Israel Zangwill

SIR Arthur Quiller Couch relates that Thackeray once rebuked a young man who spoke disrespectfully of Scott in his presence. “You and I, sir”, he cut him short, “should lift our hats at the mention of that great name.” I am no Thackeray but I would apply that rebuke to those who think it adds to their own stature to dismiss Zangwill. Mr. Henry Hurwitz, the Editor of the New York Menorah Journal recently took up the cudgels for Zangwill after a New York broadcast in connection with the 25th anniversary of his death. It was “so inadequate, so condescending a discussion of his spirit and works”, he complained, “so bent upon belittling Zangwill.” “It is a pity”, he wrote, “that your large body of listeners throughout the country should not have been given a fairer notion of an outstanding Jewish figure of modern times.” I find it interesting that

Written by

Joseph Leftwich

Published in

Volume 18

1953

Other articles within the volume

• Portuguese Jews in Jacobean London
• Sir George Jessel, 1824-1883
• REDCLIFFE NATHAN SALAMAN, F.R.S., M.D. (President of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1920-22)
• ALBERT MONTEFIORE HYAMSON (President of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1945-7; Honorary Editor of Publications, 1944-54)
• Medieval Sources for Anglo-Jewish History: the Problem of Publication
• Anglo-Jewry and the Development of American Jewish Life, 1775-1850
• Eighteenth Century Anglo-Jewry in and around Richmond, Surrey
• Anglo-Jewish Architects, and Architecture in the 18th and 19th Centuries
• Anglo-Jewish Silver
• Francis Town of Bond Street (1738-1826) and his family: With Further Notes on Early Anglo-Jewish Artists
• Israel Zangwill
• Some English Examples of the Mediaeval Representation of Church and Synagogue
• Don Pacifico,
• Jewish History and Archives
• Jacob Waley (1818-1873)
• Preface