Ten years ago, I got to know a Tory grandee. He knew that I’d been raised as an Anglican; we’d both mentioned attending church. I thought it might be a surprise to him when I eventually mentioned that my maternal heritage was Jewish, and that I was gradually beginning to understand myself as more and more culturally Jewish.
If I expected this to be news, I was wrong. “Kate, when we met I assumed you were entirely Jewish.” Why? “You are a woman who has no compunction about letting her opinions be heard.” This was, it was clear, something he liked about me. Then came the kicker: “English women don’t really let themselves do that.”
Let us leave aside for a moment that jibe about who counts as “English” and who does not. (We’ll come back to it.)
My companion was not entirely wrong. Much feminist ink has been spilt on the historic role of the father in traditional Jewish households, as teacher of the Torah and Shabbat leader. But throughout Jewish history, women have been taught to question, challenge and lead.
When we look at figures such as Deborah, Huldah and Esther (particularly at Purim), we see women who claimed political power through speech.
Supporters of Elizabeth I, especially during the early rocky years of her ascent to the throne, frequently cited the figure of Deborah — one of the main judges in the story of how Israel takes the land of Canaan — to prove that a woman could be divinely ordained to sit in judgment over men, a model painfully hard to find in the Christian scriptures.
The climactic pageant that greeted Elizabeth during her procession to her coronation depicted her as Deborah, presiding over the three legal estates of England, “the judge and restorer of the house of Israel”.
All too often, Christian women fighting for a space in the public sphere have been forced to turn to Hebrew women for their precedents.
As a result, Jewish women have often been seen as a challenge by genteel Gentiles. Perhaps the most common term is “pushy”; other words are less polite. It doesn’t help that so many Jewish women have had to be survivors, rebuilding fractured families, heading migrations.
So thank God for Tracy-Ann Oberman’s landmark female Shylock, not only a fierce reclamation of Shakespeare’s notorious villain but a celebration of centuries of female Jewish strength.
As Jewish Chronicle readers will have learned in John Nathan’s recent interview with the actress, her vision of Shylock is as an embattled single mother, drawn from the many pogrom survivors in her own family who rebuilt their families through blood, sweat in tears in London’s East End.
The Merchant of Venice 1936 is sold out at the Watford Palace Theatre, but after runs at Manchester’s HOME and the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, I believe we’re likely to see it return to central London later in the year.
Oberman herself is a woman who knows plenty about experiencing antisemitic abuse. As she recently told me, the vitriol aimed at Jewish women seems curiously focused on their perceived refusal to be silent. “It was visceral, sexual and personal,” she says of the outpouring of bile that greeted her campaign against antisemitism in the Labour Party.
But what struck her most about Gentile critics was that “they think as a woman and as an actress, that my biggest modus operandi was to be liked, was to be found to be attractive and was to be found to be acceptable”. So they couldn’t understand why Oberman would give up such a feminine ideal in order to have her voice heard. Pushy women aren’t pretty. In Gentile eyes, that often means that Jewish women aren’t pretty.
In Brigid Larmour’s production, this cultural context is made clear by the contrast between Oberman’s self-reliant Shylock and Hannah Morrish’s delicate, Mitford-esque Portia. Morrish is a brilliant rising star; her Portia leans into 1930s fascism as an aesthetic showcase for her image of hyper-conventional, blonde femininity.
When Portia goes undercover as a male barrister, there’s a moment when Shylock clocks her, another woman fighting for space in a world that demands masculinity as the price of entry.
For just a second, it looks like these two women might find a grudging sisterhood. (Some readers will have seen Oberman discussing this scene with me at Jewish Book Week last Sunday.) All too quickly, the moment passes.
The power shifts. Portia, like so many conventional, Gentile women, throws her lot in with a male system — even if it means standing by a flaky husband. Shylock is left adrift.
Even in traditional productions of The Merchant of Venice, with a conventionally male Shylock, the tension between Jewish independence and polite conformity is often emphasised.
The Duke of Venice demands Shylock show mercy and abandon his legal rights with the words, “We all expect a gentle answer Jew!” It’s a pun: to be “gentle” is to be “Gentile”. For Jewish women throughout English history, this has always been even truer.
For some of us, it’s even held out as the question of what does or doesn’t make us “English”. So here’s to more “pushy” Jewish women and more female Shylocks. Who wants to be Portia, anyway?
