Talk:Ghetto Comedies

Information about this edition
Edition:	London: William Heinemann, 1907.
Source:	https://archive.org/details/ghettocomedies00zanguoft and Project Gutenberg
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Notes:	[Many thanks to] "David Edwards, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team" (particularly for the missing frontispiece sourced from the Lord-knows-where)
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Reviews

• The Bookman, June 7 1907

The Jew in fiction too often suffers even more from indiscreet champions than from Juden Hetze. Space is lacking to analyse the causes of this; to prove it one need only mention the superior merits of Shylock to Daniel Deronda or Sidonia. The truth is, that among painters of the Ghetto Mr. Zangwill stands almost alone in his attitude of perfect candour. The whole matter strikes him as much too serious for cheap sentimentalising, and he is far from the position of claiming everything, immortalised by Thackeray's "His Majesty is one of us; ... so is the Pope of Rome...."

These Comedies chiefly deal with the pangs of adjustment, when the tie made by persecution has been loosened, and the pious Russian Jew feels himself torn between inherited racial and religious conviction, and a genuine loyalty to the country in which he has found sanctuary.

Mr. Zangwill shows his people fairly racked in a sincere endeavour to square the circle, to unite the irreconcilable, to serve the Talmud and the Union Jack. If there be any didactic intention, he has so delicately hidden it that the Gentile may read unsuspectingly, merely enjoying a set of stories, some minor, some gay, some inscrutible, telling how S. Cohn's son showed the results of "Anglicisation," describing the efforts of the Sudminster Synagogue to reconcile Sabbath keeping with business, or merely, as in "The Jewish Hamlet," a brilliantly amusing study of the Yiddish drama.

Beyond this, however, the thoughtful Jew will discover a searching inquiry upon his position in the world to-day. He will relish (or wince, if he be foolish) the irony of Sir Asher Aaronsberg, M.P., arguing against Zionism as a solid Briton, yet piously praying for a return to Jerusalem "speedily and in our days." Sir Asher also quotes the prophets against hastening this blessed event unduly through any human agency. He advocates waiting for signs. "Read your Bible," he exhorts Barstein, the sensitive, argumentative sculptor. "Mount Zion will be split by an earthquake, as the prophet..."

Barstein objects, "But why can't we go to Jerusalem and wait for the earthquake there?"

"Because we have a mission to the nations." Sir Asher is sure of his ground. "We must live dispersed. We have to preach the unity of God...." And so on through a long debate of the most light-fingered satire, ending with Barstein's angry denunciation of Sir Asher as forming in himself a complete trinity..."the Briton, the Jew and the Anti-Semite."

This same Barstein reappears in another story, where his intellectual dispair is cheered by the bewildering comedy of one Nehemiah Silverman, an irreclaimable optimist, a Jewish Micawber, who meets all objections to a penniless exodus of himself, his wife and eleven children to Turkey with ... "And cannot the Almighty support us in Turkey as well as in England?"

"It was then that the word Luftmensch flew into Barstein's mind. Nehemiah was not an earth-man in gross contact with solidities. He was an air-man, floating on facile wings through the ether.... His very pessimism was optimism in disguise... not that impersonal despair of the scheme of things which gave the thinker such black moments."

From Nehemiah, happily starving in the Minories, the stories wander to the Jewish snob—Razenoffski, the pianist, who tingles with race feeling, yet tacitly denies his race—to Schneeman, the distinguished painter, going back from Rome to his Gallician village to find his ancient grandmother on the verge of a marriage offensive to his worldly dignity. In every instance Mr. Zangwill manages to convey the sterile rootlessness of those detached sons of Israel, in contrast with the depths of meaning which life holds for such favoured natures as are able to rest secure in the shadow of the Talmud.

The curious, cumulative effect of these stories is that in spite of unsparing satire and the openness with which Mr. Zangwill treats the foibles of his people, he still gives a far more interesting and sympathetic impression than could be made by indiscriminate praise. Throughout the tone is light (although his earlier flippancy and over "smartness" have entirely sloughed away), the dialogue is full of wisdom, but swift, witty and without too much emphasis. In fact, with a few exceptions till the last story, he vindicates the title Comedies if not in always supplying the literal, happy ending, at least in giving a point of view coloured by characteristic Jewish humour, the mellow and robust fun of his own inimitable "King of the Schnorrers."

