Israel Zangwill

Without Prejudice Israel Zangwill

Publisher Marketing: And it came to pass that my soul was vexed with the problems of life, so that I could not sleep. So I opened a book by a lady novelist, and fell to reading therein. And of a sudden I looked up, and lo! a great host of women filled the chamber, which had become as the Albert Hall for magnitude-women of all complexions, countries, times, ages, and sexes. Some were bewitching and beautiful, some wan and flat-breasted, some elegant and stately, some ugly and squat, some plain and whitewashed, and some painted and decorated; women in silk gowns, and women in divided skirts, and women in widows' weeds, and women in knickerbockers, and women in ulsters, and women in furs, and women in crinolines, and women in tights, and women in rags; but every woman of them all in tears. The great chamber was full of a mighty babel; shouts and ululations, groans and moans, weeping and wailing and gnashing of false and genuine teeth, and tearing of hair both artificial and natural; and therewith the flutter of a myriad fans, and the rustle of a million powder-puffs. And the air reeked with a thousand indescribable scents-patchouli and attar of roses and cherry blossom, and the heavy odours of hair-oil and dyes and cosmetics and patent medicines innumerable. Contributor Bio:  Zangwill, Israel srael Zangwill (1864-1926), the foremost Anglo-Jewish author of his generation, chronicled London's Jewish East End in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The son of Jewish immigrants from Latvia and Poland, he was born in Ebenezer Street in London's East End, and Zangwill frequently described his identity as a "Cockney Jew." He attended schools in Plymouth, Bristol, and the Jews' Free School in Bell Lane in London, where he later taught. In 1884, he received a BA degree with triple honours from the University of London and devoted himself to journalism and literature. In 1890, he founded and edited the short-lived comic magazine Ariel, or The London Puck. He wrote sketches, essays, and editorials about Jewish immigrants for a number of British and American periodicals, including the Jewish Quarterly Review, founded by Israel Abrahams (1858-1925) and Claude Montefiore (1858-1938), distinguished Jewish scholars. Israel Zangwill, who tried his hand in various forms of fiction on both Jewish and non-Jewish issues, published numerous short stories, several novels, and plays, including The Melting Pot (1908), which gave rise to the famous metaphor about America as a crucible where various nationalities are transformed into a new race. Under the pseudonym of J. Freeman Bell, Zangwill published together with Lewis (Laurence) Cowen (1865-1942) his first novel, The Premier and the Painter (1888), a political satire that emulated Dickensian humour, but had an entirely original plot. The novel contains some references to the East End slum life. Zangwill also wrote a series of essays on Jewish issues, the most important being Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898), a series of fictionalised biographies of notable Jewish thinkers including Spinoza and Heine. Commissioned by the Jewish Publication Society of America, Zangwill wrote a novel of Jewish life, Children of the Ghetto (1892), which brought him an instant international fame. After the success of Children of the Ghetto he continued to deal with slum issues in his short stories, Ghetto Tragedies (1893, reissued and expanded in 1899) and Ghetto Comedies (1907). After meeting Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionist movement, in 1895, Zangwill supported the Zionism until he created in 1905 his own movement, the Jewish Territorial Organization, whose aim was to promote settlement of Jews in areas outside of Palestine. Zangwill rejoined the Zionist movement following the Balfour Declaration.