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The Cousins Zangwill, Eder and Cowen – the causes they championed and the South African connection

Author: Published on: Published in: Israel and Zionism

(Author: Gwynne Schrire, Vol. 69, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2014)

Feature image: Israel Zangwill (1864-1926)

 

In a book of Anglo-Jewish letters from 1158 to 1927, published in 1938, is a letter from the British novelist Israel Zangwill.1 He was writing to Monty Eder, giving him the name of someone to look up in Johannesburg – a Wolf Myer or Myers. Zangwill is well known, but who were Monty Eder and Wolf Myer and what connection did Zangwill have with South Africa? The investigation of this relationship uncovered some interesting stories.

First, here is the letter, dated 2 September 1896:

Dear Monty

…Have I told you that there live amid the brutality of Johannesburg, a couple of Jews whose acquaintance is worth making – a Mr & Mrs. Wolf Myer (or Myers), she is a cousin of Amy Levy,2 nee Ada Saunders? I am not friendly with the husband else I would give you an introduction, but it should not be difficult for you to know them, especially as they complain of lack of intelligent society. She is very charming, a poetess suppressed in a mother of two infants. He has a watch-making establishment or something of that sort, was once at Cambridge. They are now in England but are returning in October. I met a small sister of hers near Dover who is developing in the same direction – poetry, not infants…

As to Leah3 coming out, I have been told that by reason of its dust-storms, Johannesburg is the worst possible place for Leah’s lungs whereas Natal would be favourable. However, on this point you are the best authority as you would not ask her to come out if it would kill her off. I should like her to go out if possible. I am not myself in the best of health though it is rather deficiency of vitality than any positive illness. I seem to have exhausted the first spurt of energy & perhaps only a very long rest or a complete change of conditions can give me my ‘second wind’…

Father4 is, as you know, living in Jerusalem, & by latest accounts seems to be praying happily there.

Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) and his cousin Montague David Eder (1866-1936) shared digs together as university students. They and another cousin, Joseph Cowen (1868-1932), were children of Russian immigrants. Israel’s father5 was a peddler, a yeshiva student who had fled to England to escape a death sentence.6Montague’s father was a well-to-do shipping merchant and Joe’s was a pawnbroker. The English-born cousins, all clever, articulate and with a firm Jewish identity, responded to the poverty and snobbery around them by developing a strong social conscience. All found a home in the developing Zionist movement. Zangwill in his writings championed Jewish and liberal causes from the women’s movement to human rights, from the exploitation of workers in the Belgian Congo to the genocide of the Armenians. Eder’s concern for the plight of the poor led him into socialism, radical politics, medicine and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalyst Ernest Jones wrote of him that he “would sacrifice all he had, time, money, labour and health, without a moment’s reflection, not only for social, but also for any personal causes that engaged his sympathy.”7 Cowen represented the Sheffield Hebrew Congregation on the Jewish Board of Deputies and was a close friend of Theodore Herzl, who appointed him the guardian of his only son, Hans.

Israel’s father sent his son to the Jews’ Free School in Spitalfields, East London, which offered both secular and religious studies and provided its pupils with clothing, food, and health care. Lord Rothschild offered to be his patron, but Zangwill did not want to be beholden to a benefactor.8 When he finished school, he taught there part-time while studying in the evenings at the University of London. Aged 18, he published a novella with a fellow student-teacher, Meyer Breslar, about market days on Petticoat Lane, called Motso Kleis(Matzo Balls). The school was embarrassed, the unfortunate Meyer was dismissed and Zangwill was ordered to stop publishing.9When he graduated in 1884 with a BA with triple honours in English, French and Mental and Moral Science, he was appointed as a teacher at the school.

Montague’s father educated his son privately in London, Belgium and Germany. He became friendly with his cousin Joseph when they were at school together.When Monty finished school, he joined his father in business. When his father died in 1886, leaving him comfortably off, he stopped working and, as a committed socialist, devoted himself to social issues affecting Jewish and Irish workers caused by years of economic depression.

Trafalgar Square was seen symbolically as the point at which working class East End and upper class West End met, and was a popular site for demonstrations. On 13 November, 1887, Monty, Zangwill’s future step-mother-in-law, and 10 000 other protesters took part in a mass demonstration organised by the Social Democratic Federation, the National Secular Society and the Law and Liberty League, to protest the government’s handling of the Irish situation. The marchers, approaching Trafalgar Square from different directions, were confronted by 2000 police and 400 troops in what became known as the ‘Bloody Sunday Riots’.10 Many demonstrators were badly hurt – 200 were treated in hospital, three were killed and Monty was left with a scar on his forehead.11 After that experience, he decided he could best help the poor by becoming a doctor and enrolled at the University of London, sharing a bohemian apartment in Bloomsbury with Israel.12

Israel continued writing and resigned after another disagreement with the governors of the school. (Later the school named one of its four houses ‘Zangwill’). He wrote for the weekly Jewish Standard and became editor of the comic magazine Ariel, or The London Puck. In 1891 he published his first novel, The Bachelor’s Club, followed by Children of the Ghetto (1892), which brought him instant international fame. Then followed Ghetto Tragedies (1893), The King of Schnorrers, Grotesques and Fantasies (1894), Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898) and other novels, plays, poetry and essays.

