Grandchildren of the Ghetto

Grandchildren of the Ghetto (1892) is a novel by Israel Zangwill. Raised in London by parents from Latvia and Poland, Zangwill understood the plight of the city’s Jewish community firsthand. Having risen through poverty to become an educator and author, he dedicated his career to the voiceless, the oppressed, and the needy, advocating for their rights and bearing witness to their suffering in some of the most powerful novels and stories of the Victorian era. “People who have been living in a Ghetto for a couple of centuries, are not able to step outside merely because the gates are thrown down, nor to efface the brands on their souls by putting off the yellow badges. The isolation imposed from without will have come to seem the law of their being.” As a Jewish immigrant who grew up in poverty in London, Israel Zangwill knows that the condition of life in the ghetto changes not just lives, but mentalities. Even if the Jews living in squalor on the East End of London were given the same rights as native Britons, they would still live with fear and doubt every day of their lives. In the second novel of his Ghetto series, Zangwill explores the day-to-day existence of these very people, illuminating their hopes and their dreams, illustrating their struggle to uphold traditions threatened by assimilation and the increasing secularism of modern life. A new generation experiences wealth and comfort beyond the wildest dreams of those who came before them. But what will they do with their newfound privilege? The tales of Jewish life in Grandchildren of the Ghetto earned Zangwill comparisons to Dickens upon publication and helped to establish him as an author with a gift for intensive character study and a passion for political themes. This edition of Israel Zangwill’s Grandchildren of the Ghetto is a classic of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

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