JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

who condoned massacres of Jews during the First Crusade as
“a form of democratic violence,” was nevertheless attracted
to the Zionist ideal of emancipation through physical toil, recording
his impressions of a visit to the Holy Land in The New
Jerusalem (1920). A thinly disguised account of Jewish-British
relations in Ereẓ Israel is combined with an accurate description
of Palestine under the Romans in W.P. Crozier’s The Letters
of Pontius Pilate (1928). Some writers were intensely pro-
Zionist, others violently hostile and pro-Arab. Muriel Spark’s
The Mandelbaum Gate (1965) was a tale of divided Jerusalem
with an anti-Israel bias, but another non-Jewish novelist,
Lynne Reid Banks, who wrote An End to Running (1962; U.S.
ed., House of Hope) and Children at the Gate (1968), settled at
kibbutz Yasur. Of the many books about Palestine and Israel
written by English Jews outstanding was Arthur *Koestler’s
dramatic Thieves in the Night (1946).
The Jewish Contribution
Before the Expulsion of 1290, the Jews of England were culturally
an integral part of medieval French Jewry, speaking
Norman French, and conducting their business affairs in Hebrew
or Latin and their literary activities almost exclusively in
Hebrew. *Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, the 12th–13thcentury
author of Mishlei Shu’alim (“Fox Fables”), is probably
identical with Benedict le Poinctur (i.e., punctuator, Hebrew
Nakdan), who is known to have been living in Oxford in 1194.
Berechiah’s “Fox Fables” compiled from a variety of Jewish,
Oriental, and other medieval sources, were both popular and
influential, partly determining the shape of later medieval
bestiaries. Their influence may also be seen in the Latin Gesta
Romanorum, first compiled in England (c. 1330; first printed
c. 1472). An important literary figure of the Elizabethan period,
John Florio (1553?–1625), was descended from converted
Italian Jews. A friend of Ben Jonson and Sir Philip Sidney, he
influenced Shakespeare, whose Hamlet and The Tempest echo
Florio’s pioneering translation of the Essays of Montaigne
(1603). It was not until nearly a hundred years after the readmission
of the Jews in 1665 that they began to play any significant
part in English literary affairs. Moses *Mendes, the
grandson of a Marrano physician, was a well-known poetaster
and minor playwright. His ballad-opera, The Double Disappointment
(1746), was the first work written for the theater
by an English Jew. He also wrote The Battiad (1751), a satire,
in collaboration with Dr. Isaac *Schomberg. Jael (Mendes)
Pye (d. 1782), a convert like Mendes, made a brief but significant
entry into English literature with poems and a novel;
while another early poet, Emma (Lyon) Henry (1788–1870),
a staunch Jewess, received the patronage of the Prince Regent
in the early 19th century. Many of the Anglo-Jewish writers of
the 18th and 19th centuries were either remote from Jewish life
or actually abandoned Judaism. They include Isaac *D’Israeli,
father of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield; the half-Jew
John Leycester *Adolphus, the first person to deduce Sir Walter
Scott’s authorship of the Waverley Novels; members of the
*Palgrave dynasty, notably Sir Francis (Cohen) Palgrave and
english literature
his son, Francis Turner Palgrave, editor of the famous Golden
Treasury of English Verse (1861); and Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
(1855–1934), the most successful dramatist of his time, who
was also of Jewish origin. Late writers included Stephen Hudson
(Sydney Schiff); Naomi Jacob; Ada *Leverson; Benn Levy;
Lewis Melville; Leonard *Merrick; E.H.W. *Meyerstein; Siegfried
*Sassoon; Humbert *Wolfe; and Leonard *Woolf.
JEWISH THEMES. From the early 19th century onward, many
Anglo-Jewish writers devoted a large part of their talent to
Jewish themes. Several of these committed authors were
women. The sisters Celia (Moss) Levetus (1819–1873) and
Marion (Moss) Hartog (1821–1907), who ran a private school
for 40 years, together published a collection of poems, Early
Efforts (1838 1 , 1839 2 ); a three-volume Romance of Jewish History
(1840); Tales of Jewish History (1843); and a short-lived
Jewish Sabbath Journal (1855). Better known was Grace *Aguilar,
a vigorous champion of Judaism, who wrote the first significant
Anglo-Jewish novel, The Vale of Cedars (1850). Two
other women writers were Alice Lucas (1851–1935) and Nina
(Davis) Salaman (1877–1925), both of whom wrote poetry;
Nina Salaman also translated medieval Hebrew verse. Novels
on Jewish themes proliferated from the latter half of the 19th
century. Benjamin *Farjeon, a writer of North African Sephardi
origin, really created this new genre with works such as
Solomon Isaacs (1877), Aaron the Jew (1894), and Pride of Race
(1900), which described the London-Jewish scene and especially
the growing populace of the East End. This was the main
location for the more famous novels of Israel *Zangwill, who
remains the greatest single figure in England’s Jewish literary
history. Although Zangwill wrote many books on non-Jewish
themes, he is best remembered for his “ghetto” stories – Children
of the Ghetto (1892), Ghetto Tragedies (1893), The King of
Schnorrers (1894), and Dreamers of the Ghetto (1899). At about
the same time, Jewish middle-class life was being faithfully described
by three women novelists, Amy *Levy; Julia (Davis)
*Frankau (“Frank Danby”); and Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick (Cecily
Ullman, 1855–1934), whose works include Scenes of Jewish Life
(1904), In Other Days (1915), and Refugee (1934). Their books
had little impact outside the Jewish community, but their common
central theme – mixed marriage – became increasingly
popular. This was the case with the novelist G.B. *Stern, but
the most sentimental, and obsessive, use of the motif occurs
in the works of Louis *Golding, whose Magnolia Street (1932)
and “Doomington” novels enshrine this aspect of Jewish assimilation
with an archetypal repetitiveness that suggests a
permanent solution of the “Jewish problem” through wholesale
extra-marriage. The outstanding Jewish poet of the 20th
century was Isaac *Rosenberg, whose feeling for the sufferings
of the soldiers in the trenches of World War I was in part
nourished by the Bible. Izak *Goller, originally a preacher, was
a more intensely Jewish poet, whose passionate Zionist sympathies
and outspoken manner brought him both fame and
notoriety during the 1930s. Other Jewish writers included S.L.
*Bensusan; the biographer and historian, Philip *Guedalla;
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 437