Monty graduated at the University of London in 1891 with a B Sc. and from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1895 as a doctor – after four attempts – perhaps much of his study time had gone on his commitments as secretary to the Bloomsbury Socialist Society and member of the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society.

As for his cousins, Joseph Cowen became a prosperous blouse manufacturer and married Monty’s sister. He became a member of the Anglo-Jewish Association and was on the Board of Directors of the London Jewish Chronicle.Zangwill became a popular speaker on Jewish issues and was a member of the Chovevei Zion society, of “Wanderers of Kilburn”13, a group of London Jewish intellectuals that included Dr Solomon Schechter, the discoverer of the Cairo Geniza. The latter’s daughter, Ruth, was to marry Adv. Morris Alexander of Cape Town, a founder of the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies and later a member of the Union Parliament.

In 1895 Zangwill, by then regarded as the foremost Anglo-Jewish author of his generation, had a visitor. He wrote: “One day a black-bearded stranger knocked on my study door like one dropped from the skies and said ‘I am Theodore Herzl – help me to rebuild the Jewish State.’”14

Zangwill introduced Herzl to potential supporters, presiding over a meeting he addressed at the Maccabean Club, London, on 24 November. The following year, he joined him in a ‘pilgrimage’ of English Jews to Palestine and helped him found the World Zionist Organization. He took Joseph Cowen with him to the first Zionist congress, where Herzl’s impassioned speeches made a deep impression on them. Significantly, Cowen wrote, “For the first time in my life, I heard Jews who did not apologise for being Jews, who did not seek to excuse themselves in any way, but who were seemingly proud of the fact.”15 Joe started touring Jewish areas of England, giving talks promoting Zionism and helping found the Zionist Federation, of which he became President in 1911. He was Director of the Jewish Colonial Trust from its foundation in 1899 until his death. Herzl referred to Cowen and Zangwill as part of his corps d ’elite. He took Joe with him on his visit to Constantinople as the guest of the Sultan, Joe’s British passport serving as an indirect guarantee of safety for Herzl. Joe regarded his friendship with Herzl as the greatest thing in his life and his name was one of the last things Herzl muttered on his deathbed.16

As for Monty, he qualified as a doctor in 1895 and married Florence Mary Herring, daughter of Captain Stephen Murray of the Indian army. Unfortunately, Florence was already married when he met her and adultery and divorce were frowned upon in Victorian England. For five days in November 1895, their affair hit the media. It was alleged that Florence adulterer had been involved with Mr Herring and his new wife in an alleged insurance fraud. Herring was accused of overvaluing a yacht and deliberately destroying it; Monty was cited as a co-conspirator and also charged with being involved in fraud in relation to the house he shared with Florence.17 Details of Florence Herring’s divorce case, described by the judge as ‘shocking and repulsive’, were splashed across the papers. The case against him was not proved, but such publicity would not enhance the reputation of a newly qualified doctor. Thus, Dr and Mrs Eder moved to Africa, settling in Johannesburg, where no one would have heard of them. It was a city of gold and doctors were in short supply.18

As the letter already quoted shows, Eder and Zangwill kept up a correspondence. According to an article on Eder by Mathew Thomson, “(l)etters from South Africa to Zangwill reveal Eder as a man who was disillusioned with his youthful political idealism, but also with medicine, keen just to make his fortune. He now cared not about ‘psychology or sociology’ but ‘the narrow instincts of class’, or as he put it in another letter, ‘fat dinners, fat wives, stalls at the theatre, trips to Brighton or the equivalent, long morning sleeps and half-crowns to beggars’.19

Did Monty Eder, now called David Eder, look up Wolf Meyers? We do not know, but the Johannesburg Directory of 1890 does list under ‘Watchmakers and Jewellers”: W. Meyers, 1177, Jeppe Street. Johannesburg.20 It would be interesting to know if Meyers left any descendants in Johannesburg.

