Exactly, and I’m always amazed that so many fail to grasp that. It went over the head of even my 9th grade English teacher at the (albeit crappy) public school where I began my high school education, it needed to be pointed out to a majority of my classmates when Merchant was discussed at the private school I fortunately was able to transfer to, and it isn’t nearly the item of common knowledge you’d expect it to be among well educated adults who are familiar with the story.
:dubious:
I don’t see any statement about mercy being a Christian attribute.
There is common usage on the street today, It’s not the kind of thing that comes up in polite conversation, you need to be talking to people who know about actual loan sharks and they’re associates and victims. I don’t know for sure that the people using don’t understand the anti-semitic connotation at all, but I don’t think so, they’re talking about criminal financial activities conducted by religiously diverse people.
Good point, although I think the term is more mainstream than you think. I’m somewhat obsessed with biopics, books, documentaries, etc., about the Mafia and it is used more or less interchangeably with loan sharking, not only by criminals but often by law enforcement/prosecutors, often publicly (although I doubt it ever gets used in court, or in other official capacity).
Yeah, law enforcement also. Loan sharking is not some fixed activity as I’m sure you must know. It’s often bookies or drug dealers owed money. Pawn brokers get called Shylocks and there are mob scams with proxy purchasers. Whenever people owe money to criminals those criminals are likely to get called Shylocks. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll hear in middle class America very often.
The “we” who pray for mercy are Christians. She basically says that mercy is a superior virtue to justice, and while justice may be the highest standard of conduct among Jews, Christians render mercy, which is why Christians find salvation, and Jews don’t.
She’s wrong about Judaism and mercy, but it was a common belief about Jews.
The reason that Shylock is a slang term for money lenders is because, historically, money lending was one of the few professions in which Jews could engage. Money lending - specifically, charging interest - is the sin of usury. Christians were forbidden to charge interest on loans. (Nowadays, usury is defined as the sin of charging excessive interest and Christians never think twice about it).
Jews who engaged in money-lending were active sinners, in addition to the whole blood-libel problem. Calling someone a Shylock is not just talking about a person’s job description.
You can’t say Shylock is merely slang for a loan-shark, ignoring the whole history of the word, the negative expressions of Christians for Jews, and the way everyone down to the Nazis used Shylock as an example of Predatory Jews. It’s not a word that was just dreamed up by colorful gangsters in Damon Runyon stories. There’s a whole history of the word and it’s deliberately derogatory.
Emphasis mine.
It’s the section, here. This whole sequence is a contrast between the way that early modern Christians understood Judaism and themselves. It is designed to specifically contrast Jewish legalism with the Christian doctrine of Salvation through faith in Christ’s mercy (as embodied in His sacrifice).
Portia is specifically saying that The Jew calls for justice, but that it’s not justice, but Christ’s Mercy alone which saves us. She goes on to say that Christians are called to show that same mercy to others.
To which, Shylock replies:
*My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,
The penalty and forfeit of my bond. *
Shylock has no ears to hear mercy. He continues to insist on the letter of his bond, according to the law - that he is entitled to a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Portia agrees that yes, this is what the law says and it may not be set aside because that would serve to weaken the Law. Shylock is delighted by her judgement (he doesn’t recognize her, of course.) Antonio gets a speech about how grateful he is that money isn’t important to him (unlike the filthy Shylock).
The Portia drops the bomb that while Shylock is entitled to the flesh (a nice bit off the breast, right near the heart, please) - he’s not entitled to the blood and he’d better take care that he doesn’t steal any while carving his meat.
Shylock then tries to go back and take the money he was offered instead, but because he insisted on the law instead of mercy, he’s charged with attempting to kill a citizen of Verona. Half of his fortune is seized for the state and half for his victim - Antonio. Furthermore, Portia continues …
Thou hast contrived against the very life
Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr’d
The danger formerly by me rehearsed.
Down therefore and beg mercy of the duke.
The Duke pops up at this point and spares Shylock’s life, immediately, saying -
That thou shalt see the difference of our spirits,
I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it:
Shylock, slave to the Law and to money, begs that they will take his life instead of his fortune, saying,
… you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.
At which point Portia breaks in to ask Antonio -
*
What mercy can you render him, Antonio?*
Antonio gets a little bogged down in money matters but the upshot is that he begs the city to forgo taking their half of Shylock’s wealth and he will use his half for Shylock’s children, provided that Shylock converts to Christianity.
In the end, Shylock claims that he is content with this exhange of Mercy for the law -
PORTIA
Art thou contented, Jew? what dost thou say?
SHYLOCK
I am content.
