Liberalism, Anglo-Jewry and the diasporic imagination: Herbert Samuel via Israel Zangwill, 1890-1914

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Description/Abstract

Although Herbert Samuel has often been described as the first practising Jew to be appointed to a British Cabinet, the relationship between his Jewishness and his politics was extremely complex, particularly in the early years of his career. A partial comparison of his political beliefs with those of his contemporary, the novelist and activist Israel Zangwill, reveals some of the tensions between Samuel’s liberal philosophy and his responses to social and political issues centred upon London’s East End, especially the ‘anti-alien’ campaigns against Jewish immigration. A brief coda speculates on Zangwill’s likely influence upon Samuel’s later Zionist sympathies.