Chosen Peoples: 'Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan - spoiled''
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About this ebook
Israel Zangwill was born in London on 21st January 1864, to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire.
Zangwill was initially educated in Plymouth and Bristol. At age 9 he was enrolled in the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields in east London. Zangwill excelled here. He began to teach part-time at the school and eventually full time. Whilst teaching he also studied with the University of London and by 1884 had earned his BA with triple honours in philosophy, history, and the sciences.
His writing earned him the sobriquet "the Dickens of the Ghetto" primarily based on his much lauded novel ‘Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People’ in 1892 and its glimpse of the poverty-stricken life in London's Jewish quarter.
As a writer he was keen to reflect on his political and social outlooks. His simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest. His mystery work, ‘The Big Bow Mystery’ (1892) was the first locked room mystery novel.
Zangwill was also involved with narrowly focused Jewish issues as an assimilationist, an early Zionist, and later a territorialist. In the early 1890s he had joined the Lovers of Zion movement in England. In 1897 he joined Theodor Herzl (considered the father of modern political Zionism) in founding the World Zionist Organization.
Zangwill quit the established philosophy of Zionism when his plan for a homeland in Uganda was rejected and founded his own organisation; the Jewish Territorialist Organization. Its stated goal was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever territory in the world could be found for them.
Amongst the challenges in his life he found time to write poetry. He had translated a medieval Jewish poet in 1903 and his volume ‘Blind Children’ in 1908 shows his promise in this new endeavour.
‘The Melting Pot’ in 1909 made Zangwill’s name as an admired playwright. When the play opened in Washington D.C., former President Theodore Roosevelt leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, "That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play."
Israel Zangwill died on 1st August 1926 in Midhurst, West Sussex.
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Jinny the Carrier: 'Dead men hear no tales; posthumous fame is an Irish bull'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlind Children: 'I hate French poetry. What measured glitter!'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Grey Wig: 'Editors are constantly on the watch to discover new talents in old names'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Old Maids Club: 'What clinical lectures I will give in heaven, demonstrating the ignorance of doctors!'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Grandchildren of the Ghetto: 'Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Melting Pot: 'America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhetto Comedies: 'Selfishness is the only real atheism'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsItalian Fantasies: 'The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe King of Schnorrers Grotesques and Fantasies: 'Let us start a new religion with one commandment, Enjoy thyself'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDreamers of the Ghetto: 'No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWithout Prejudice: 'Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhetto Tragedies: 'Take from me the hope that I can change the future and you will send me mad'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChildren of the Ghetto: 'Take from me the hope that I can change the future and you will send me mad'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMerely Mary Ann: 'It takes two men to make one brother'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Chosen Peoples - Israel Zangwill
Chosen Peoples by Israel Zangwill
Israel Zangwill was born in London on 21st January 1864, to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire.
Zangwill was initially educated in Plymouth and Bristol. At age 9 he was enrolled in the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields in east London. Zangwill excelled here. He began to teach part-time at the school and eventually full time. Whilst teaching he also studied with the University of London and by 1884 had earned his BA with triple honours in philosophy, history, and the sciences.
His writing earned him the sobriquet the Dickens of the Ghetto
primarily based on his much lauded novel ‘Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People’ in 1892 and its glimpse of the poverty-stricken life in London's Jewish quarter.
As a writer he was keen to reflect on his political and social outlooks. His simulation of Yiddish sentence structure in English aroused great interest. His mystery work, ‘The Big Bow Mystery’ (1892) was the first locked room mystery novel.
Zangwill was also involved with narrowly focused Jewish issues as an assimilationist, an early Zionist, and later a territorialist. In the early 1890s he had joined the Lovers of Zion movement in England. In 1897 he joined Theodor Herzl (considered the father of modern political Zionism) in founding the World Zionist Organization.
Zangwill quit the established philosophy of Zionism when his plan for a homeland in Uganda was rejected and founded his own organisation; the Jewish Territorialist Organization. Its stated goal was to create a Jewish homeland in whatever territory in the world could be found for them.
Amongst the challenges in his life he found time to write poetry. He had translated a medieval Jewish poet in 1903 and his volume ‘Blind Children’ in 1908 shows his promise in this new endeavour.
‘The Melting Pot’ in 1909 made Zangwill’s name as an admired playwright. When the play opened in Washington D.C., former President Theodore Roosevelt leaned over the edge of his box and shouted, That's a great play, Mr. Zangwill, that's a great play.
Israel Zangwill died on 1st August 1926 in Midhurst, West Sussex.
Index of Contents
NOTE
FOREWORD
CHOSEN PEOPLES
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
AFTERWORD
Israel Zangwill – A Short Biography
Israel Zangwill – A Concise Bibliography
NOTE
The Arthur Davis Memorial Lecture was founded in 1917, under the auspices of the Jewish Historical Society of England, by his collaborators in the translation of The Service of the Synagogue,
with the object of fostering Hebraic thought and learning in honour of an unworldly scholar. The Lecture is to be given annually in the anniversary week of his death, and the lectureship is to be open to men or women of any race or creed, who are to have absolute liberty in the treatment of their subject.
FOREWORD
Mr. Arthur Davis, in whose memory has been founded the series of Lectures devoted to the fostering of Hebraic thought and learning, of which this is the first, was born in 1846 and died on the first day of Passover, 1906. His childhood was spent in the town of Derby, where there was then no Synagogue or Jewish minister or teacher of Hebrew. Spontaneously he developed a strong Jewish consciousness, and an enthusiasm for the Hebrew language, which led him to become one of its greatest scholars in this, or any other, country.
He was able to put his learning to good use. He observed the wise maxim of Leonardo da Vinci, Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker.
He was not one of those learned men, of whom there are many examples—a recent and conspicuous instance was the late Lord Acton—whose minds are so choked with the accumulations of the knowledge they have absorbed that they can produce little or nothing. His output, though not prolific, was substantial. In middle life he wrote a volume on The Hebrew Accents of the Twenty-one Books of the Bible,
which has become a classical authority on that somewhat recondite subject. It was he who originated and planned the new edition of the Festival Prayer Book in six volumes, and he wrote most of the