Jewish Johannesburg was divided between the more modern Anglo-German Jews and the religiously more traditional Yiddish speaking East European Jews, with each group disdaining the standards and practices of the other.21 In 1896 a Zionist Society was established – the Chovevei Zion. Whether Eder had anything to do with this is not known but Zangwill was a member of the London Chovevei Zion and the Johannesburg Chovevei Zion wrote to him for advice on how to operate.22 As Eder was living in Johannesburg at the time and knew Zangwill’s address, this is possible.

Monty was leaving behind social and personal problems but going to a town with social and political problems of its own. The arrival of thousands of fortune hunters into a conservative puritanical rural country aroused xenophobia and these ‘Uitlanders’ faced much opposition from the Transvaal government. In August 1895 they handed a petition, signed by 32 479,23 to President Paul Kruger outlining their grievances, which dealt with unfair taxation, voting and citizenship rights.24 “Go back to your people,” Kruger told them, “and tell them that I shall never give them anything. I shall never change my policy. And now let the storm hit.”25

The storm hit soon after the Eders arrived with the ill-considered Jameson Raid, in which Dr L S Jameson, with the connivance of Cecil Rhodes and the support of Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies,26 invaded the Transvaal from Bechuanaland in an attempt to overthrow Kruger. It was a fiasco and Jameson and his conspirators were captured. These events were to lead to the South African War in 1899. By then the Eders had left the goldfields, although Zangwill retained his interest there.

One of Zangwill’s stories, ‘Anglicization’,27is set against the background of the South African War, as is the Mantle of Elijah, a political novel that attacked jingoism and might have been intended to counter the accusation that cosmopolitan Jewry were behind the war. The book was the fourth most popular book out of 38 in a January 1901 Bookman list.28 Not only was South Africa one of the countries Zangwill contracted with the Romeike press cutting agency to collect every mention of his name in its newspapers,29 but he also mentioned it when an Australian newspaper interviewed him in 1903: “The Dreyfus case, South Africa with its menace of the Jewish capitalists, were in the air, demanding his attention. For Zangwill there was no overlooking them or the problems they involved.”30

This was a reference to the influential antisemitic reports emanating from Johannesburg-based JA Hobson, a Manchester Guardian reporter who believed that the Jewish capitalists on the Rand wielded inordinate power, controlled the mining industry, the dynamite industry, illicit liquor traffic, the press and the share market and persuaded Britain to embark on the War.31

For Dr Eder, it did not take long for Johannesburg to lose its attraction. Maybe it was the brutality, the lack of intellectual society, the dust-storms. Maybe it was the Uitlanders’ grievances and political uncertainty and the threat of war with England. As a socialist, despite his disillusioned letters, he may have disliked the materialism of the wealthy landlords and the conditions of the workers. Perhaps he did not find Wolf Meyers and his poetic wife congenial, or perhaps his reputation had followed him. Whatever the reason, their stay in Johannesburg was short and in 1898 they moved to Columbia, where Monty’s uncle James Eder was a pioneer of the sugar industry. There, Monty obtained a doctorate in medicine from the University of Bogota, but still could not settle down. The Eders returned to England, then went back to South America in 1901. In 1902, Monty was the Medical Officer in a poor Cumberland mining village. In 1903 he joined the Bolivian army as a non-commissioned military surgeon, planning a career in tropical medicine. He expected to set up a model hospital but found himself, in the midst of a civil conflict, employed by an Anglo-American concession-hunting rubber expedition examining indigenous beetles, butterflies and flowers.32 He was believed to have been in danger of starving to death, of being eaten by cannibals and of being spy.

In the meantime Zangwill, a supporter of votes for women, had married suffragette Edith Ayrton in 1903. Like Florence, she was not Jewish, but had a Jewish step-mother and was a writer and feminist. They joined the Women’s Social and Political Union. Criticised for supporting the militant tactics of its ‘unwomanly’ members, Zangwill responded that “ladylike means are all very well if you are dealing with gentlemen; but you are dealing with politicians”. They helped form the Jewish League for Woman Suffrage “to demand the Parliamentary Franchise for women, on the same terms as it is, or may be, granted to men.” The members disrupted Shabbat services in London synagogues, demanding both religious and political suffrage for women, and had to be forcibly removed. The Anglo-Jewish press called them “blackguards in bonnets”.33

In 1901, Herzl decided to solicit the financial help of Cecil John Rhodes.34 Herzl asked Joseph Cowen to arrange a meeting. Max Langerman, a prominent Johannesburg pioneer and communal leader who had been involved with the Uitlanders and in the Jameson Raid, was proposed as a go-between, but Cowen persuaded English journalist WT Stead to do so. Herzl carefully drafted a letter that would flatter Rhodes,35 which Zangwill translated into English. Joseph was to deliver it, but Rhodes died before that could happen.

