SOURCE: “Israel Zangwill,” in Living Age, Vol. 282, No. 3664, September 26, 1914, pp. 790–797.

In the excerpt below, Jackson approves of Zangwill's holistic portrayal of modern Jewish life, which reveals the soul of a people as well as that of the author.

[E]quipped with ability and a mind of his own, Israel Zangwill came to art. He did not come, however, as a business man marketing a gift. He had something to say and he desired to say it in the most effective manner; so he became a writer, recording at first the tragedy and achievement of the Jewish people and, later, interpreting the spirit of the age apropos of Hebrew and Christian morals and mysticism. Bare historic or philosophic statement could not have achieved his aim; indeed, that aim has been to give artistic form to the existing records of historian and philosopher plus the results of his own observation...