“The prop that doth sustain my house”: Jewish Women, Widowers, and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

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August 17 2021
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44min 59s
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Few literary characters have loomed as large and felt as "real" as Shakespeare’s Shylock. Though, as early 20th-century British Jewish historian Cecil Roth reminds us, he is a "sheer figment of Shakespeare’s imagination." Or was he? In this episode, Dr. Chaya Sima Koenigsberg illuminates Shakespeare’s (in)famous portrait of Shylock with her research on medieval Ashkenaz Jewry and the lives of the Rokeach and his wife, Dulce. She also sheds new light on the presence of Hebrew bible figures Jacob and Leah and the underexamined presence of prayer in the play.

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    Learning on the Marcos and Adina Katz YUTorah site is sponsored today by Larry Adler & Joan Presby in honor of Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom's YUTorah shiurim and by Benjy Owen in memory of Sam Owen, Shemuel Reuven ben Yehudit Rachel and by Fran & Jerry Weinberg l'ilui nishmot Yaakov Yosef ben Moshe Ahron and Sheindel Perel bat Moshe