Melting Point

Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin

A Jewish family story and the search for a Jewish homeland

With Jerusalem Day on Sunday, 25 May, this book that celebrates Zionism and which culminates in the establishment of the State of Israel, will surely resonate with readers, especially at this time.

In pursuing this aim, Rachel Cockerell has devised a new literary technique that will surprise the reader. She has succeeded in pushing the boundaries of traditional memoir writing that previously always privileged the narrator’s voice. In her captivating, informative and absorbing story, Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land, she has only written the Preface, the Afterword and the Acknowledgements.

So what is radically different in Cockerell’s approach? The text of her fascinating book comprises linked quotations by major and minor historical and literary figures, sourced from newspapers, letters, diaries, memoirs, recordings, and multiple articles, as well as several oral histories she conducted with family members and recorded. They were, in most instances, living witnesses to the seminal events of her family’s story. For anyone with even the slightest degree of scholarly curiosity concerning primary sources, this is a satisfying read, for there are source attributions alongside every quotation; and further references in the ‘Notes’ and in the ‘Selected bibliography’.

So how does this compilation of quotations work for the reader? Well, the answer is brilliantly. So often in a memoir, one is distracted by the authorial voice that dictates what we should think, paraphrasing quotations, analysing new ideas and developments in the story line and, overall, projecting and imposing the narrator’s preferred perspectives. With the narrator excised from her own personal and historical chronicle of past times, all editorialising is absent in Cockerell’s highly original, well-conceived and executed book.

Essentially, Cockerell traverses the political landscapes of European, English and American histories in the twentieth century, while harking back briefly to the late nineteenth century with its pogroms, poverty and persecution especially among Eastern European Jewry. Interestingly, her personal family story intersects with larger national and international movements and their protagonists. The four generations of her family, for example, are juxtaposed with the tragic fate of the Jewish people leading up to the Holocaust and intertwined with the personalities and destinies of movements that culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel. These personal stories are dexterously integrated into a wider canvas depicting the birth of Zionism, the magnetism of its charismatic leader Theodor Herzl, his supporters and other protagonists of Zionism concerned with the salvation of Jews. The reader meets Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder and leader of the Revisionist party, a leader with intellectual and moral stature and prescient understanding of the looming calamity for his people. The English novelist, playwright, and founder of the Jewish Territorial Organisation, Israel Zangwill, features as a central figure in the drama that unfolds across several decades and continents. He stated, ‘If we cannot get the Holy Land, we can make another land holy’. After his play The Melting Pot was produced in Washington, DC and attended by President Theodore Roosevelt, who led the audience’s standing ovation, Zanwill’s phrase, ‘The Melting Pot’, entered history and the English language.

Herzl dominates the book’s opening, with apposite quotations establishing his credentials, his mission and vision. Jabotinsky wrote, ‘Theodor Herzl made a colossal impression on me. This is no exaggeration. There is no other word for it: colossal.’ Stefan Zweig said, ‘To me his authority was the highest, his judgement fundamental and absolute….His natural charming courtesy cast its spell upon me’. Zweig testified to Herzl’s ‘majestic appearance’ and his ‘dignity of kings or great diplomats’.  He adds, ‘His very physical appearance was sufficient to cause everyone to defer to him involuntarily’. According to Chaim Weizmann, Herzl ‘became a monumental mythical Jewish figure—something of a legend’. By means of quotations such as these, Cockerell skillfully constructs her stories and defines its characters and events, especially those gathered together at the first Zionist Congress held in 1897 in Basel.

The book deals in some detail with the little-known Galveston movement, named for a Texan port where Russian Jews were encouraged to disembark—10,000 did—and thence make their way to the ‘great Hinterland’ of western America, instead of settling in the over-populated Jewish ghetto of New York. It is at this juncture that we meet Cockerell’s great-grandfather, David Jochelman, Zangwill’s trusted collaborator in the Galveston enterprise and vice-president of the Jewish Territorial Organization. Together they had explored options for safe havens for Russian Jewry. As Zangwill stated, ‘We have knocked on all the most promising doors and everywhere we received the answer: too late, too late, ye cannot enter now’. Furthermore, he dissuaded Jochelman from migrating with his family to America. ‘Your future belongs to England,’ Zangwill said.

From this point onwards the book focuses on four generations of the Jochelman family, including the son and granddaughter from Jochelman’s first marriage in Russia, who settled in New York. Changing his name to Emjo Basshe 1, he became a well-known playwright who established an experimental theatre that ultimately failed. David Jochelman’s family settled in the 1940s in north London, where two of his daughters, their spouses and seven children, together with grandmother Tamara and her sister lived in chaotic conditions in a large run-down house at 22 Mapesbury Rd. Their stories and those of their American family are entertaining, moving and informative.

Rachel Cockerell has initiated what might well be a favoured literary modality, cutting and pasting quotations and linking them seamlessly to tell a story. Clearly, this technique requires dedicated research, trawling through databases online, accessing sources, visiting locations and conducting personal interviews. In this instance, it was a labour of love. However, it is a task and methodology that is potentially complicated, as most texts are still copyrighted and the intellectual property of their authors, despite popular moves to the contrary. However, Cockerell is to be commended for her bravery and expertise in transforming this initiative into a compelling reality. Undoubtedly, this is a landmark publication.

Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land

Rachel Cockerell

Wildfire Press

May 2025