In September 1903, on his return from the Sixth Zionist Congress,36 Zangwill reported to the English Zionist Federation in London that he had met South African Jews and received mandates from Jews from Cape Town and that although the South African millionaires were comfortable enough, yet it was a South African Zionist millionaire who had furnished the money to produce a great Hebrew Encyclopaedia. The name of the South African millionaire was not disclosed but this was possibly a reference to the encyclopaedia on Jews and Judaism (Ozar ha-Yahadut)37 planned by Ahad Ha-Am to foster the educational work which he considered a prior condition for settlement. A sample with four articles was published in Warsaw in 1906 but garnered little support.38

At this congress, Secretary of State Joseph Chamberlain suggested that Great Britain might provide land in Uganda as an alternative to settling in Palestine.39 Herzl wrote that “Cowen … and Zangwill danced an Indian war dance” when he told them of a bill Chamberlain and Lord Lansdowne had introduced in Parliament. “When the Uganda plan was put to Herzl by Mr. Chamberlain, Herzl bombarded men with cables, letters and messages – to …Cowen, Zangwill … urging negotiations and new combinations.”40 The East Europeans Jews refused the suggestion, calling Herzl a traitor,41but Zangwill returned convinced. He stopped writing and gave up seven years to search for a territory to serve as an autonomous Jewish settlement and lecturing around Britain advocating this. He established the Jewish Territorial Organisation (Ito) which looked for suitable territories in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Iowa, Mesopotamia, Nevada, Paraguay, Rhodesia, South Africa, Tripoli (Cyrenaica) and Uganda.

An American newspaper reported on 2 December 1904 under the heading ‘Israel Zangwill who favors colonizing South Africa’, that “Israel Zangwill, the famous Jewish novelist, playwright and essayist is much interested in the project to colonise the Jews of Europe on a tract of land in South Africa donated by Great Britain. His present visit to America is partly for the purpose of arousing interest here in the plan.”42

The requests for land in Canada, Australia and South Africa43 were not favourably received and as Cyrenaica forms part of Libya, it is just as well that they were unsuccessful. In South Africa the Territorialists, as they were called, found support from the Anglicised assimilated anti-Zionist Jews. By identifying with Ito they could express their concern at the persecution of East European Jews while confirming their loyalty to England. Three months after the conference, a branch of Ito was established in Cape Town by David Goldblatt,44 with anti-Zionists like the Rev Bender of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation and Hyman Liberman, the first Jewish mayor of Cape Town, as its honorary presidents. A branch was established in Johannesburg in 1905 with Alfred Cohn as chairman.45 Zangwill accepted an invitation to visit South Africa in 1905 to attend the SAZF conference, but had to cancel.

Up until this point, Eder had been a sceptic – as a socialist, he had distanced himself from Zionism and had accepted Marx’s dictum that the solution to the Jewish question was bound up with the dissolution of capitalism, as is clear in correspondence with his cousin. He certainly had little hope that the Jews he had seen in South Africa would abandon capitalism,46 but his work among the poor Jews in the East End of London made him sensitive to its need. Cowen claimed that Eder became a Zionist through him. Eder joined the Ito council and Zangwill sent him to Brazil in 1907 to investigate purchasing land for a Jewish settlement, and in 1908 to West Africa and Cyrenaica as part of an Ito contingent.

Eder became a school medical officer in Poplar, London, where he tackled the ill health of Britain’s poor. He founded and edited School Hygiene, the first medical journal in Britain devoted to the health of school children, and designed a scheme for ‘The Endowment of Motherhood’. He helped establish the London Labour Party and travelled across England lecturing, not on Zionism like his two cousins, but about the need for social and economic justice. He became a regular contributor on medical subjects in the radical periodical The New Age where he met the school-teacher wife of the drama critic Dr Leslie (later Lord) Haden Guest. Edith Guest was ‘the New Woman personified’: a vegetarian, who walked around in flat heels and an Egyptian jibbah and was the daughter of Maximilian Low, a Jewish stockbroker with six sons and five daughters.47

Eder ran off with Edith and the abandoned Florence committed suicide. Edith divorced Dr Guest and married David in 1909. Always open to new ideas, David’s life was shaped by his desire to play an active part in bringing about a fairer society. He then eagerly embraced the revolutionary new field of psychoanalysis,48travelling to Vienna to be analysed by Freud, who sent him to Viktor Tausk. He and Edith entered courses of analysis with Carl Jung and Ernest Jones and Edith had affairs with Jones and H.G. Wells.49 David was the first doctor in England to practise psychoanalysis, was a founder member of the London Psycho-Analytical Society, acting as its first secretary and in 1912 set up a psychoanalytic clinic in London, but also worked in another clinic as a ‘poor man’s doctor’. Maybe his interest in psychoanalysis was linked to a mood disorder – this could account for his impulsivity, his enthusiasms and his frequent changes of jobs and countries – in a letter to Zangwill discussing depression, he commented that the normal advice of a change of scene did not necessarily provide the opportunity ‘to get away from oneself’.50 Zangwill’s letter to him also hints that Zangwill had a tendency to depression.

