| Summary: | In this dissertation, we are proposing to study the Jewish condition in the works of Israel Zangwill and Albert Cohen. The primary postulate of our thesis was that the analysis of what it meant to be a Jew in Zangwill's works would provide us with a sociohistorical framework that would enable us to better understand the condition of Cohen's Jewish protagonists. This thesis is divided into four parts. In the first part, we explain how the discovery of the non-Jewish world alienates the Jewish child from his own childhood and milieu and determines his future relationship to his people. Alienated from his past, the Jewish child has not other choice than to leave the Ghetto. In the second part, we examine how the cohesiveness of the Ghetto is preserved in a hostile environment. We also take into consideration the effect that this cohesiveness has on those Jews who attempt to break free from the Ghetto. In the third part, we consider how the Ghetto implodes under the influence of messianic aspirations (religious, political and nationalistic). More specifically, in the second and third parts, we show how Cohen distorts sociohistorical references which are exploited in a straightforward manner by Zangwill. In the fourth part, we see how difficult it is for emancipated Jews to remain Jewish while adapting to a christianised and often anti-Semitic West. Both Zangwill and Cohen were interested in presenting the tragic and comic effects that result from the dilemma between traditional religious practice and the ways of the secular world. But if Zangwill was more interested in investigating this dilemma from a social angle, Cohen was above all interested in exploring the influence of this dilemma on the psyche of his Jewish protagonists. In the works of Zangwill and Cohen, this dilemma is never resolved. Therefore, we were led to conclude that after the dissolution of the Ghetto, the condition of the modern Jew was an impossible one.
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