Literature+Share

toc NEW!



media type="custom" key="7600943" National Brotherhood Week, a satirical song that reflects the theme of intolerance.

LYRICS

media type="custom" key="7866811" Another unusual, humorous statement on stereotypes and Jews.



"In the modern world, the Jew has perpetually been on trial; still today the Jew is on trial, in the person of the Israeli -- and this modern trial of the Jew, this trial which never ends, begins with the trial of Shylock." -- Philip Roth, //Operation Shylock//

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

media type="custom" key="7794391" align="center"

= What is Comedy? Click here to learn. =

= Tragedy or Comedy? Click here to read the article. =

= Harold Bloom reviews Anthony Julius' book ,:"Trials of the Diaspora" = Here is an excerpt:

For Julius, “The Merchant of Venice” is both an anti-Semitic play and a representation of anti-Semitism. I dispute the latter: the humanizing of Shylock only increases his monstrosity. Who can doubt that he would have slaughtered Antonio if only he could? But I like a fine summary by Julius: “Shylock is an Englishman’s Jew — wicked, malignant but ultimately conquerable.”

Dickens created the second most memorable Jew in his superb Fagin [in Oliver Twist]. There is no third figure to compete with Shylock and Fagin...

How does one estimate the lasting harm done by Shakespeare’s and Dickens’s egregious Jews? Himself a usurer, Shakespeare must have known how much he had invested in Shylock. Is that why he punishes the Jew with such ignoble humiliation? The zest of Dickens for his urban apocalypses burned through his own humane sense of fairness. Yet nothing mitigates the destructiveness of the portraits of Shylock and Fagin.

Jerusalem Post article on the USA's most popular religion in 2010

A Press Release of the the new publication, **American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us**

=Play Analysis= Cummings Study Guides provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the play. Please read the section "Portia as a Hypocrite" and "Christians as Villians." Choose one discussion question to respond to.

=Usury= This article discusses usury in the context of Merchant of Venice.

=Halachic Loans= ==

[|HALACHIC LOANS]

Here is an article from Rav Simmons of Aish Hatorah outlining permissible loans in Judaism.

=The Prioress' Tale= Geoffrey Chaucer

Ther was in Asye, in a greet citee, Amonges Cristene folk a Jewerye, Sustened by a lord of that contree For foule usure and lucre of vileynye, Hateful to Crist and to his compaignye; And thurgh the strete men myghte ride or wende, For it was free and open at eyther ende.

A great satirical work by Geoffrey Chaucer, predating Shakespeare by 400 years, is The Canterbury Tales. The theme of antisemitism represented in The Prologue to the Prioress' Tale is echoed in The Merchant of Venice. Read the full text, in modern day English. .

P

Read the following article which examines the theme of antisemitism in The Prioress' Tale An article examining the Prioress' Tale as an Antisemitic Work

media type="custom" key="7820645"