Israel Zangwill’s Italian Fantasies: Constructing a Self beyond the Ghetto

Fiction writer, playwright, and political activist for whom Jewish identity, if not ritual strictness, remained central, Israel Zangwill used the term ghetto in his early work as shorthand for a Jewish traditionalism that could be viewed as either nurturing or confining as Jews entered modern life; in his 1898 Dreamers of the Ghetto, the ghetto of Venice signified both. Later, however, Zangwill looked beyond the ghetto to other sites and cities of Italy as inspiration for a wider philosophy. In Italian Fantasies (1910), Zangwill used the genre of the travel essay to develop ideas about art, religion, and society that grounded culture in the experienced life of place. At the same time, he sought to solidify his credentials as a significant figure in European thought, a Jewish commentator who was also cosmopolitan and modern, heir to a Victorian legacy of social critique.