To Die in Jerusalem by Israel Zangwill

The older Isaac Levinsky grew, and the more he saw of the world after business hours, the more ashamed he grew of the Russian Rabbi whom Heaven had curiously chosen for his father. At first it seemed natural enough to shout and dance prayers in the stuffy little Spitalfields synagogue, and to receive reflected glory as the son and heir of the illustrious Maggid (preacher) whose four hour expositions of Scripture drew even West End pietists under the spell of their celestial crookedness. But early in Isaac's English school-life -- for cocksure philanthropists dragged the younger generation to anglicization -- he discovered that other fathers did not make themselves ridiculously noticeable by retaining the gabardine, the fur cap, and the ear-locks of Eastern Europe: nay, that a few -- O, enviable sons! -- could scarcely be distinguished from the teachers themselves.

When the guardian angels of the Ghetto apprenticed him, in view of his talent for drawing, to a lithographic printer, he suffered agonies at the thought of his grotesque parent coming to sign the indentures.