To the Editor:
. . . John Gross [“Zangwill in Retrospect,” December ’64] relies so heavily on Maurice Wohlgelernter’s recent study of Zangwill, that one would expect some expression of indebtedness. Surprisingly, the only comment is a negative one: “he spends more time placing Zangwill in the context of minor turn-of-the-century naturalistic novelists . . . than in following topics which one would otherwise have supposed were of more immediate interest to a teacher at Yeshiva University.” That Wohlgelernter placed Zangwill in that context is true, but he did so explicitly, not by any sleight-of-hand. Neither is Zangwill’s relation to Jews and Judaism slurred over. He is placed in the company of Hess, Pinsker, and Herzl. One of the major themes in Wohlgelernter’s work deals with the different roads that brought each of these once-assimilated Jews back to a meaningful identification with his people. Wohlgelernter convincingly draws a dividing line through the ranks of the 19th-century Jewish nationalist epigoni. One group came back to the fold by means of an inner conversion, the other did so as a form of reaction to the new racial anti-Semitism.
Anyone who looks at Wohlgelernter’s readable and erudite study after reading Mr. Gross’s article will conclude that the latter has not dealt fairly with it.
Elias Cooper
Bronx, New York