When the 1914 War broke out, David joined the British Army and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in charge of Malta’s psycho-neurological department. During this time, he developed ideas about post traumatic psychosis, which resulted in a book, War-Shock. That year, Joe became friendly with Chaim Weizmann when Joe, the President of the English Zionist Federation, offered him the presidency.51 Joe, David and Mrs Weizmann helped Vladimir Jabotinsky try to recruit a Jewish battalion, hoping that would increase Jewish post-war influence. When formed, the Zion Mule Corps was active in Gallipoli.52

Zangwill by now was considering a population transfer in Palestine, although it was never Zionist policy. If the Boers had migrated to the Transvaal, he argued, why could the Arabs not realise that such a migration, for which they would be fully compensated for by the Zionists, would be in their best interest?53Chloe Veltman wrote that when Zangwill gave a speech or published on any topic, his words sparked debate on both sides of the Atlantic. British society looked to him as the authoritative voice on all things Jewish and she quoted Edna Nahshon as calling Zangwill the Elie Wiesel of his day.54

Then came the Balfour Declaration. Joe, Weizmann and eight others participated in a conference leading up to the Declaration.55 Even Zangwill was an active campaigner, speaking at a 1917 public meeting in the London Opera House to celebrate its adoption. Weizmann wrote, “Zangwill was, or had been a Zionist. In the early days of the movement Herzl had leaned heavily on him and he had made a great impression at one of the first congresses… Zangwill’s understanding of Zionism was subtle, his devotion substantial. Yet… he broke away to found his Jewish Territorial Organisation… Zangwill never got over his rift with us… In 1917 he indicated the possibility of a rapprochement. His Territorial Organisation had become meaningless, and he dissolved it that year. However, there was one fortunate result to our negotiations – the accession to our forces of Dr M D Eder, the distinguished psychiatrist. Zangwill himself remained outside, his attitude critical and unhelpful.”56

Although Israel was outside, the other two cousins were definitely inside and they were sent in 1918 by the British Government as part of an eight-member Zionist Commission under Weizmann to survey the situation in Palestine and prepare recommendations for applying the Balfour Declaration.57 The Eders remained behind – David was optimistic and foresaw close co-operation with the Arabs with Palestine eventually part of a Federation of Middle East states.58 Edith joined a Women’s Representative Committee with Rebecca Sieff and Vera Weizmann to plan a programme for women and children with funds they intended to raise.59 The following year Edith, Rebecca Sieff, Dr Vera Weizmann and Miriam Marks founded WIZO in England. Edith was elected onto the WIZO’s executive and became vice president of the Federation of Women Zionists.

The Eders moved to Palestine, living on an orange farm, where he served as a political officer and doctor for the Zionist Commission and helped in the absorption of the first groups of immigrants of the Third Aliyah, displaying great understanding for their pioneering spirit. From 1921 to 1927 he was elected onto the Zionist Executive in Palestine as diplomatic representative – Joe was a member of the Zionist World Executive. In 1921 David went to the Soviet Union to try (unsuccessfully) to get them to recognise the work of the Zionist Organization. This was facilitated by the Soviet government’s representative in Britain, Maxim Litvinov, who had married Ivy, the daughter of Edith’s brother. (Litvinov had been appointed by Lenin and was then appointed by Stalin as People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs – until Hitler came to power and his Jewish ethnicity became an obstacle. He was replaced by Molotov whom Stalin directed to ‘purge the ministry of Jews’ and was murdered on Stalin’s instructions in 1951.) 60

Weizmann appreciated Eder’s abilities greatly and wrote about him in his autobiography:

The burden of this side of our work – and it was a heavy one – fell almost entirely on Dr David Eder. Superficially you would have said that there could hardly have been found a less suitable man for the job. He was Western by birth and upbringing, a scientist, Western in outlook, leftist in politics and almost entirely ignorant of any of the languages in current use in the old Yishuv. But these handicaps were purely superficial, and he overcame them. What mattered was his real kindness, his tolerance and humanity, his eagerness to understand the other’s point of view, and these qualities soon gained for him the deep respect and affection of even the most recalcitrant among them. To nobody but Eder would they open up, he seemed possessed of some sort of intimate personal magic which charmed away their fears and suspicion… He took charge of the Commission. Although our relations with the military administration were in the hands of Jabotinsky, it was Eder’s authority which expressed itself in the commission and, whenever difficulties arose… it was he who was called in to straighten matters out. It is remarkable that though in private he was at times temperamental and affected a gruff manner, he remained to the outside world a model of patience and forbearance. He always gained his point by persuasion and never resorted to threats or bluster… He was a tower of strength to us in those days. He understood the British better than most of us, was always able to reason matters out, to explain difficulties, and to advise”61

