By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

According to the dictionary, an author is a person who writes a book. That leads to an interesting question: can someone be called an author if the overwhelming majority of the prose in her work was written by someone else? That question arose because Rachel Cockerell’s “Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is, except for its preface and afterward, a compilation of short writings from different time periods. Does compiling these writings make Cockerell the author? While that is open to debate, an additional and more interesting question is whether her prose experiment is successful. While the work as a whole doesn’t completely jell, parts of it are intriguing enough to make me glad that I read it. 
Cockerell explores three disparate time periods: The most interesting section is “Vienna, Basel, Galveston,” which looks at a failed Zionist experiment to create a Jewish colony in Texas. “New York” tells the story of Emmanuel Jochelman (AKA under his pen name Emjo Basshe), a Jewish playwright, and the experimental theater in which he took part. “London” focuses on two things: Cockerell’s extended family and the conflicts in British politics over the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The three sections are very loosely tied together by the appearance of her great-grandfather, David Jochelman. However, he plays a very minor role in the first section. While David is Emmanuel’s father by his first wife, David has no other connection to the story that takes place in “New York.” The second section is connected to the third when Emmanuel’s daughter, Emjo Basshe II, travels to London to spend time with her newly found relatives. However, these latter two sections were not nearly as interesting as the failed Zionist experiment.
Although I knew that the early Zionists explored several ideas for where to found a Jewish colony – most of which were dismissed as impractical – I was not as familiar with the attempt to found a colony in Texas. The decision split the movement as the splinter group formed an organization to help Jews from Russia immigrate to Texas in the early part of the 20th century. They wanted to steer immigrants away from the East Coast cities – particularly New York City – to other parts of the country. They recognized that if immigrants disembarked at the northern part of the East Coast, they would rarely travel elsewhere. This led to an effort to have ships dock further south first and then travel to Galveston. Unfortunately, the scheme was not a success for a variety of reasons.
Where Cockerell’s work differs from other books is that rather than offering her own thoughts about the subject, she collects short selections of writing from newspapers, journals, diaries and other historical documents. These offer a wide variety of opinions, which give readers a chance to learn about events from a 360-degree point of view. Positive and negative comments are given equal weight, which will not appeal to those looking for an author’s commentary on how best to interpret the material. This method did work for the first section of “Melting Point,” because the sheer number of opinions offered were interesting and absorbing. 
One important thing is missing, though: there are no biographies of the writers/speakers. Readers do learn a great deal about a few of them, for example, Theodore Herzl and Israel Zangwill, a British novelist and playwright whose writings were once very popular. But how much value to give a particular comment is left up to the reader. Knowing something about the writers is helpful. For example, in “New York,” one of the most quoted is John Dos Passos. The fact that I am familiar with his writings and life added a depth to his comments. Readers unfamiliar with all the writers may feel something is missing or wonder why they should care about Emjo Basshe, except that he is a distant relative of Cockerell.
The “London” section uneasily juggles the Zionist movement and the daily life of Cockerell’s family. This section features the longest pieces of prose, many of which are really dictations telling of Emjo Basshe II’s time in London. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the author’s family that interesting: the daily problems of who made lunch or who couldn’t cope with her children just didn’t resonate after having read about the Galveston experiment. That left the book feeling very lopsided.
However, while Cockerell’s experiment was not completely successful, it was absorbing and easy to read. This unusual book will not appeal to everyone, but those interested in the early days of the Zionist movement will find much of interest in the first section, while those interested in experimental nonfiction may enjoy exploring the author’s presentation of newspaper writings and personal musings.