Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People

A muscular Judaism

Before the mid-nineteenth century the Jewish community in England was largely Sephardic, having its historical origins in the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, but from the 1850s onwards a growing influx of refugees from Poland and Russia brought a different set of Jewish traditions to London's East End. These Ostjuden were Yiddish-speaking, and of Ashkenazi origin, and they looked and sounded very different from their Anglo-Jewish brethren. They also tended to be more religiously orthodox and suspicious of integration. These new Jews threatened the bargain earlier Anglo-Jewry had struck with British culture, that they would assimilate in public and maintain their Jewish identity in private.

There were inevitable tensions between the two groups. Israel Zangwill came from poor ostjudisch stock, but he went to school at the Jews' Free School in the East End, a strongly assimilationist establishment set up by rich Anglo-Jewish philanthropists. Understandably enough, his attitude to the ostjudisch ghetto was shot through with ambivalence. A pacifist, a feminist and an early Zionist, Zangwill argued passionately for a rapprochement between the Jewish and Christian faiths in works such as his highly successful play The Melting Pot (1908). But however much he might criticize the backward-looking religiosity and isolationism of the ghetto, he refused to condemn it. Children of the Ghetto, his highly successful novel of 1892, openly satirizes some of the rigidities of orthodox Hebrew tradition, but it also offers a fervent celebration of the humour, fellowship and ritual beauty of Jewish life. Some of the novel's characters have a very secular outlook, most notably Sam Levine, who is a radical disciple of "muscular Judaism", and the ambitious young jeweller David Brandon. Others, such as the Rabbi Shemuel, remain sticklers for the law.

The main plot of the novel concerns the plight of Shemuel's daughter Hannah, who is barred from marrying David because of a minute point of religious doctrine. Indignant and frustrated, the lovers plan to elope, but at the very last minute Hannah decides to go back to her family. And just as one expects the novel to pass judgement on Shemuel and his life-denying patriarchalism, Zangwill performs a sudden about-face, hinting that Hannah may have been right, after all, to remain loyal to her father. Moments like this show Children of the Ghetto to be delicately poised, and help explain why Zangwill was so highly regarded at the turn of the century, as a writer who helped explain the mysteries and complexities of Jewish identity not only to the Gentiles, but also to Jews themselves.

Gregory Dart is a lecturer in English at University College London. He is the author of Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism, 1999, and Unrequited Love: On stalking and being stalked, 2003.

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