Uncategorized
Saul Rubinek’s new one-man show asks, Is there ever a right time to play Shylock?
When Saul Rubinek walks on stage in “Playing Shylock,” he’s not only playing Shakespeare’s infamous Jew — he’s playing himself. Or rather, a version of himself: a Jewish actor furious that his production of “The Merchant of Venice” has just been canceled for being too controversial.
That conceit — a play about a play that’s been shut down, starring an actor playing a version of himself — is the brainchild of Canadian playwright Mark Leiren-Young, who wrote an earlier one-man show called “Shylock” three decades ago. During the pandemic, in collaboration with Rubinek, Leiren-Young reimagined the play, which opens Thursday at Brooklyn’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center after a critically acclaimed Toronto run.
“My character was ready to come on stage for three minutes,” Rubinek said in a joint interview with the playwright. “Saul Rubinek — the character — just wants to tell the audience that ‘Merchant’ has been canceled and they’ll get a refund. But he can’t leave the stage. He keeps talking. It’s all supposed to feel improvised — but 99.9 % is scripted.”
Over the next 100 minutes, Rubinek, a longtime character actor perhaps best known as Daphne’s mensch-y boyfriend Donny on the 1990s sitcom “Frazier,” delivers a primer on the history of Shakespeare’s most controversial play, a polemic against cancel culture and a meditation on Jewish identity and artistic heresy in the charged years after Oct. 7.
As Shylock — the Jewish moneylender who is scorned and humiliated by the Christian merchant to whom he lends 3,000 ducats under extraordinary terms — Rubinek, 77, wears the velvet kippah, tzitzit and long black coat of a modern-day haredi Jew. He recites some of Shylock’s best-known soliloquies — including “Hath not a Jew eyes,” an appeal to his tormentors’, and the audience’s, conscience — in an Eastern European accent.
Rubinek said he was imagining how his own father, a Holocaust survivor and one-time Yiddish actor who once dreamed of performing “Merchant,” might have played Shylock.
“That gave me the key to Shylock,” said Rubinek, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany after World War II, before his family immigrated to Canada. “I’m not really playing Shakespeare’s Jew. I’m playing how I imagine my father would have played him.”
That patrimony only fuels the outrage of the Rubinek character (henceforth called “Saul”) now that an unspecified social media campaign has intimidated the producers into shutting down the production.
The fictional cancellation echoes real-world controversies: In 2014, the Metropolitan Opera cancelled the international simulcast (although not the live performances) of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer,” about the 1985 hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestinian Liberation Front 2014. The producers’ cited concerns that the production could be used to fuel antisemitism.
Just last year, a Canadian theater cancelled a showing of “The Runner,” a play about an Orthodox man who piously collects body parts after terrorist attacks. The theater explained: “Given the current conflict in the Middle East, this is not the time for a play which may further tensions among our community.”
Jewish activists and the family of Klinghoffer, who was killed in the hijacking, put pressure on the Met; it’s not clear which members of the “community” sought to cancel “The Runner.” Similarly, “Playing Shylock” leaves vague who exactly objected to a new “Merchant,” although there’s a strong suggestion it was over-sensitive Jewish interests. Saul describes a grilling he got at “the Jewish community center,” where a Jewish moderator suggests that a play that centers an antisemitic archetype may be too “toxic” to perform.
Saul reacts with fury. “This? This play? With what’s happening? Right here? In this city?” he thunders. “Where you can’t go into a synagogue without passing armed guards — the real danger to ‘well-being’ is ‘Merchant’?”
Responding to a comically diplomatic press release from the theater saying it would be inappropriate to stage “Merchant” at “this time of rising antisemitism,” Saul scoffs.
“Has there ever been a time when antisemitism was not rising?” he says. “When, when was this magical time? Before or after Moses parted the Red Sea?”
Rubinek insists that “Playing Shylock” isn’t just another shot at woke culture, or a version of the dubious complaint by comedians that they can’t joke freely onstage without risking cancellation, or a dig at right-wing politicians and pundits who police what can and can’t be said about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
“The show isn’t about the left or the right,” Rubinek said. “It’s not Fox News or woke protesters. ‘Merchant’ could have been canceled in 1936, in 1947, in 2016 — it’s always been a lightning rod. The question is, why do we keep trying to silence the art instead of confronting what makes us uncomfortable?”
