The enduring image of America as a "melting pot" was stamped on the national consciousness by the English Zionist Israel Zangwill in 1908, when his simple-minded melodrama, The Melting Pot, opened in Washington and New York. The play featured two Russian immigrants, a Jew, and a Christian, who found love and happiness in America-America, "God's cruci- ble, the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming!" Expertly larded with bathos and cliche,...