"Scorned My Nation": A Comparison of Translations of The Merchant of Venice Into German, Hebrew, and Yiddish

By comparing versions of Shakespeare's play in three languages, reveals changing social and political perspectives relating to Jews and stereotypes about them. The histories of the reception of "The Merchant of Venice" reveal continuing reciprocal relations among the three cultures. In Germany the center of the play shifted from Elizabethan romantic comedy to the character of the Jew, who became an important figure in a country involved in determining who was a German and who was an alien. The latter stereotype culminated in the Nazi image of the Jew. Both the Yiddish and Hebrew translations presented counter-images of the Jew, either as a moral foil to immoral Christians or in tragic or heroic opposition to antisemites. In postwar Germany the play has served as a point of departure for discussions about German-Jewish relations in general and the Holocaust in particular.