With those qualities, he must have been a superb psychiatrist. One of his patients, writer Ethel Mannin, wrote, “He knows all there is to know about human nature… He did not acquire this knowledge merely by reading text-books… He knows the human mind because he has himself endured fundamental experiences, pain and conflict, and in his wanderings in all parts of the world come into contact with all kinds and classes of people.”62 Sigmund Freud told Edith’s sister, Barbara Low, herself an analyst, that Eder represented “a rare blend of intrepid courage and an absolute love of truth, together with tolerance and a great capacity to love.”63

The Eders spent eight months in Budapest while David was being analysed by Sandor Ferenczi. Back in England, he became a prominent member of the Jewish Health Organisation and president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain. He wrote many articles and served on the editorial board of New Judea, the paper of the World Zionist Movement and worked on behalf of the Hebrew University (which launched an appeal on his death to establish a memorial library in his name). With the rise of Nazi Germany, Germany started persecuting Jews and preventing them from ob he helped hundreds of Jewish refugees find medical positions in England and the Commonwealth.64 Young refugees from German and Austrian hachsharah camps were placed on the David Eder farm bought in 1935 in Ringelstone, Kent, so that they would qualify for Palestinian agricultural visas. (Teddy Kollek was sent there in 1938 to work with the Habonim members.)

The first of the cousins to die, of pneumonia in 1926, was Zangwill. This followed a depressive illness for which he was hospitalised, probably brought on by the lack of success of recent plays and the furore that erupted after a speech he had given in America criticising the Zionist leadership. His funeral was conducted by visiting American Zionist leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and president of the Zionist Organization of America. He had been probably the best known Jew in the English-speaking world at the start of the 20th Century, with his friends including H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

In 1932, Joe Cowen visited Palestine and sent a telegram to Durban where Weizmann had taken ill while on a Keren Hayesod tour.65It stated that he was very pleased with what he had seen, the Jewish position in Palestine was as solid as the rock of Gibraltar and he was thinking of moving there.66 Shortly after he came back, Joe died. The day after Weizmann returned from South Africa a memorial service was held with eulogies from Weizmann and David Eder. Four years later, Weizmann was to speak at David’s funeral after his death from a heart attack.67 Tributes were received from his friends who included Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells, Rebecca West, D. H. Lawrence and Sigmund Freud (who described him as a pioneer figure in three of the great modern movements of his age: socialism, psychoanalysis and Zionism).68

In his article on Eder, ‘Socialist, Psychoanalyst, Zionist and Modern Saint’, Mathew Thomas makes the interesting point that “in the shift from political and social to cultural history we have become increasingly interested in connections between political, social and intellectual movements, less tied to histories of institutions, more interested in ideas, and more open-minded about which ideas mattered.”The three cousins are ideal subjects because they were wrapped up in political, social and intellectual movements. Causes were important to them. Ideas mattered. Activism mattered. For Zangwill it was feminism, Jewish and social causes round the world and Zionism. For Eder it was education, sex reform, feminism, socialism, psycho-analysis and Zionism.69 For Cowen it was Jewish causes and Zionism.

Cowen’s comments about meeting people who were not ashamed to be Jewish indicates that their commitment to Zionism and other isms might reflect a response to feelings of rejection experienced as Jews who did not fit into the British class system, despite their undoubted abilities, and an according rejection of the beliefs of that society and a concomitant desire to create a homeland where Jews could live free from prejudice. Zangwill had a complex relationship to his Jewishness,70 and both he and Eder broke from convention by choosing non-Jewish wives.

This examination of the lives of Zangwill, Eder and Cowen also reminds one how interconnected our world was even in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, before air travel and the Internet. Zangwill’s letter to Eder has thrown some light onto these cousins whose involvement, while intimately connected to the early history of Zionism, had ripples extending into South Africa.

 

Gwynne Schrire is Deputy Director of the Cape Council of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She is a regular contributor and a member of the Editorial Board of Jewish Affairs and has written, co-written and edited various books on aspects of local Jewish and Cape Town history.

