Children Of The Ghetto

J. A. Hammerton, Israel Zangwill

Description

“The Children of the Ghetto” is a 1892 novel by British author Israel Zangwill (1864–1926). The first book in Zangwill's “of the Ghetto" books, which offers an insight into the generation of Jewish immigrants caught between the ghetto and modern British life in the late nineteenth century. When first published this book brought him instant international fame. A fascinating and thought-provoking novel not to be missed by those who have read and enjoyed other works in Zangwill's “of the Ghetto" series. Zangwill was a leading figure in cultural Zionism during the 19th century, as well as close friend of father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In later life, he renounced the seeking of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Other notable works by this author include: “Dreamers of the Ghetto” (1898) and “Ghetto Tragedies” (1899). Highly recommended for fans and collectors of Zangwill's seminal literature. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with an introductory chapter from “English Humourists of To-Day” by J. A. Hammerton.

Sujets

• Jewish Currents (magazine)
• Victorian era

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 27 août 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781446060056
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO
A STUDY OF A PECULIAR PEOPLE
WITH A CHAPTER FROM English Humorists of To-day BY J. A. Hammerton
By
ISRAEL ZANGWILL

First published in 1914


This edition published by Read Books Ltd. Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd. This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library


Contents
Israel Zangwill
PREFACE
PROEM
BOOK I
CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO
CHAPTER I THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION
CHAPTER II THE SWEATER
CHAPTER III MALKA
CHAPTER IV THE REDEMPTION OF THE SON AND THE DAUGHTER
CHAPTER V THE PAUPER ALIEN
CHAPTER VI "REB" SHEMUEL
CHAPTER VII THE NEO-HEBREW POET
CHAPTER VIII ESTHER AND HER CHILDREN
CHAPTER IX DUTCH DEBBY
CHAPTER X A SILENT FAMILY
CHAPTER XI THE PURIM BALL
CHAPTER XII THE SONS OF THE COVENANT
CHAPTER XIII SUGARMAN'S BAR-MITZVAH PARTY
CHAPTER XIV THE HOPE OF THE FAMILY
CHAPTER XV THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE
CHAPTER XVI THE COURTSHIP OF SHOSSHI SHMENDRIK
CHAPTER XVII THE HYAMS'S HONEYMOON
CHAPTER XVIII THE HEBREW'S FRIDAY NIGHT
CHAPTER XIX WITH THE STRIKERS
CHAPTER XX THE HOPE EXTINCT
CHAPTER XXI THE JARGON PLAYERS
CHAPTER XXII "FOR AULD LANG SYNE, MY DEAR"
CHAPTER XXIII THE DEAD MONKEY
CHAPTER XXIV THE SHADOW OF RELIGION
CHAPTER XXV SEDER NIGHT
BOOK II
THE GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO
CHAPTER I THE CHRISTMAS DINNER
CHAPTER II RAPHAEL LEON
CHAPTER III "THE FLAG OF JUDAH"
CHAPTER IV THE TROUBLES OF AN EDITOR
CHAPTER V A WOMAN'S GROWTH
CHAPTER VI COMEDY OR TRAGEDY?
CHAPTER VII WHAT THE YEARS BROUGHT
CHAPTER VIII THE ENDS OF A GENERATION
CHAPTER IX THE FLAG FLUTTERS
CHAPTER X ESTHER DEFIES THE UNIVERSE
CHAPTER XI GOING HOME
CHAPTER XII A SHEAF OF SEQUELS
CHAPTER XIII THE DEAD MONKEY AGAIN
CHAPTER XIV SIDNEY SETTLES DOWN
CHAPTER XV FROM SOUL TO SOUL
CHAPTER XVI LOVE'S TEMPTATION
CHAPTER XVII THE PRODIGAL SON
CHAPTER XVIII HOPES AND DREAMS
GLOSSARY




