Dreamer of the Ghetto: The Life and Works of Israel Zangwill (review)

Volume 9. No.2 Winter 1991 BOOK REVIEWS 73 Dreamer of the Ghetto: The Life and Works of Israel Zangwill, by Joseph H. Udelson. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990. 314 pp. $49.95. In the Epilogue to this fine book, the author offers a midrash to his text, briefly exploring the ways in which Israel Zangwill's life parallels the lives of westernized Jews, of all westernized minorities (represented by the career of W. E. B. Du Bois), and, finally, of all the inhabitants ofwestern civilization in their irreconcilable alienation of the self from itself. It is a tribute to Udelson that we are able to accept all three vast generalizations as containing some essential truth. By carefully following the threads of Zangwill's own divided self through the labyrinths of his life and writings, Udelson convinces us not only of the author's startling political prescience, but that he embodies attitudes now shared by almost all secular Jews as a result of events Zangwill did not witness-Nazism and the founding of Israel. Udelson begins with brief sketches of the sociopolitical and literary backgrounds of Zangwill's life and writings and uses them to establish his primary thesis, namely that assimilation is totally inconsistent with the preservation of Judaism. This is equally true of Christianity or any other religion : because modern society is secularist in its value system, belief is the source of deep conflict on the one hand or deplorable hypocrisy on the other. Zangwill, like many satirists and humorists before him, lashes out at the latter attitude, especially as it was manifested in the "West End," among already successfully assimilated Jews; but it is the personal conflict that most occupies his attention, not only in his fictions but, as Udelson acutely demonstrates , in his life. In the second part of Children ofthe Ghetto (1892), for example , Zangwill responds to the conflict with what will become his most characteristic gesture, a celebration of Judaism as a rationalist (i.e., "natural" and "universal" religion). As his subsequent career amply shows, this is not a satisfactory resolution, and, even in this early work, Udelson rightly distinguishes a thread of profound pessimism amidst its successful humor. Much of this study is perforce taken up with recounting Zangwill's literary career, summarizing for us stories and essays no one reads today, and plays no longer performed. While it is worth recalling that it was Zangwill's The Melting Pot that established the term as a metaphor for America, his dramatic career seems to have been one more conflict in his life-in this case between his desire for renown and his clumsiness as a playwright. And yet, when we read in August 1990 sentences like the following, we might well wonder ifwe forgot him at our peril: 74 SHOFAR Re-erect Solomon's Temple in Palestine! A ruined country to regenerate a ruined people! A land belonging to the Turks, centre of the fanaticism of three religions and countless sects! (1899) Now that the ancient ideal of military glory is discredited and Christianity has forced hypocrisy upon the world, we pretend to conquer the world for the world's good. At bottom, it is the same lust for bigness. (1900) Palestine already has its inhabitants ... so we must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did, or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population ... accustomed for centuries to despise us. (1905) And finally, he deplored ... the impossibility of establishing a Jewish polity with the existing disproportion of 600,000 Arabs to 100,000 Jews.... The world seems to prefer Jews scattered, to serve as scapegoats for its crimes and follies. In Palestine, the Arab hirelings of more Machiavellian Powers terrorize their fellow-Arabs into massacring the Jews.... (1918) Udelman is able to fit such insights into Zangwill's lifelong struggle between his role as a leading figure of Anglo-Jewish assimilation and his interest in the continuance ofJudaism. He quotes generously from the writings; whatever Zangwill lacked in his capacity to create plots 'and characters, he certainly had a ringing prose style, precise, dramatic, and powerful. Hence, even when...