When the show isn’t defending artistic freedom, it is probing Jewish identity. Saul complains about the number of gentile actors who have played Shylock, from Laurence Oliver to Al Pacino to Patrick Stewart, suggesting that Jewish actors have been overlooked in a misguided effort to downplay the character’s Jewishness. (Although, to be fair, the Jewish actor Henry Goodman was lauded for his turn as Shylock in a 1999 National Theatre production of “Merchant” that came to Broadway, and the Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman starred as Shylock on London’s West End in 2022. Dustin Hoffman played the role in a 1989 London production that transferred to Broadway the following year.)
“In the play, I say I’m committing a kind of heresy,” Rubinek said. “By making Shylock visibly Jewish at a time of rising antisemitism, I’m accused of inciting hatred. But I think it’s the opposite — it’s reclaiming a Jewish story that’s been distorted for centuries.”
“You want to know why actors still do this play?” asked Saul Rubinek, shown on stage at at Brooklyn’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. “Because Shylock is the first three-dimensional Jewish character in all of literature.” (Dahlia Katz)
For Leiren-Young, the collaboration offered a way to explore a lifelong fascination with censorship and identity. “It’s not just about who’s allowed to stage what,” he said. “It’s about who gets to tell their own story — and whether we still believe in the artist’s right to risk being misunderstood.”
Since the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, Rubinek admits, staging a play about Jewish representation feels fraught. Yet the production, he said, seeks to hold both left- and right-wing audiences “in the same room, breathing together.”
“I’ve had people who see things completely differently — politically, emotionally — come up after and say they felt seen,” he said. “Because the play doesn’t lecture. It includes you in the fiction. You become part of the story.”
Ultimately, the play is a rousing defense of “Merchant,” allowing Rubinek to show off his acting chops — both in Shakespeare’s original language and in Yiddish. Rubinek has little patience for those — a roll call that includes the Jewish critic Harold Bloom and the British actress Judy Dench — who call “The Merchant of Venice” irredeemably antisemitic. Instead, he said, the play demands that audiences see a stereotype as a human being.
“You want to know why actors still do this play?” he asked. “Because Shylock is the first three-dimensional Jewish character in all of literature. Five scenes, and he’s haunted actors for 400 years. Why? Because he’s real.”
“Playing Shylock,” now in previews, opens Oct. 23 and runs through Dec. 7 at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, home of Theatre for a New Audience (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn).
—
The post Saul Rubinek’s new one-man show asks, Is there ever a right time to play Shylock? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Javier Bardem Slams Trump, Netanyahu for Iran War Before Declaring ‘Free Palestine’ at Academy Awards
Javier Bardem and Priyanka Chopra Jonas on stage during the Oscars show at the 98th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 15, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Blake
Spanish actor Javier Bardem protested the US-Israeli war with Iran while speaking to reporters on the red carpet at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night, before taking to the stage at the awards show in Los Angeles and declaring “Free Palestine.”
The Oscar winner, 57, attended the ceremony at the Dolby Theater wearing on his tuxedo lapel a pin that said, “No a la Guerra,” which in Spanish means, “No to War.” He wore the same pin in 2003 to protest the US invasion of Iraq.
The “F1” star has been a vocal critic of Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war and has publicly voiced support for a “Free Palestine” several times in the past. While speaking to reporters at the Academy Awards, he blasted the US and Israel for their joint strikes against Iran, specifically calling out US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I’m wearing a pin that I used in 2003 with the Iraq war, which was an illegal war,” Bardem told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday night on the Oscars red carpet. “And we are here, 23 years after, with another illegal war, created by Trump and Netanyahu with another lie, which is to defeat the regime. But they are radicalizing the regime by their horrific actions. So that’s not the reason, as it was not the reason weapons of mass destruction in 2003.”
Bardem also wore to the Oscars this year a pin in support of Palestinian resistance on his tuxedo lapel. On the pin was a drawing of Handala, a character created by Palestinian newspaper cartoonist Naji al-Ali in 1969. Handala is a 10-year-old Palestinian refugee who is turning his back to the world and has become a long-standing symbol for Palestinians. Bardem said it is a “Palestine symbol of resistance.”
Later on in the evening, while co-presenting the award for best international feature film with actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Bardem made more political comments, but this time about “Palestine.” When he walked on stage, the first thing he said was, “No to war. Free Palestine,” before presenting the nominees for the category.
