on an Easter card that is truly an Easter card?
In November, 1919, the Anti-Defamation Committee claimed that 150 American cities had excluded “The Merchant of Venice” from the public schools. The newspapers at this writing are announcing that David Warfield, the great Jewish actor, is going to play “Shylock” in the manner which, as he believes, represents the true Shakespeare conception. The Anti-Defamation League may yet find itself to have expended much energy beating the wind, especially as the best Shakespearean critics declare that “The Merchant of Venice” is not about a Jew at all, but about Usury as a vicious practice which gripped both Jew and non-Jew and brought division.
There was, however, a certain finesse in the manner of the Anti-Defamation League in approaching the matter of the exclusion of the “Merchant.” It was not an incapacity to appreciate the fine work of Shakespeare. Oh, no, anything but that. Nor was it a confession of thin-skinned sensibility on the part of Jews. Not at all. No, it was really for the benefit of the Gentile children that the Anti-Defamation League wanted them kept from that play in their reading lessons.
Here are excerpts from one of the letters sent out from the Anti-Defamation League in Chicago to the superintendent of public schools in an important city. The italics are ours:
- “We have just been advised that the * * * * high schools still retain “The Merchant of Venice” in the list of required readings * * * *
- “We do not base our request because of the embarrassment which may be caused to the Jewish students in class, nor is our attitude in this regard based on thin-skinned sensitiveness. It is the result of mature consideration and investigation. Our objection is made because of its effect upon the non-Jewish children who subconsciously will associate in their own minds the Jew as Shakespeare portrayed him with the Jew of today. Children are not analysts. A character in the past vividly portrayed exists for