PORTIA
Clerk, draw a deed of gift.
SHYLOCK
I pray you, give me leave to go from hence;
I am not well: send the deed after me,
And I will sign it.
All of this is meant to show the contrast between the mercifulness of Christians and the money-grubbingness of legalistic Jews. Shylock’s ultimate acceptance of mercy is, to modern ears, rather undercut by the way it makes him sick and forces him to rush off, and no doubt Shakespeare intended that ambiguity, but for the general audience, there was no other possible ending that would have satisfied them.
I’m not saying that. I’m saying there are a lot of people using the term who don’t know that history or the Shakespearean reference. You can define it all you want as a slur but people using it may not intend it that way at all, only using it to refer to an onerous debt holder.
I don’t know, man. I mean, I’m sure there are people out there who are just that ignorant. But it’s not like anti-semitism and derogatory portrayals of Shylock are ancient history. WW2 is still within living memory, after all.
Oh - here. It’s an editorial about Biden’s use of the word from 2014.
They talk about this history of the word and also the play including modern cases of concern. They conclude -
If “Shylock” was still used in casual conversion as recently as the 70’s, I think it’s way to soon to argue that the history of the word has faded into obscurity.
Also, JFTR, Joe Biden apologized for using the word.
I don’t think the history of the word and it’s connotations have faded into obscurity, only that there is a large population of people using it and ignorant of all that baggage.
Joe Biden should have known better, but of course that never stopped him before.
I grew up in the midwest. lived in Los Angeles for 30 years.
Never heard the word used to mean anything other than loan shark. Then again, it mostly on television.
There are apparently people who are unaware of the history of the term “Jewed me down,” and in fact, if asked to write it, might spell it “Jood me down,” but that doesn’t make the term suddenly acceptable.
If someone says “loan shark”, I’d think nothing of it.
If someone say “shylock”, then red lights go on. Why didn’t they just say something like “loan shark” unless they are making a point? A very, very uncomfortable term to use like this.
I don’t think it has to be more explicit than it is: she’s a Christian addressing Jews about forgiveness vs the law.
I don’t have to know the role of mercy in Christian theology to know that she is contrasting it with the role of the law in Jewish theology.
I have related such a story about ‘Jewed’ before. I’m not trying to make any words acceptable. Outside of a high school English class I never heard the word spoken aloud to mean anything but ‘loan shark’, at least not that was discernible from the conversation. Certainly I’ve seen it written a number of times, in regard to the Merchant of Venice or anti-semitism in general, but in conversation it would seem quite dated now, and earlier in my life limited to the relic bigotry from an even earlier era.
What’s the name of that fox in the comics pages that dresses like Sherlock Holmes and solves animal “crimes”? Isn’t his name Shylock Fox?
That’s the only context that would come to my mind if I heard the term “shylock”: detective.
Ha! You’re thinking Slylock Fox! Whenever I read his name I thought of Shylock’s name, and it tripped me up.
There’s also Hayao Miyazaki’s Sherlock Hound series, but I don’t remember that.
What on earth is a “slylock”? Is it, too, antisemitic?
Excellent thread, everyone, and timely, too. I just read Christopher Moore’s “The Serpent of Venice”,which borrows heavily from the characters and themes of Shakespeare. Question: does the ’ pound of flesh’ have any Old Testament foundation, or is it an invention of Shakespeare to highlight the nastiness of Jews?
It’s probably an invention of Shakespeare. It has absolutely no foundation in Jewish scripture, whether biblical, or Talmudal, or in any commentary, and the story is unknown even as a cautionary tale of a bad Jew who was condemned by his community.
Suffice to say, this would never have stood up in a Jewish court. In fact, it would be the other way around. If the Torah prescribed a measure of flesh as a punishment for something, say, for removing the same measure from someone else in some freak accident during a knife fight (“eye for eye, tooth for tooth, pound for pound”), the courts would not allow a pound of flesh to be removed from the healthy person, but determine a financial sum to be paid to the victim, usually involving things like how long and how much the victim’s dependents needed to be supported while he recuperated. And if he didn’t have family, but had a farm that needed tending, how much it would cost to continue to pay his hired help to do so.
This had ALWAYS been how “eye for eye” has been interpreted, by the way. That law was given when people were hanged for stealing, and it’s purpose was to say “recompense for what was lost AND NO MORE.” Lots of rabbis through history have pointed out that it couldn’t be taken seriously, because suppose a man with only one eye damaged one eye of a man with two? where was the justice in blinding the one-eyed man? It has always been hyperbolic language meant to be interpreted symbolically.