Twice Blest: Exploring Shakespeare and the Hebrew Bible

BONUS EPISODE: Shakespeare’s Hamlet opens with a seemingly straightforward question: “Who’s there?” Who’s there, indeed. The appearance of the ghost of his murdered father prompts Hamlet– and the play’s 16th-century audience– to grapple with a series of philosophical and theological questions relating to death and the afterlife. Does Purgatory exist? How does one avoid posthumous punishment? Can the deceased visit the world of the living? If so, how and why? What do the living owe the dead?

In this episode,  Dr. Susan Weissman, Chair of Judaic Studies and Associate Professor at Lander College for Women, a division of Touro College, shares her extensive research and expertise on death and the afterlife in medieval Europe. Through a detailed analysis of ghost tales in the Talmud and Sefer Hasidim, a religious-ethical work by an elitist group of medieval Jewish German Pietists, Weissman shows how many beliefs and rituals of the period reflected in Shakespeare’s Hamlet were cross-culturally shared by neighbors, Jews and Christians alike.

Corrections

1. In her concluding statements about the role of the dead in the Talmudic/Rabbinic period, Dr. Weissman speaks of the "living coming to aid or inform the dead" but meant to have said the "dead coming to aid or inform the living" (around 18:24).
2. Dr. Trapedo mistakenly says the Rabbinic/Talmudic literature was "centuries later" instead of "centuries earlier" (around 23:08).
3. Dr. Weissman speaks of the violence inflicted upon knights by their very own spurs "cutting into their soles," but being that there are no written words visible, listeners might hear it as "cutting into their souls," which would be inaccurate. Dr. Weissman intended the soles of their feet since these tortures were inflicted on bodies, not disembodied souls. (around 25:45).
4. Dr. Weissman says "we have responsas," but intended "responsa" as the word is already plural.
   
   
   

Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock as a cruel and vengeful Jew in the early 16th century gave rise to some of the most enduring racial stereotypes. He also gave Shylock depth and sympathetic qualities. In one of the most stirring speeches in all of Shakespeare, Shylock underscores his humanity, famously asking, “hath not a Jew eyes?” Yet the conclusion of that monologue requires further examination as it ends with the Jew’s assertion that he learned revenge from his Christian neighbors. Is there a basis for this claim? What is the Jewish understanding of revenge and retributive punishment? How do we reconcile the divine prohibition against revenge in the Hebrew Bible with its description of God as vengeful? And of what relevance is the long-suffering biblical Jacob, whose life is discussed by the characters in this play? 

In this episode, Rabbi Dr. Dov Lerner offers a master class on biblical exegesis, the relationship between interpretation, law, and justice, and what we can learn from Jewish tradition about how to end the cycle of vengeance.

If, as we’re told in the Hebrew Bible, "God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good" (Genesis 1:31), how are we to understand physical imperfection? As "mistakes" by the divine? Manifestations of malfeasance? Or misinterpretations of creation? 

In this episode, Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson explains the discourses of theology, physiognomy, and monstrosity that influenced Shakespeare’s representation of Richard III’s misshapen body and behavior, as well as the ongoing implications of relating internal essence and external appearance.

Audio Credits:

Does religion dictate politics or does politics dictate religion? Is success achieved through strategy or spirituality? Should the king bear moral responsibility for his soldiers’ behavior in battle? Shakespeare shot to fame in the 1590s by tackling the critical questions of his day in dramas depicting the inner lives of medieval English monarchs. But he couldn’t have done it without drawing on the Hebrew Bible. In this episode, Professor Paul Cantor takes us on a deep dive into Henry V, unpacking the influence of early Israelite leaders, including Moses, Joshua, and David, on Shakespeare’s compelling and complex representation of the Tudor dynasty.

Audio Credits:

Few literary characters have loomed as large and felt as "real" as Shakespeare’s Shylock. Though, as early 20th-century British Jewish historian Cecil Roth reminds us, he is a "sheer figment of Shakespeare’s imagination." Or was he? In this episode, Dr. Chaya Sima Koenigsberg illuminates Shakespeare’s (in)famous portrait of Shylock with her research on medieval Ashkenaz Jewry and the lives of the Rokeach and his wife, Dulce. She also sheds new light on the presence of Hebrew bible figures Jacob and Leah and the underexamined presence of prayer in the play.

Audio Credits

What are blessings? Prayers? Protections? A performative act? In this episode, Professor Julia Reinhard Lupton, Shakespeare scholar and co-director of the UCI Shakespeare Center, rethinks the love gambit that opens King Lear as a battle of biblical prooftexts and tracks the presence and purpose of benediction in the play and beyond to reveal a cascade of blessings throughout Shakespeare’s works.

Audio Credits: 

How has the Hebrew Bible impacted the intellectual development of the West? How might a deeper understanding of Saul and David’s biblical narrative help us read Shakespeare’s meditations on the nature of kingship? In this episode, Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik, director of the YU’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, examines the legitimacy, majesty, and humility of monarchy (or lack thereof) in Shakespeare’s Richard II and Macbeth.

Audio Credits:

Welcome to Twice Blest, a podcast from the Yeshiva University Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. Hosted by Dr. Shaina Trapedo, Twice Blest brings you conversations with faith leaders, scholars, and writers that bridge the wisdom of Judaic and classical texts so we can live more informed and fulfilling intellectual and spiritual lives on an individual and communal level.

Shaina Trapedo is a lecturer in English at Stern College for Women and a Resident Scholar at the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought of Yeshiva University. She received her PhD in English from UC Irvine, where she specialized in early modern literature and religious studies. Her current book project, From Scripture to Script: The Hebrew Bible on the Early Modern Stage, considers the affordances and risks of hermeneutic engagements in the works of writers including Peele, Greene, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Cary, and Milton. In her teaching and scholarship, she continues to explore the connections between literacy, cultural identity, and social engagement.