Shana Tova with Shakespeare

It's the Jewish High Holiday season, and we're wrapping up our first season with a look back at what Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have known and thought about Jews and their religious practices. Although English Protestants expressed plenty of anxiety and hostility towards Jews, continuing a long tradition of the same, they also respected the Jews' status as God's chosen people and their fundamental role in the scripture. In this episode, we explore these complexities by looking at a piece of travel writing by an Englishman in Venice and talking about Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice.