Sabbatical Report. Zangwill The Jewish Dickens and feminist.

There were some men who set out to empower women, whether it was their daughters, wives or friends.  Israel Zangwill is one of them. His name never gets a knowing nod these days. But he had an unforgettable profile, and a  long lean shape, perfect for caricature.

 Pacifist, Zionist, author, he was a convinced feminist at the fin-de-siecle, but his endorsement of feminist causes was not merely a polite nod to emerging ideas. He did everything with consuming commitment. It cost him his reputation and respectability in some circles.
Meri-Jane Rochelson has written a meticulous account of Zangwill's journey into women's suffrage in Jewish Culture and History (1999) and she is the avowed expert on Zangwill himself. Her book devoted to the man came out in 2010: Zangwill, a Jew in the Public Arena.



Zangwill's  career was as much political as it was literary, and his plays and novels portrayed the plight of the refugee Jew. It is hard to know whether Zangwill was are widely appreciated among Gentiles as he was among Anglo-Jewry, but certainly, he was best known in the pre-WW1 era. It was a time when London's East End had been flooded by refugees from relentless pogroms and persecutions. The historical roots of the modern era wandering Jew are not commonly known. We tend to think it was all Mr Hitler, but the social culture and policies that empowered anti-Semitic genocide were set centuries earlier.

  Although we associate poor wandering Jewry with Eastern Europe, even in the most liberal and supposedly tolerant states of  Western Europe, persecution and marginalization of Jews was normalised.

 In Bohemia, where my own family originated, Jews were permitted to live in a family house allotted to them from the early 1500s, but only the eldest son could marry, and most occupations were closed to them. Second and subsequent sons moved across Europe in search of work, brides, home and safety. In the Ukraine there were waves of anti-Semitic pogroms. People who had felt safe in their communities for generations were killed and starved in the early 20th Century, and the youngest and strongest tried to find their way to Israel, which was just a barren desert. Waves of refugees finished up in England, which had admitted Jews for a few hundred years. London and Liverpool were the centres of international trade, and Jewish families were always upwardly mobile. They started out selling rags, moved into manufacturing, acquired property, and educated the next generation of sons at Oxford.

And yes,  like Disraeli and crowds of  other no-so-proud Jews, many upwardly mobile families had their children baptised in the Church of England. My grandfather's second wife marched off  three children to have them sprinkled. My great-uncle Hugo Lazarsfeld was sinking quietly into his plot at Ball's Pond Road Jewish Cemetery when his widow took the children to St Ann's C of E  in Tottenham, so they grew up ignorant of their origin.

The generosity and diligence of  ancient families of Anglo-Jewry in the mid to late 19th and early 20th C ensured refugees were not a burden on British society. Thousands of charities, schools and relief societies were established to make sure Jewish poverty and need did not promote anti-Semitic policies in a nation more tolerant than most. Community care was well rewarded because many families quickly built businesses, entered professions and contributed to the intellectual life of the nation.

Now here's the connection between my book, Feathers and  Zangwill. He was a great collaborator and mentor to one of my key subjects, Nina Salaman, a Hebraic scholar, poet and Jewish community leader.  Nina was taught Hebrew language, literature and religious practice by her father who returned to his beliefs as an adult. Her father also introduced her to Zangwill when the three worked together on more appropriate English translations of Hebrew prayers.  Their mastery and love of Hebrew language was the foundation of a lifelong friendship. Zangwill and Nina Salaman died within about a year of one another.

Zangwill's wife was Edith Ayrton, author and suffragist. Although Edith was not Jewish her step-mother was, and both her mother and step mother have histories of  achievement in science, religion and dissent. The convergence of Jewish and Christian feminism dates from this moment when women found that their social issues were more unifying than the religious differences.

The entire Ayrton female line was embroiled with the causes of women's property rights, women's education and suffrage, dating back to first half of 19th Century or the pre-history of enfranchisement. The Votes for Women campaign was 40 years old before women became militant.

The scientist Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923) was helped in her education by  Barbara Bodichon (1827-91)  the illegitimate daughter of Benjamin Leigh Smith, son of a Unitarian abolitionist and cousin of Florence Nightingale. Leigh Smith's financial provision for his daughter enabled her work among women.  Bodichon's ally was Emily Davies (1830-1921) - not to be confused with suffragette martyr Emily Wilding Davison who died under the hooves of the King's horse at  - Miss Davies was the daughter of a liberal evangelical clergyman who also equipped his daughter with education for social action. These radical women were  authors, editors and publishers, suffragists and political radicals in the Kensington Society which strategised to promot women's equality, beginning with the struggle for women to legally own property and have an education. They served on school boards, in prisons and workhouses.

They succeeded in opening up Cambridge and Oxford examinations (at school level) to women, establishing Girton College at Cambridge, and beginning to leverage the universities to accept women students - although they would not  grant degrees to them until much later in the 20th Century.