Children of the Ghetto

Children of the Ghetto

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Children of the Ghetto, by I. Zangwill
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Title: Children of the Ghetto
Author: I. Zangwill
Release Date: June 22, 2004 [eBook #12680]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO
A Study of a Peculiar People
BY
I. ZANGWILL
Author of "The Master," "The King of Schnorrers" "Dreamers of the Ghetto," "Without Prejudice," etc.
1914

Preface to the Third Edition.
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.

CONTENTS.
BOOK I. THE CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO.
Proem I. The Bread of Affliction II. The Sweater III. Malka IV. The Redemption of the Son and the Daughter V. The Pauper Alien VI. "Reb" Shemuel VII. The Neo-Hebrew Poet VIII. Esther and her Children IX. Dutch Debby X. A Silent Family XI. The Purim Ball XII. The Sons of the Covenant XIII. Sugarman's Barmitzvah Party XIV. The Hope of the Family XV. The Holy Land League XVI. The Courtship of Shosshi Shmendrik XVII. The Hyams's Honeymoon XVIII. The Hebrew's Friday Night XIX. With the Strikers XX. The Hope Extinct XXI. The Jargon Players XXII. "For Auld Lang Syne, My Dear" XXIII. The Dead Monkey XXIV. The Shadow of Religion XXV. Seder Night
BOOK II. THE GRANDCHILDREN OF THE GHETTO.
I. The Christmas Dinner II. Raphael Leon III. "The Flag of Judah" IV. The Troubles of an Editor V. A Woman's Growth VI. Comedy or Tragedy? VII. What the Years brought VIII. The Ends of a Generation IX. The "Flag" flutters X. Esther defies the Universe XI. Going Home XII. A Sheaf of Sequels XIII. The Dead Monkey again XIV. Sidney settles down XV. From Soul to Soul XVI. Love's Temptation XVII. The Prodigal Son XVIII. Hopes and Dreams

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