After getting off stage, he told Variety he felt compelled to take about the “injustice” he feels is taking place in the Middle East. “Which in this case is the genocide in Palestine that is still going on … what is going on in the West Bank, the abuse of civil rights and human rights and ethnic cleansing,” he added. “It’s horrible … and then the illegal war [in Iran].”
“They are not defeating any regime, they are radicalizing the regime, bombing innocent people,” Bardem claimed about the US-Israeli joint strikes against Iran.
Before entering the Vanity Fair afterparty, he told USA Today: “We are going back to the same beginning of lying and manipulating us … it’s not about freedom. It’s not about changing any regime. It’s about creating a chaos that only benefits the richest and the people that have the power to control the area.”
Uncategorized
College Republicans Federation Disbands University of Florida Chapter Over Nazi Pictures
An entrance to the University of Florida in Gainesville, Dec. 4, 2020. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
The Florida Federation of College Republicans (FFCR) has disbanded its chapter at the University of Florida and asked the school to deactivate it following an investigation which revealed that student leaders photographed themselves pantomiming the Nazi salute.
“This request is based on the FFCR’s findings that some Local CR [College Republicans] members engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture,” the university said in a statement on Saturday. “In compliance with its policies, the University of Florida is in the process of deactivating the Local CR as a registered student organization. When the FFCR is ready, the university will also assist it with reactivating the Local CR under new student leadership.”
Since reports of the action emerged, the UF College Republicans chapter has alleged that the Florida Federation lacks jurisdiction over the organization, insisting that it is registered with the College Republicans of America group. There are several contending “College Republican” groups, including the original College Republican National Committee founded in 1892, College Republicans United, the National Federation of College Republicans (NFCR), and College Republicans.
“They cited the FFFCR, an organization that we are not a part of that has no authority over our chapter [sic],” College Republicans of America said in a statement. “We look forward to the university reinstating our club and correcting this statement. We have retained counsel and have received information that this is not the first time that FFCR has lied to silence Christian conservative groups on campus.”
Regardless of the outcome of the dispute, the incident marks the second time this month that conservative youth were publicly outed for indulging Nazism and the white supremacist movement. Earlier this month, leaked texts revealed dozens of antisemitic and racist texts exchanged by young Republicans in Miami-Dade County, Florida, some of which fantasized about engaging in onanism in an all-white country.
As first reported by The Miami Herald, the group chat, created on WhatsApp, was described by its members as “Nazi heaven” for the daily barrage of extremist comments contributed to it. Individuals affiliated with the Miami-Dade Country Republicans, Turning Point USA, and College Republicans casually said “ni—er,” denounced women as “whores,” and spoke rapturously about Adolf Hitler.
Dariel Gonzalez, according to the Herald, was one of the chat’s most prolific contributors, bandying about comments regarding “color professors” and telling members that “You can f—k all the k—kes you want. Just don’t marry them and procreate.”
The group chat’s exposure comes at a time when, according to recent polling, young Republicans have increasingly embraced antisemitism and conspiracy theories.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitism has permeated college campuses across the US for years, even before the recent surge in incidents amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In 2022 alone, anti-Zionists at State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz expelled a sexual assault survivor from a victim support group over her support for Zionism; a former University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) lecturer threatened to commit a mass shooting of Jews on campus, saying in a note to former colleagues that “Violence against Jews should happen. Retaliation and retribution for what they have stolen is legitimate and a good thing”; and students at Indiana University posted messages on a social media forum which lambasted “east coast Jews” as rapists, charging that their “huge noses, afros, and smelliness prevent them from being attractive.”
The Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel unleashed a historic surge in such outrages on US campuses. College students, joined by faculty, carried out a number of antisemitic incidents and hate crimes — spitting on Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley while calling them “Jew”; gang assaulting Jewish students at Columbia University’s Butler Library; vandalizing public spaces with swastika graffiti; and chasing Jewish students out of graduate programs by denying them religious accommodations and smearing their reputations.
While much of the anti-Zionist movement on campus has been associated politically with the far left, the far right has recently been involved with a series of antisemitic incidents on campuses,
In October, for example, a conservative student magazine at Harvard University published an essay which bore likeness to key tenets of Nazi doctrine. In January, a sophomore and right-wing social media influencer at the University of Miami verbally attacked a Jewish student group, calling its members disgusting while accusing rabbis of eating infants.
