SOURCE: “Literary Lion,” in Dreamer of the Ghetto: The Life and Works of Israel Zangwill, University of Alabama Press, 1990, pp. 113–122.

In the following excerpt, Udelson demonstrates how Zangwill's preoccupation with Jewish survival, his doubts about Zionism, and his belief in the spiritual necessity of Judaism inform his short stories in Ghetto Comedies, Ghetto Tragedies, and his novella The King of Schnorrers.

Ghetto Tragedies

In 1893 Ghetto Tragedies, a collection of four short stories, appeared. An expanded version, containing an additional seven stories, was published under the title They That Walk in Darkness in 1899. Subsequently, in 1907, these eleven stories were reissued under the original title. Written in the Western “ghetto” literary tradition, the collection evokes the fading and poignant realities of the traditional Jewish world for a generation reaching maturity amid the glaring illumination of Western culture. Less didactic than most of his other fiction, this collection contains some of...