In May 1943, at Vienna’s Burg theater, the Nazi party staged its most famous production of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” It starred Werner Krauss, a man so anti-Semitic that he is said to have asked Joseph Goebbels to make a public announcement clarifying that he was not Jewish, but rather habitually played Jewish caricatures…
Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” with Shylock, the vengeful Jewish money-lender, is seen by many as anti-Semitic. Yet Jewish actors and directors have been drawn to the play. “Wrestling with Shylock: Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice,” a collection of essays edited by Edna Nahshon and Michael Shapiro from Cambridge University Press, tries to explain…
Shylock Is My Name By Howard Jacobson Hogarth Shakespeare, 288 pages, $25 What to do with Shylock? I was pondering this question recently while browsing in a Barnes and Noble, when I noticed that they’d helpfully labeled the Humor shelf, “Books that make you laugh.” Especially with regard to some of them (“What Would Jesus…
The word “moneylender” evokes the image of Shylock, the Western canon’s merciless Jewish anti-hero. However, as is the case with most stereotypes, the historical reality was much more diverse and nuanced. Moneylending, vital to the growth of kingdoms and empires throughout the middle Ages, provided a stepping-stone to independence, wealth and influence not only to…
The Greek Jewish community protested after one of Greece’s main newspapers published a caricature of former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as a “Jewish moneylender.” The image, which shows Varoufakis wearing a giant black skullcap and hunched over a ledger, counting bags and coins of gold, was published Friday in Ta Nea, one of the country’s…
Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that he made a “poor choice of words” in using the term “Shylock” to describe unscrupulous lenders. Biden was reacting Wednesday to remarks by Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, in response to the vice president’s use of the term this week. Speaking to the Legal Services Organization, a…
In the weeks since Mia Farrow took to Twitter to voice her disdain for the lifetime achievement award Woody Allen was given at this year’s Golden Globes, everyone and his sister has flooded the Internet with an opinion about Allen, Farrow’s daughter Dylan and what may or may not have transpired between them twenty-two years…
If you habitually discard the sports section, you might have missed news of European soccer’s biggest transfer story since Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United for Real Madrid four years ago. It involves Madrid again, in fact – Tottenham Hotspur’s star winger Gareth Bale is rumoured to be on the verge of moving there for a…
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