If the closing story, "Samooborona," however, contain any trace of comedy, it is on those appalling elemental lines of burlesque along which Nature herself plays her grim, practical jokes.

David Ben Amram hurries to Milovka to organise a Jewish Local Self-Defence Corps. Headquarters has caught wind of a pogrom (massacre) in preparation. In Molovka he finds almost as many parties as Jews. Each individual has discovered a panacea—Zionism itself is split into Political Zionism, Economic Zionism, Chovevi Zionism! There are Leagues for the Advancement of Equal Rights. There are N. S.'s, D. R.'s, Maximalists, Minimalists, Resurrectionists, Bundists. David has "a nightmare vision of bristling sects and pullulating factions, each with its Council, Federation, Funds, Conference, Party-days, Agenda, Referats, Press-Organs."

He seeks to save lives. "It was asking too little. The poor Russian Jews, like the rich Russian Jews, were largely occupied with saving the world, or at least Holy Russia. Crushed by such an excess of Christianity," David tries to rouse a father's apprehension as to the fate of his children in case of a pogrom.

"But we Chassidim have no fear," is his answer. "Our wonder-working rabbi, who has power over all the spheres, will utter a word..."

And so it goes on, the Philosophers of Milovka, trained in long generations of Talmudic intellectual calisthenics, having queerly absorbed, through contact, a measure of Slavonic fatalism, dispute and quote Hegel and split straws over fine drawn distinctions of party and platform till the comedy is ended by Russian gatling guns. The pogrom is complete.

Mr. Zangwill has never been more serious than in this enigmatic volume, and never has his capacity showed more clearly than in his successful illumining the unattractive and the absurd with an appreciative love, which establishes the existence of noble and lovable qualities in the very object of his satire. Never has he proved more plainly that a special theme in no way hampers an artist, if only the artist be sufficiently strong and fecund to resist over-specialisation and to remain alive and sentient within his chosen field.

Marry Moss

• The Nation, May 23 1907:

In his latest-work, Mr. Zangwill has succeeded in the difficult feat of preserving a twofold interest. Each story stands complete in itself, may be read by itself purely as a new example of his witty observation, as an amusing bit of character sketching without reference to the reader's attitude towards the Jewish question. Taken as a whole, however, each story will prove to form part of a wonderful piece of affectionate satire and speculation upon the attitude of the Jewish world towards its own contemporary problems. This effect is cumulative, reaching its climax in the tragic picture of a Russian village full of Jewish philosophers bent on solving the difficulties of Russia and the world by theory alone. They dispute blindly over Marx, Hegel, Spencer, Zionism, Territorialism, Bundism, parties by the dozen, panaceas by the score, until "the unconditional historic necessity had overtaken them all" in the form of Russian Gatling guns.

Most of the stories take place in England, and two at least are as robustly and delightfully humorous as "The King of the Schnorrers," but in the majority the comedy is of the saturnine kind, and plays about the contest between Jewish national feeling and genuine patriotism to adopted king and country. "Anglicization" deals with an acute phase of this struggle. S. Cohn, rich shopkeeper, a jingo of jingoes, grows hot over the dismemberment of "our Empire." He contributes largely, gives a bonus to clerks volunteering for service in South Africa; he is pure English to the core until his only son also puts on.the khaki. In a few short conversations Mr. Zangwill typifies the whole situation—the clash between generation and generation, the conflict between heredity and environment. "The Sabbath Question in Sudminster" gives a witty application of Talmudic casuistry to practical business, and "The Luftmensch" contains brilliant pages of peculiarly Jewish humor, never ceasing to be amusing, but always illuminating some characteristic national trait.

In reading these stories (fourteen in all) it is impossible not to feel that merely as a writer of fiction, Mr. Zangwill has gained greatly in the past decade. Moreover, his point of view has broadened, and while his sympathies and enthusiasms are as distinctively national as ever, while he still loves so tenderly that he can find fault, or even laugh, he never falls into that partisan sentimentalism which would rob his Jewish pictures of their unflinching sincerity.