Israel Zangwill

"A Child of the Ghetto"
Zangwill as caricatured by Walter Sickert in Vanity Fair, February 1897

Israel Zangwill (February 14, 1864 – August 1, 1926) was an English humorist and writer.

Quotes

• No Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a clever man.
  • Children of the Ghetto (1892), bk. 1, ch. 7.

• Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan — spoiled.
  • Children of the Ghetto (1892), bk. 2, ch. 6.

• No... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell you—he will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.
  • The Melting Pot, act 1.

• America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!
  • The Melting Pot, act 1.

• Oh, for the simple life,
  For tents and starry skies!
  • Aspiration.

• The past is our cradle, not our prison, and there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.
  • The Voice of Jerusalem, Macmillan, 1921, p. 270

The Abolition of Money (1894)

• Money must be abolished. The root of all evil must be pulled up." "Money abolished!" I echoed in amaze. "Why, any student of political economy will tell you we could not live without it. Lacking a common measure of value, we—"
  
  "So it has always been held by students when answering political economy papers," he interrupted impatiently. "Yet I dreamt once of a land where the currency was called in, and the morning stars sang together."
  
  "But the exchange of commodities—" I began.
  
  "Was effected by the sublime simplicity of barter. At one sweep were swept away all that monstrous credit system which had created an army of accountants and a Court of Bankruptcy; all that chaos of single and double-faced entry—all that sleight-of-hand abracadabra of signatures—all those paper phantoms of capital. The Stock Exchange and other gambling hells shrivelled up. There was a vast saving of clerical labour, and there were few loopholes for fraud.

Poem: Blind Children

• An Edward's England spat us out - a band
  Foredoomed to redden Vistula or Rhine,
  And leaf-like toss with every wind malign.
  All mocked the faith they could not understand.

• How full and rich a world
  Theirs to inhabit is—
  Sweet scent of grass and bloom,
  Playmates’ glad symphony,
  Cool touch of western wind,
  Sunshine’s divine caress.
  
  
  How should they know or feel
  They are in darkness?
  
  
  But, oh, the miracle!
  If a Redeemer came,
  Laid finger on their eyes—
  One touch and what a world,
  New-born in loveliness!

• What a dark world—who knows?—
  Ours to inhabit is!
  One touch and what a strange
  Glory might burst on us,
  What a hid universe!

See also

• Yehuda he-Hasid
• Yom Tov of Joigny

External links

• Israel Zangwill and Children of the Ghetto
• Israel Zangwill at bastulli.com
• Israel Zangwill at 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• The Zionist Exposition
• Jewish Virtual Library
• Internet Broadway Database
• Without Prejudice
• Jewish Museum in London
• Works by Israel Zangwill at Project Gutenberg
• A reading of The King of Schnorrers