Daily Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does indicate approval.–Editor.]

Tribute to Israel Zangwill for his genius as a writer and his sincerity as a humanitarian and a leader and spokesman for his people is voiced by the whole press.

That Zangwill was primarily an East-European Jew, born in Siemiatyce, Poland, and not in London, as many assume, and that he refused to go very far in the process of assimilation with British Jewry, is the point emphasized by the “Jewish Morning Journal,” (Aug. 3), which observes:

“Israel Zangwill has a particular significance for us not so much that he was a Jew but that he was an East-European Jew who became a conspicuous figure in English literature. Zangwill was a ghetto Jew; he belonged not to the British Jews but to the immigrant Jews of London’s East End. Throughout his life he was the recognized and outspoken representative of Russian-Polish Jewry before the English-speaking world,” the paper writes.

Zangwill’s only act in the course of his whole life that did not harmonize with his role as a Jew first and last, the “Jewish Morning Journal” further points out, was his marriage to a non-Jewess. Alluding to a cable to the effect that one of the great disappointments which brought about Zangwill’s breakdown resulting in his death, was the fact that his wife brought their children up as Christians, the paper remarks: “He paid so dearly for this disharmony that his untimely death must be viewed as a sort of atonement.”

Zangwill’s significance as a great humanitarian and exposer of shams is seen by the “Jewish Daily Forward” to be even greater than his significance as a writer. It was his extraordinary sincerity and idealism that caused his opponents always to speak of him with respect, the paper says, concluding:

“Zangwill’s name will live long in the realm of literature. But still longer will it live in the annals of mankind’s struggle toward progress and in the history of the development of the best and most beautiful in the spirit of the Jewish people.”

It is not Zangwill the “publicist” but Zangwill the man, the artist, that should concern us most, according to the New York “Times,” wherein we read:

“Zangwill, the man, was courteous and gentle; Zangwill, the artist, is all that counts. To the elder generation, at least, he is the painter, without prejudice or partiality, with careful distribution of shade and light of the mean streets’ of Whitechapel and the rest of London Jewry. Nobody but a Cockney Jew could have written the books of the ‘Ghetto’ series.

“Curiously enough, this Russian refugee’s son was also able to paint the true effigy of the West End Jews, so large was his sympathetic understanding. In the art–at present a trade–of writing short stories, he had a genius at times almost inimitable; and he invented a Jewish beggar who ought to be immortal. Indeed, in re-reading Zangwill, we shall turn first not to ‘Children of the Ghetto,’ but to the grotesquerie of ‘The King of Schnorrers’.”

Israel Zangwill deserves to be remembered as a great minority leader, declares the “World,” observing: “He was such a big factor in vitalizing movements to help the Jews that he made major issues of his personal hopes. In his outstanding fiction, ‘Children of the Ghetto,’ first published in 1892, he presented portraits so richly human and sympathetic that they live today. In his Zionist activities he burned with the zeal of the ancient prophets, and although controversy maimed his effectiveness there was no abatement to his energy.

“Into his sixty-two years as teacher, novelist, dramatist and propagandist he crowded the lives of a dozen men.”

The vast influence on public opinion exerted by the symbol of “The Melting Pot” staved off for a generation the restriction of immigration in America, avers the “Herald-Tribune.”

“By virtue of his drama “The Melting Pot’ and above all by its title Zangwill impressed on the American mind a cast of thought regarding immigration which had a high imaginative appeal. Fears of being swamped by the alien influx were for the time quieted by the metaphor of assimilation. Seldom has an author so molded thought by the instrumentality of a single phrase,” states the “Herald-Tribune.”

The “Evening World” writes:

“In the controversial field into which his ardent convictions led him he was brilliant and aggressive, but, with his sensitive artist nature, he must have suffered much. He was a humanitarian, a progressive, and he served his fellow men–which is something that cannot be said of all men who write well. He had a big heart and a big brain, he did big things and has left a big void.”