By Irvin H. Jacobs

 

CORONADO, Calif.— The Christian assessment of Judaism in medieval times was that the "New Testament" superceded the "Old Testament."  In that Christianity needed the Hebrew Bible as justification for the coming of its Messiah, the Jews preceding Jesus' arrival were good but those who came in his time and later were no longer good.  Since Jews didn’t accept Jesus, Christians believed it justifiable to punish Jews. Chrristians often used accounts in the Christian Scriptures to accuse Jews of being Christ killers.

This theme was examined by Professor Lisa Lampert, UCSD Associate Professor of English Literature and Comparative Medieval Studies, who spoke Wednesday, May 24, at the Police Department in  Coronado, a suburb on San Diego Bay. Her appearance was sponsored jointly by the San Diego Agency for Jewish Education (AJE), Coronado Friends of the AJE, Ohr Shalom Synagogue, and Temple Beth Sholom.

Medieval towns put on series of day-long  plays, depicting the cycle of Biblical stories beginning with the creation story.  Eventually these plays focused on the suffering of Jesus, emphasizing the "Passion Plays" of which those in Oberammergau, in Bavaria, Germany, persist to this day.  They are performed as a town pageant each decade, with locals competing for role.  The Passion Plays  have become a town industry attracting tourists to this otherwise obscure village.

Many stories of the Hebrew Bible were read retroactively as harbingers of the story of Jesus. Among these were the “original sin” of Adam and Eve,  the death of Abel,  the binding of Isaac, and on through the prophecies of Isaiah and others  In such a reading, Hebrew Scriptures were offered as proof that  it was G-d’s plan to bring about Christianity, but it wasn’t until Jesus that the true trajectory of the “divine vision” became clear.

In the New World, the Spaniards depicted the indigenous populations as the “New Jews,” again justifying maltreatment.  As Jews were officially banned from places such as Spain and England, often enough no one ever saw a Jew.  Nevertheless, severe descriptions of Jews  grew,  their absence serving to fuel the malevolent way in which Christians pictured them.

Several plays emerged over time depicting the Jew in Satanic terms. Marlowe’s Jew of Malta in the late 16^th century depicted a trickster, Barabas the Jew, whose daughter was kidnapped and taken to a convent.  Marlowe’s character however was flat and one dimensional, simply evil.

Shakespeare followed with  is Merchant of Venice, but in this case he fleshed out his characters. The Jew, Shylock, had human traits and feelings, and could and can be played as a subject of sympathy.  It is because of this and numerous other instances in Shakespeare’s writings that there is controversy as to his true feelings toward Jews (who officially did not and could not live in England at that time since 1290.

Shakespeare, according to Lampert, expressed numerous contemporary messages in his plays, and “Merchant” is no exception.  For example, in Act V, when Lancelot the clown addresses Jessica, Shylock’s convert daughter to Christianity, he states such conversions, if multiplied, will cause a rise in the price of pork.  This had resonance in Elizabethan England, which at the time experienced an influx of foreign immigrants.

Shakespeare, in his contrived setting of Venetian society, expressed through this play a fear that the developing mercantilism of Britain resulted in decadence, to be compared of course with a reversion to Judaism!

Lampert addressed an interested and energetically involved audience, who challenged her with numerous questions, including inquiries about just who Shakespeare was.  I  raised the question whether Shakespeare’s genealogy possibly included some Jewish blood.

In an interview following the program, Lampert  agreed that there were two documented communities of “conversos"  in England during Elizabethan times —similar to the maranos in Spain,

The Shakear family, precursor to the Shakespeare name, had migrated from northern Europe, over a century before, and there are hints there may have been Jewish connections.  Shakespeare, like many others of his time, filled his writings, his self-designed family crest, even his portrait with ciphers that can be interpreted as Jewish messages.  True enough, I conceded, Shakespeare was baptized and was married to Anne Hathaway.  Still he is a mysterious figure in history, with people to this day proposing theories as to who he secretly might have been.

Lampert didn’t buy any of this!  Furthermore, her conclusion was that Shakespeare was anti-Semitic.