Campus antisemitism has changed the college experience for American Jewish students, affecting how they live, socialize, and perceive themselves as Jews, according to new survey results released by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in partnership with Hillel International.
A striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus, and of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. The survey also found that 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism. Meanwhile, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
“No Jewish student should have to hide their identity out of fear of antisemitism, yet that’s the reality for too many students today,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in February. “Our work on the ground every day is focused on changing that reality by creating environments where all Jewish students can find welcoming communities and can fully and proudly express their Jewish identities without fear or concern.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Amsterdam’s New Warning to Europe on Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters clash with police outside Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, breaking through barricades and setting off smoke bombs during a demonstration against a performance by the IDF’s chief cantor. Photo: Screenshot
Amsterdam likes to present itself as a city of tolerance. It celebrates diversity, prides itself on openness, and often reminds the world of its history as a refuge for those seeking freedom. Yet something deeply troubling happened in Amsterdam last week that should concern not only the Netherlands, but all of Europe:
A municipal debate about antisemitism had to be held at a secret location because of security concerns.
Pause for a moment and consider what that means. In a democratic European capital, a discussion about protecting a Jewish minority could not take place openly for fear of threats and intimidation. If that does not signal a serious problem, what does?
That’s in addition to the bombing of a Jewish school, and another attack that just occurred.
During the meeting, a 15-year old Jewish boy addressed the room. His testimony cut through political rhetoric and statistics with the clarity only a young voice can bring. Since the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, he said, life for Jewish students in Amsterdam has changed dramatically. Many of his friends have already left the city. They no longer see a future there.
Imagine hearing those words in 2026 in one of Europe’s most celebrated liberal cities. A teenager speaking calmly about the disappearance of his community.
Amsterdam alderman Melanie van der Horst was visibly moved and struggled to hold back tears. The emotional moment showed that some political leaders understand the gravity of what is happening. Yet empathy alone will not solve the problem.
Another participant in the debate raised a painful but necessary question: How must it feel for Jewish residents to walk daily through public spaces where demonstrations take place in which their country and their people are shouted down? Pro-Palestinian protests have become a constant presence in parts of the city. Political protest is a democratic right, but when rhetoric turns into open hostility toward Jews, society has crossed a dangerous line.
One proposal during the debate illustrated the level of frustration. A politician suggested sending undercover police officers into the streets wearing a kippah in order to identify those who harass Jews. Critics called the idea controversial. But the fact that such a measure is even being discussed reveals how serious the situation has become.
The problem extends beyond the streets. Jewish organizations in the Netherlands increasingly report difficulties renting venues for events. Cultural gatherings and lectures sometimes struggle to find halls willing to host them. It rarely makes headlines, but this quiet exclusion sends a clear message: you are welcome in theory, but not visibly.
History has taught Europe where that kind of atmosphere can lead. Antisemitism rarely begins with violence. It begins with discomfort, social pressure, and the slow normalization of hostility toward Jewish identity.
Meanwhile, another factor fuels the problem. Much of the European media landscape presents Israel through a lens that reduces a complex reality to a simple narrative of aggressor and victim. When context disappears and facts are replaced by slogans, public perception shifts. The hostility directed at Israel easily spills over into hostility toward Jews living thousands of kilometers away.
That is why factual education and responsible journalism matter so much. Civil society organizations that work to counter misinformation often struggle to be heard. Yet without a commitment to truth, public debate becomes an echo chamber for activism rather than a search for understanding.
There is also a question for Jewish communities themselves. When fear grows, the instinct to become less visible is understandable. But invisibility comes at a cost. If intimidation forces people to hide their identity, those spreading hatred learn that their tactics work.
The lesson of Jewish history is painfully clear. Silence has never protected Jewish communities.
Strength does not mean confrontation. It means refusing to surrender identity and dignity to intimidation. It means raising a generation that is proud rather than afraid. It means understanding that resilience is sometimes the only answer to those who seek to erase a people’s presence.
The young boy in Amsterdam asked a simple question without even intending to pose a challenge to Europe: will the Jewish community still exist here in the future?
That question should echo far beyond the walls of the municipal chamber where he spoke. Because if a Jewish teenager in Amsterdam already doubts his future in the city, then Europe is facing not just a Jewish problem.
It is facing a moral test of its own values.