 

NOTES

  1. Roth, Cecil (Ed), Anglo-Jewish Letters (1158-1917);Soncino Press, London, 1938, p318.
  2. This might have been Amy Levy, a British Jew, who wrote novels in English on Jewish themes and committed suicide in 1889.
  3. Israel’s sister, one year older than him.
  4.  His father Moses, supported by Israel, moved to Palestine where he died.
  5. From Ridenichki, Latvia.
  6. http://www.jta.org/1926/08/03/archive/all-jewry-mourns-death-of-israel-zangwill-famous-writer-and-defender-of-his-people#ixzz2b0VmDTI7.
  7. Galpa, Mark, op cit.
  8. Veltman, Chloe, “Melting Point”, Tablet Magazine – Jewish News, www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/theater…/melting-point 10 March 2006
  9. chloeveltman.com > features > arts www.chloeveltman.com/features/arts/zangwill.html
  10. Thomson, Mathew, ‘The Solution to his Own Enigma: Connecting the Life of Montague David Eder (1865–1936), Socialist, Psychoanalyst, Zionist and Modern Saint’, Cambridge Journal of Medical History, 2011 January; 55(1): 61–84. * Mathew Thomson, Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick, Humanities Building, Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. Email: m.thomson@warwick.ac.uk www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › Journal List › Med Hist › v.55(1); Jan 2011 PMCID: PMC3037215.
  11. Bloody Sunday (1887) – Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1887)ý
  12. Galpa, Mark, “Dr.M.D.(Montague David) (1866-1936)”, Modernist Journals, a Joint project of Brown University and the University of Tulsa, www.modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=mjp.2005
  13. This group later formed the core of the Maccabaeans and the Jewish Historical Society of England.
  14. Schneiderman, Harry, op cit.
  15. http://www.jta.org/1932/06/14/archive/a-great-servant-of-the-movement-and-his-people-dr-weizmanns-tribute-to-joseph-cowen-at-london-mem#ixzz2Z0Q Pr0eC
  16. Dr. Siegmund Werner, who aided in nursing Herzl and as editor of “Die Welt” was close to him, in describing Herzl’s last hours, wrote: From time to time he mumbled in his sleep. Then he straightened up again and stared at me. “Did you inform Cowen?” I answered “Yes”. http://www.jta.org/1932/05/26/archive/death-of-joseph-cowen#ixzz2ZnMmuKCC
  17. The details of the Herring v. Janson and others case are accessible in reports in The Times between 7 and 15 November 1895. See Thomson, op cit.
  18. Thomson, Mathew, op cit.
  19. Ibid.
  20. Johannesburg Directory, 1890, Dennis Edwards & Co. With thanks to archivist Naomi Musiker, Beyachad Archives, 29 April 2013.
  21. The arrival of Yiddish-speaking religiously orthodox Jews from Eastern Europe from the early 1890s created serious tensions within the Johannesburg Jewish community. The English-speaking Anglo-German Jewish pioneers regarded the newcomers with disdain as primitive and dirty; the newcomers thought the English Jews ignorant and assimilated. When the Eders arrived there were three synagogues – the Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation’s President Street Synagogue (opened in 1889), the breakaway Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation’s Park Synagogue (opened by President Kruger in 1892) and the Johannesburg Orthodox Hebrew Congregation (opened in 1893), known as the Griene Beth Ha-midrash. The first two were attended by modern, Anglicized, middle class Jews, the latter by Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews.
  22. Gitlin, Marcia, The Vision Amazing, Menorah, Johannesburg, (1950), p17.
  23. Chilvers, Hedley A, Out of the Crucible, Juta, 1948, p8.
  24. In 1894, Kruger extended the time required before the newcomers could get the vote to fourteen years. Fairbridge, D, A History of South Africa, Oxford, 1926, London, p278.
  25.  F Addington Symonds, The Johannesburg Story, Frederick Muller, London, 1953, p 113.
  26. Saunders, Christopher (Ed), Reader’s Digest Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story, Readers Digest, Cape Town, 1988, p237. Chamberlain ensured that he escaped the ensuing witch-hunt by getting himself elected to the committee established to determine the extent of his involvement. Called ‘The committee of no enquiry”, he was found to be blameless.
  27. First published in Pall Mall Gazette in February 1902 and later included in Ghetto Comedies.
  28. Rochelson, Meri-Jane, A Jew in the Public Arena: The Career of Israel Zangwill, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008; books.google.com/books?isbn=0814333443 pp 134-138.
  29. Schneiderman, Harry, ‘Israel Zangwill, A Biographical Sketch’, www.ajcarchives.org/ajc_data/files/1927_1928_5_specialarticles.pdfý
  30. “Novelist and prophet: A talk with Mr Zangwill”, West Gippsland Gazette, 22 December 1903, trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/68727601.
