Shylock, the world’s most despised moneylender, is once again sharpening his knife in a new production of The Merchant of Venice. Do we need this, during a summer when the Jewish People have enough problems on their plate? Or can a case be made for the Bard of Avon and his troubling play?
And therein lies the rub. Because the same Shakespeare who gave the world the brooding Hamlet and the tragic King Lear also gave the world a Jew named Shylock — and this portrayal of the Jew as an uber usurer who won’t stop even at murder to take his revenge still haunts us Jew and non-Jew alike.
And therein lies another rub. Because even though the plot of The Merchant of Venice is a shaky structure cobbled together from several ill-fitting sources the play is still one of Shakespeare’s most popular. Every year “Shylock a Jew” makes his ghastly appearance in classrooms around the globe. Every year some actor somewhere is sharpening his knife on stage in preparation for receiving his “pound of flesh.”
This summer one of those stages is located in the bustling city of New York where the New York Shakespeare Festival has mounted a new production of the play starring the Hollywood actor Al Pacino in the role of Shylock. Mr. Pacino who visited a chassidic shul in Boro Park as part of his preparation for the role has received generally glowing reviews.
But do we need this “praise”? In a summer where the world is demanding an international investigation into Israel’s conduct during the Gaza-bound flotilla raid and where a United States court has sentenced Sholom Rubashkin to a twenty-seven-year prison term that even many non-Jewish lawyers and law professors believe is too severe do we really need to see the spectacle of another Jew — albeit a literary figure — hauled before a court and demonized?
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