up a printing establishment. Afterward, however, he turned to literature, and produced, under...
, and his son was the prominent British psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, Oliver Zangwill
Oliver Zangwill
Oliver Louis Zangwill FRS was an influential British neuropsychologist. He was Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, 1952-81, then Professor Emeritus. He was the son of Israel Zangwill and the grandson of William Edward Ayrton...
.
Zangwill received his early schooling in Plymouth and Bristol. When he was nine years old Zangwill was enrolled in the Jews' Free School
Jews' Free School
JFS is a Jewish secondary school in Kenton, north London. It presently accepts both male and female students. At one time it had more than 4,000 students attending making this school the largest Jewish school in Europe. The school has been awarded specialist Humanities College status...
in Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...
in east London, a school for Jewish immigrant children. The school offered a strict course of both secular and religious studies while supplying clothing, food, and health care for the scholars; today one of its four houses is named Zangwill in his honour. At this school young Israel excelled and even taught part-time, moving up to become a full-fledged teacher. While teaching, he studied for his degree in 1884 from the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, earning a BA with triple honours.
Zangwill married Edith Ayrton, a gentile feminist and author who was the daughter of cousins Matilda Chaplin and William Edward Ayrton
William Edward Ayrton
-See also:*Henry Dyer*John Milne*Anglo-Japanese relations...
.
In later life, his friends included well known Victorian writers such as Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome K. Jerome
Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat.Jerome was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up in poverty in London...
and H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
.
The writer
Melting pot
The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...
to describe American absorption of immigrants was popularised by Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, a hit in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1908–1909. The play received its most recent production at New York's Metropolitan Playhouse
Metropolitan Playhouse
The Metropolitan Playhouse of New York, recipient of a 2011 Obie Award and grant from the Village Voice, is a producing theater in New York City. Founded in 1992, the theater is devoted to presenting plays that explore American culture, including seldom-produced American classics and new plays...
in March 2006.
When The Melting Pot opened in Washington D.C. on October 5, 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play." The hero of the play, David, emigrates to America in the wake of the Kishinev pogrom
Kishinev pogrom
The Kishinev pogrom was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Chişinău, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire on April 6-7, 1903.-First pogrom:...
in which his entire family is killed. He writes a great symphony called "The Crucible" expressing his hope for a world in which all ethnicity has melted away, and falls in love with a beautiful Russian Christian immigrant named Vera. The dramatic peak of the play is the moment when David meets Vera's father, who turns out to be the Russian officer responsible for the annihilation of David's family. Vera's father admits his guilt, the symphony is performed to accolades, David and Vera live happily ever after, or, at least, agree to wed and kiss as the curtain falls.
"Melting Pot celebrated America's capacity to absorb and grow from the contributions of its immigrants." Zangwill, who had already left Zionism, was writing as "a Jew who no longer wanted to be a Jew. His real hope was for a world in which the entire lexicon of racial and religious difference is thrown away."
Zangwill wrote many other plays, including "Nurse Marjorie" (1906) for American actress Eleanor Robson.
His simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest. He also wrote mystery works, such as The Big Bow Mystery, and social satire such as The King of Schnorrers (1894), a picaresque novel. His Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898) includes essays on famous Jews such as Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
, Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...
and Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...
. Jules Furthman
Jules Furthman
Jules Furthman was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter.Born in Chicago, Illinois, during World War I he wrote under the name "Stephen Fox." Furthman wrote screenplays for a number of important or popular films, including: The Docks of New York , Thunderbolt , Merely...
adapted one of his plays for the 1931 Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel...
film Merely Mary Ann
Merely Mary Ann
Merely Mary Ann is a romantic comedy drama film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Gaynor and Farrell made almost a dozen films together, including Frank Borzage's classics Seventh Heaven , Street Angel , and Lucky Star ; Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for the first...
, about an orphan and a composer.
The Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room murder novel. It has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.
Another widely-produced play was The Lens Grinder, based on the life of Spinoza.