  31. Shain, Milton, The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994, pp41-3.
  32. Thomson, Mathew, op cit.
  33. Edith Zangwill: Biography – Spartacus Educational.
  34. He wrote in his diary: “I tried to communicate with Cecil Rhodes who will perhaps give me the money I need.” Rhodes’ comment to Stead on hearing that Herzl wanted to meet him was “if he wants a tip from me, I have only one thing to say, and that is, let him put money in his purse.” Marcia Gitlin, The Vision Amazing: The Story of South African Zionism, Menorah, Johannesburg 1950, p20.
  35. As “avisionary politician or a practical visionary” who was to be invited “to make history”. Gitlin, op cit, p21.
  36. Simon, Maurice (Ed) Speeches, articles and letters of Israel Zangwill, Soncino Press, London, 1937, p191.
  37. A%ad Ha- Am – Jewish Virtual Librarywww.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/…/ejud_0002_0001_0_00569.htmlý
  38. M. Lan, Encyclopaedias, in Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol 6 Di-Fo, Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem, Israel, 1972, p731, column 2.
  39. His son, with equally well intentioned but ill-considered policies, tried to appease Hitler with the Munich Agreement of 1938.
  40. Death of Joseph Cowen, Jewish Telegraphic Agency; www.jta.org/1932/05/26/archive/death-of-joseph-cowený
  41. Laquer, Walter, A History of Zionism, Schocken, New York, 1976, p129.
  42. Israel Zangwill, Who Favors Colonizing Jews In South Africa”. The Evening News, 2 December 1904” news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1982&dat=19041202&id.
  43. Schneiderman, Harry, op cit.
  44. Goldblatt published a number of Yiddish newspapers in Cape Town, including Der Kriegstraphet, Der Yiddisher Advocate and Afrikaner Telegraph and with Morris Alexander established the Jewish Board of Deputies. In 1914 he moved to New York.
  45. Gitlin, Marcia, op cit, pp 132-133.
  46. Thomson, Mathew, op cit;
  47. Ibid
  48. Eder, (Montague) David – Oxford DNB; www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=61592&back
  49. Thomson, Mathew, op cit.
  50. I thank psychiatrist Dr Ashley Robins for his insights.
  51. Dr. Weizmann at Joseph Cowen Memorial Meeting, 1 June, 1932. http://www.jta.org/1932/06/01/archive/dr-weizmann-at-joseph-cowen-memorial-meeting#ixzz2Zqow60sm
  52. Weizmann, Chaim, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann, First President of Israel. Harper. New York, 1949, 167-168 Weizmann said he was not easy when Jabotinsky became a political officer of the Zionist Organisation but thought that as Dr Eder would be there with him, the combination would not be too bad.
  53. Laqueur, Walter, A History of Zionism, Schocken, New York, 1976, pp231-2.
  54. Nachson was editor of a new volume of Zangwill’s plays, From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot, Veltman, Chloe.
  55. Weizmann, Chaim, op cit., 188.
  56. Ibid, p160.
  57. Ibid., p213
  58. Laqueur, W, op cit. pp 240-241.
  59. Rebecca Sieff – Jewish Women’s Archive jwa.org/encyclopaedia/article/sieff-rebeccaý.
  60. When Stalin told Molotov to “purge the ministry of Jews”, Molotov commented, ‘Thank God for these words! Jews formed an absolute majority in the leadership and among the ambassadors. It wasn’t good.’ He said Litvinov had ‘remained among the living only by chance.’ Litvinov’slast words to his wife were ‘Englishwoman, go home’. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Litvinový
  61. Weizmann, Chaim, op cit., pp 226-.228.
  62. Mannin, Ethel, ‘Confessions and Impressions of 1934’, quoted in Thomson, Mathew, op cit.
  63. http://www.answers.com/topic/eder-david-montague#ixzz2Z0cOozvt Psychoanalysis Dictionary.
  64. Galpa, Mark, op cit.
  65. Cowen had donated £5,000 to Keren Hayesod on its creation in 1920. Rubinstein, William (Ed), Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo Jewish History.
  66. Dr. Weizmann at Joseph Cowen Memorial Meeting, 1 June, 1932, op cit.
  67. He said that Eder’s wise and experienced mind was at the service of the London Executive up to the time of his death, but that to replace him in Palestine would not be a simple matter, Weizmann, Chaim, op cit, p295
  68. Eder, M. D. (Montague David) (1866-1936) – Modernist Journals. www.modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=mjp.2005
  69. Eder, (Montague) David Oxford DNB; www.oxforddnb.com/templates/article.jsp?articleid=61592&back
  70. Eder had no children. Zangwill had three including a daughter who was institutionalised for a mental condition. His son Oliver Louis Zangwill FRS (1913 – 1987) was an influential British neuropsychologist and Professor of Experimental Psychology.

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