Outrage over Merchant play is warranted

Re ‘Inappropriate’ play at school sparks outrage, Oct. 30

The Merchant of Venice was read and studied as part of the Grade 9 English course when I attended North Toronto Collegiate in the mid-1960s. I was one of only two or three Jewish students in the class.

It was very disturbing and unsettling to have to read and study this horrible depiction of Jewish people. As a 12-year-old, this was the first time I had experienced anything this overtly anti-Semitic and didn’t know how to react.

During the summer, my family moved and I spent the rest of high school attending Forest Hill Collegiate, a school with predominately Jewish students. Shakespeare’s plays were studied in all English classes but not The Merchant of Venice.

To add insult to injury, this adapta- tion of the 16th-century dark comedy felt it necessary to modernize the play by adding references to Hitler and the Holocaust and encourages students to laugh at horrific events and cheer anti-Semitic chants.

I applaud the Star, often criticized for it’s unbalanced opinions about Israel, for making this story front page news. Would it have been front page news if the tragic events in Pittsburgh had not occurred? Jonathan Weizel, Thornhill The article mentions that the play was performed primarily before Grade 11 students but it does not mention whether the original Shakespeare play was on their curriculum. It would be foolish to present such a play to a school audience unless they had seen or studied the original. Bruce Couchman, Ottawa