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ABSTRACT
This article traces the evolution of mid-twentieth-century Jewish adaptations of Shakespeare's comedy "The Merchant of Venice," which aimed to counter the perceived antisemitism of the play that had pervaded European attitudes toward Jews. Through close comparative readings, I attempt to tease out the disparities between successive and at times overlapping versions, and I suggest some historical and cultural causes of these differences. The adaptations, which all date to the crucial years 1943-48, shift between genres, languages, and places of origin. They are informed by, and reflect, the events and historical processes of the period.
Key words: Shakespeare, antisemitism, Hebrew, Yiddish, World War II
In 1943, the Palestinian Hebrew writer Ari Ibn-Zahav published his novel Shailok ha-yehudi mi-venetsiyah (Shylock, the Jew of Venice), a radical reworking of Shakespeare's comedy.1 His stated intention was to counter the Shakespearean image of Shylock as an avaricious, bloodthirsty, non-Christian Other. He felt this was necessary because the image had permeated European culture over the centuries and exerted a dominant influence over popular constructs of Jews, with fateful, tragic results in the 1930s and 1940s. This novel was the first in an intriguing series of mid-twentieth-century adaptations of the play, informed primarily by the events of the Holocaust but also by one another. The successive permutations of the novel reflected and accommodated the shifting cultural landscapes, sensibilities, and concerns of the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in Palestine and the United States during those momentous years.
In a Hebrew article in 1942, Ibn-Zahav stated his rationale for writing the novel: he wanted to counter the Shakespearean image of Shylock that had permeated European culture over the centuries and that exerted a dominant influence over popular constructs of Jews.2 Ibn-Zahav sought to undermine the very basis of Shakespeare's views and rewrite the story to reflect a "truer" approach to Jews. He believed he had identified the source of Shakespeare's perceived misrepresentation: the playwright's oft-noted unfamiliarity with Jews and Jewish tradition. (Jews had been expelled from England almost three centuries before Shakespeare's birth, and he is not known to have ever left that country.) Ibn-Zahav's basic claim was that Shakespeare was ignorant of the severe biblical prohibition against taking human life and thus did not know that Shylock, as a traditionally observant...