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EconTalk

Zionism, the Melting Pot, and the Galveston Project (with Rachel Cockerell)

1/26/20261 hr 7 min

What happens when a writer discovers her "boring" great-grandfather was actually a household name across the Russian Empire who helped 10,000 Jews escape to Texas? Rachel Cockerell's The Melting Point traces this forgotten history through an audacious technique: she removed herself entirely, letting only primary sources--newspaper articles, diaries, letters--speak across time. Her journey uncovers great-grandfather David Jochelmann's partnership with Israel Zangwill, the "Jewish Dickens" and their ambitious Galveston Project to divert Jewish refugees from overcrowded New York to Texas. The conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts spans the early Zionist movement's schism over the right location for a Jewish homeland, 1920s New York experimental theater, and one family scattered across London, New York, and Jerusalem.

Clips

Britain Offers Uganda Homeland
The Galveston Escape Plan
Birth of 'The Melting Pot'
Long-Lost Relative Picks Up
Another Land Holy Slogan

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Russ Roberts· Host0:00

    [upbeat music] Welcome to EconTalk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to two thousand and six. Our email address is mail@econtalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. [upbeat music] Today is December twenty-third, twenty twenty-five, and before I introduce today's guest, I wanna encourage you to vote on your favorite episodes of twenty twenty-five. So go to econtalk.org. You'll find a link there to our survey, and vote. Thank you, and thank you for listening. My guest is author Rachel Cockerell. Her book, which is the subject of today's conversation, is The Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land. Rachel, welcome to EconTalk.

  2. Rachel Cockerell· Guest1:09

    Thank you, Russ.

  3. Russ Roberts· Host1:10

    Now, this is a rather extraordinary book, uh, as listeners will discover. Tell us how you started to write it and how it, uh, came out when you finished.

  4. Rachel Cockerell· Guest1:21

    I really just wanted to write a nice, normal book. I had read quite a few sort of Jewish family memoirs, like, uh, The Hare with Amber Eyes by

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