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The Melting-Pot and Its Legacies
in European Judaism
Author:
Meri-Jane Rochelson
Meri-Jane Rochelson
Professor Emerita, Florida International University, USA
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Abstract
This article examines Israel Zangwill's 1908 play The Melting-Pot as a document in American immigration history, and the role of its most contested tropes – interfaith marriage and the melting-pot itself – in his efforts to rescue suffering Jews of Europe. Through close readings of the play and with reference to other works by Zangwill in the early twentieth century, the article looks at the play as a pragmatic work in a time of international upheaval and American nativism. A discussion of the play's reception by critics and audiences indicates that what was most controversial at the time of its production was not necessarily what Zangwill was most desirous to convey. But a look at its varied meanings over time reveals the persistence of the melting-pot metaphor in discussions of immigration, identity, ethnicity and nationhood, especially in the American imaginary.
Contributor Notes
Meri-Jane Rochelson is Professor Emerita of English at Florida International University. She is the author of A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill (Wayne State University Press, 2008), has published critical annotated editions of Zangwill's 1908 play The Melting-Pot (Broadview, 2018) and his 1892 novel Children of the Ghetto (WSUP, 1998), and co-edited the essay collection Transforming Genres: New Approaches to British Fiction of the 1890s (Palgrave, 1994). Her most recent book is Eli's Story: A Twentieth-Century Jewish Life (WSUP, 2018).