Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill (London, 1864 - Midhurst, 1926) was a British writer and journalist of Jewish descent who stood at the forefront of cultural Zionism in the late nineteenth century and later became the leading thinker of the Jewish territorialist movement. He wrote in English. He is remembered for his popular novels, which sold well in his lifetime, and for his plays, which gave the phrase "melting pot" its place in the vocabulary of American immigration.

He was born in Whitechapel to immigrant parents from the Russian Empire: his father came from present-day Latvia and his mother from present-day Poland. After a childhood in Spitalfields, he attended the Jews' Free School, where he later taught. While working there he studied for his degree at the University of London and graduated with triple honours in 1884. He then left teaching for journalism and literature, founding and editing Ariel and The London Puck, and writing for the London press. His novel Children of the Ghetto (1892) earned him the nickname "the Dickens of the Ghetto". He also wrote mystery stories and social satire.

His political views shifted over time. He first backed Theodor Herzl, but in 1905 he broke with the mainstream Palestine-focused movement and founded the Jewish Territorialist Organization, which looked for a homeland elsewhere, with places such as Uganda and Mesopotamia considered. His writing on Palestine is ambivalent, and in later years he acknowledged the Arab population there. He also supported women's suffrage and pacifism.

His play The Melting Pot (1908) was a success in the United States, and his lasting legacy lies mainly in having popularised the melting pot as an image of immigrant assimilation. He died of pneumonia in 1926 at a care home in Midhurst, where he had been staying for two months.