Isr ael Zangwill


Israel Zangwill
This picture though it is not much Like Zangwill, is not void of worth It has one true Zangwillian touch It looks like nothing else on earth.
Oliver Herford Confessions of a Caricaturist,
Perhaps some one will suggest that Mr. Israel Zangwill is a humorist only as one whom "we loved long since and lost awhile," because of late years — indeed, for more than a decade — little that is entirely humorous has come from his pen. On the other hand, he has never been a humorist who inspires affection: he is somewhat too intellectual for that. There is no novelist who, with greater justice, takes himself and his art more seriously than Mr. Zangwill has done since, in 1892, he wrote that masterpiece of modern fiction, Children of the Ghetto ; yet, as he began his literary career as a humorous writer and is beyond question one of our masters of epigrammatic wit and intellectual point—de—vice, he may with sufficient reason be included in any survey of modern humour. Moreover, despite the high and serious purpose of all his later work, his attendant imps of mirth are ever at his elbow, and we find him with welcome frequency acknowledging their presence in the writing of even his soberest stories.
Born to Jewish parents in London forty—three years ago, Mr Zangwill shares the distonction of such celebrities as Napoleon and Wellington in not knowing his birthday. He is aware that the year was 1864, but the day would seem to have been "wropt in mystery." He has, however, got over the difficulty by choosing his own birthday, and for this purpose he selected February 14. "It is not merely." he says, "that St. Valentine's Day is the very day for a novelist," but he has a dog "whose pedigree has been more carefully kept" than his own, and it bears the name Valentine from having been born on the saint's day, master and dog can celebrate their birthday together. This canine favourite he has thus addressed in verse:
Accept from me these birthday lines— If every dog must have his dog, How bless'd to have St.Valentine's!
But, asked on one occasion to give the date of his birthday, Mr.Zangwill replied, expressing his inability to do so, and suggested that the inquirer might "select some nice convenient day, a roomy one, on which he would not be jostled by bigger men."
As he is eminently original in his personality as well as in his work, it is not surprising to know that during his boyhood his favourite reading was not found among the conventional classics, but that he loved to rove in the strange realms of fiction created by writers whose names will be found nowhere in the annals of bookland; the fabricators of cheap boy's stories to wit. Yet his scholastic training was eminently respectable, as he was the most successful scholar of his time at the Jews' Free School in Spitalfields, and before he was twenty—one he had graduated B.A. at the London University with triple honours.
J. A. Hammerton English Humorists of To-day, 1907



PREFACE
The issue of a one-volume edition gives me the opportunity of thanking the public and the critics for their kindly reception of this chart of a terra incognita , and of restoring the original sub-title, which is a reply to some criticisms upon its artistic form. The book is intended as a study, through typical figures, of a race whose persistence is the most remarkable fact in the history of the world, the faith and morals of which it has so largely moulded. At the request of numerous readers I have reluctantly added a glossary of 'Yiddish' words and phrases, based on one supplied to the American edition by another hand. I have omitted only those words which occur but once and are then explained in the text; and to each word I have added an indication of the language from which it was drawn. This may please those who share Mr. Andrew Lang's and Miss Rosa Dartle's desire for information. It will be seen that most of these despised words are pure Hebrew; a language which never died off the lips of men, and which is the medium in which books are written all the world over even unto this day.
I.Z. London, March, 1893.


PROEM
Not here in our London Ghetto the gates and gaberdines of the olden Ghetto of the Eternal City; yet no lack of signs external by which one may know it, and those who dwell therein. Its narrow streets have no specialty of architecture; its dirt is not picturesque. It is no longer the stage for the high-buskined tragedy of massacre and martyrdom; only for the obscurer, deeper tragedy that evolves from the pressure of its own inward forces, and the long-drawn-out tragi-comedy of sordid and shifty poverty. Natheless, this London Ghetto of ours is a region where, amid uncleanness and squalor, the rose of romance blows yet a little longer in the raw air of English reality; a world which hides beneath its stony and unlovely surface an inner world of dreams, fantastic and poetic as the mirage of the Orient where they were woven, of superstitions grotesque as the cathedral gargoyles of the Dark Ages in which they had birth. And over all lie tenderly some streaks of celestial light shining from the face of the great Lawgiver.
The folk who compose our pictures are children of the Ghetto; their faults are bred of its hovering miasma of persecution, their virtues straitened and intensified by the narrowness of its horizon. And they who have won their way beyond its boundaries must still play their parts in tragedies and comedies—tragedies of spiritual struggle, comedies of material ambition—which are the aftermath of its centuries of dominance, the sequel of that long cruel night in Jewry which coincides with the Christian Era. If they are not the Children, they are at least the Grandchildren of the Ghetto.
The particular Ghetto that is the dark background upon which our pictures will be cast, is of voluntary formation.
People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries, are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being. But a minority will pass, by units, into the larger, freer, stranger life amid the execrations of an ever-dwindling majority. For better or for worse, or for both, the Ghetto will be gradually abandoned, till at last it becomes only a swarming place for the poor and the ignorant, huddling together for social warmth. Such people are their own Ghetto gates; when they migrate they carry them across the sea to lands where they are not. Into the heart of East London there poured from Russia, from Poland, from Germany, from Holland, streams of Jewish exiles, refugees, settlers, few as well-to-do as the Jew of the proverb, but all rich in their cheerfulness, their industry, and their cleverness. The majority bore with them nothing but their phylacteries and praying shawls, and a good-natured contempt for Christians and Christianity. For the Jew has rarely been embittered by persecution. He knows that he is in Goluth , in exile, and that the days of the Messiah are not yet, and he looks u