In politics
Zangwill supported the feminist and pacifist movements, but his greatest impact may have been as a writer who popularized the idea of the melding of the races into a single, American nation. The hero of his widely-produced play, The Melting Pot, proclaims: "America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming... Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians - into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American."Jewish politics
Zangwill was also involved in specifically Jewish issues as an assimilationist, an early Zionist, and a territorialist. Zangwill left the Zionist movement in 1905 to lead the Territorialist movement, advocating a Jewish homeland in whatever piece of land might be available.Zangwill is incorrectly known for coining the slogan "A land without a people for a people without a land
A land without a people for a people without a land
"A land without a people for a people without a land" is a widely-cited phrase associated with the reintroduction of a Jewish state in Palestine....
" describing Zionist aspirations in the Biblical land of Israel. What Zangwill actually wrote, in the New Liberal Review
New Liberal Review
The New Liberal Review was a short-lived British, monthly periodical published from 1901 to 1904 in London. The New Liberal Review was founded by Cecil B. Harmsworth and Hildebrand A. Harmsworth...
in December, 1901, was “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country.” Zangwill, who had visited Palestine, knew that it did contain a population, although a relatively small one. What he meant by calling it a land without "a people" is that there was at that time no people or ethnic group identifying itself as any particular national group and that it was underpopulated as most travelers at the time agreed. The people then living in Palestine under the rule of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
thought of themselves as Arab, Greek, Circassian, and so forth. Those identifying as Arabs identified with their cities, villages or tribe, or with the wider region of Syria, Bilad al-Sham, encompassing what are now Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Zangwill, however, did not invent the phrase; he acknowledged borrowing it from Lord Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG , styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was an English politician and philanthropist, one of the best-known of the Victorian era and one of the main proponents of Christian Zionism.-Youth:He was born in London and known informally as Lord Ashley...
. During the lead-up to the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
in 1854, which signaled an opening for realignments in the Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
in July 1853, Shaftesbury wrote to Foreign Minister Aberdeen that Greater Syria was “a country without a nation” in need of “a nation without a country... Is there such a thing? To be sure there is, the ancient and rightful lords of the soil, the Jews!” In his diary that year he wrote “these vast and fertile regions will soon be without a ruler, without a known and acknowledged power to claim dominion. The territory must be assigned to some one or other... There is a country without a nation; and God now in his wisdom and mercy, directs us to a nation without a country.” Shaftesbury himself was echoing the sentiments of Alexander Keith, D.D.
After having for a time supported Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
and the main Palestine-oriented Zionist movement, Zangwill, a British Jew, broke away from the established movement and founded his own organization, called the Jewish Territorialist Organization
Jewish Territorialist Organization
The Jewish Territorial Organization, known as the ITO, was a Jewish political movement which first arose in 1903 in response to the British Uganda Offer, but which was institutionalized in 1905....
in 1905. Its aim was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever possible territory in the world could be found (and not necessarily in what today is the state of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
). Zangwill died in 1926 in Midhurst
Midhurst
Midhurst is a market town and civil parish in the Chichester district of West Sussex, England, with a population of 4,889 in 2001. The town is situated on the River Rother and is home to the ruin of the Tudor Cowdray House and the stately Victorian Cowdray Park...
, West Sussex
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
after trying to create the Jewish state in such diverse places as Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
, Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...
and Cyrenaica
Cyrenaica
Cyrenaica is the eastern coastal region of Libya.Also known as Pentapolis in antiquity, it was part of the Creta et Cyrenaica province during the Roman period, later divided in Libia Pentapolis and Libia Sicca...
.
"At the centennial of his birth, even some of those who recognized the continuing relevance of his efforts to define the Jew in the modern world separated the compelling nature of his struggle from the Victorianness of his writing and the insufficiency of his solutions: territorialism, universal religion, assimilation into an American 'melting pot.' As John Gross
John Gross
John Gross FRSL was an eminent English author, anthologist, literary and theatrical critic. The Spectator magazine called Gross “the best-read man in Britain”, as did The Guardian...
wrote in Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
Magazine "one honors the writer, and puts aside his books."
In others' fiction
- Israel Zangwill features as a recurring character in the novels of Will ThomasWill ThomasWill Thomas, born 1958 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is a novelist who writes a Victorian mystery series featuring Cyrus Barker, a Scottish detective or "private enquiry agent," and his Welsh assistant, Thomas Llewelyn. The Barker/Llewelyn novels are set in the 1880s and often feature historical...
.