Centuries and cultures apart Michelle and Jessica, two young Jewish women, have identical goals. Both seek relief from their homes in which they were raised. Michelle wishes to escape her father’s tyrannical outbursts. Jessica asserts, “our house is hell”. The first chance she gets Jessica elopes with her gentile fiancé, nullifying her Jewish life. Who are these women? One is Michelle Ephraim, author of a new memoir, Green World, the other Shylock’s beleaguered daughter in Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice.

 

Author Michelle Ephraim was raised in a “Yekish” (German Jewish) environment by two “irreparably damaged” Shoah survivors. Michelle’s home felt like “Little Germany.” Her father a “Berliner” made clear, his German genes were superior to her mother’s“Polack substandard stock.” Whenever Michelle went off her father’s rigid parenting template, Dad flew into a rage, called her “schtupit,” screaming she had inherited her mother’s bad genes. Little Michelle heard endless “survival stories,” about her father’s escape from Nazi Germany to Manila and his displacement from the Philippines after Japan’s attack.. Her home, a daily “crises center,” Michelle learned early the dangers of childhood, her mom’s refugee status on the Kindertransport that produced feelings being an outsider. Emotionally scarred by her parents’ paranoia, Michelle’s teachers asked her “Do your parents abuse you? Michelle yearned for emancipation from her house of perpetual distress. Her chance came in academia.

 

While completing her PhD in American poetry, Michelle accepts an invitation to a Shakespearean recitation party. Reading The Merchant of Venice, Michelle identifies with Jessica, the daughter of Venetian moneylender, Shylock. She understands what Jessica means : “to be ashamed to be my father’s child/a daughter to his blood not to his manners”. Michelle relates to Jessica’s oppressive home life, Shylock’s authoritarian control over his only daughter.

 

Both women seek a“green world,” a place where the bard’s heroines magically find relief from their families.However, unlike Jessica, Michelle would not deny her heritage though her father’s parenting was as despotic as Shylock’s. Unlike Jessica Michelle would not trash her Jewish faith nor relinquish her connection to her family. Michelle felt compassion for the much- maligned Shylock a tragic figure a Jew demonized in the 16th century Venetian ghetto, shamed, taunted and stigmatized for his faith. As was her own father, a Jew barely surviving a genocidal regime. In stark contrast to Jessica, Michelle envisions a green world “mediated by mercy” without seeking retribution or vindication from her parents.

 

Now a professor of English Dr. Michelle Ephraim quotes, Helena, a character in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well espousing Helena’s credo, “Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie. “Michelle creates a green world on her own terms proudly asserting she’s not only a Shakespearean scholar but a “Jewish Shakespearean scholar.”

 

Fascinating analyses with fresh insights into a play worth re-reading.