Falmouth Jewish Congregation hosts a virtual Jewish Book Council author talk with Harry Freedman on Shylock’s Venice: The Remarkable History of Venice’s Jews
Tuesday, May 13 at 2pm on Zoom
Free and Open to the public | Advance RSVP for this Zoom event is required: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcOqsrz8iH9dVG2_XBzv3U6n2ospTHAeS
Falmouth Jewish Congregation invites everyone to a free, virtual Jewish Book Council author talk by author Harry Freedman on Shylock’s Venice: The Remarkable History of Venice Jews and the Ghetto on Tuesday, May 13 at 2pm on Zoom. This author talk includes an illustrated presentation and a Q & A, so you can engage by posting questions to the author. Register in advance for this Zoom event at www.falmouthjewish.org. This is the last talk of the season, but return to the website this summer for details about next year’s series, with talks on a monthly basis, both in-person and virtual. Local independent bookshop Eight Cousins Books in Falmouth is handling book sales. Contact them directly to place an order.
Come (virtually) and be transported to 16th century Venice on this May afternoon and emerge with a fresh understanding of the city and its Jewish ghetto. Your guide is Harry Freedman, Britain’s leading author of popular works of Jewish culture and history. The Jewish Book Council has described Shylock’s Venice as “fascinating and thorough…a total pleasure.. a must-read for anyone who has been to Venice or ever plans to go.”
Venice gave the world the word ghetto, and the ghetto prison turned out to be as remarkable a place as the city of Venice itself. Harry Freedman tells the story of Venice's Jews in this lively and accessible narrative, from the founding of the ghetto in 1516 to the capture of Venice by Napoleon in 1797, describing the remarkable cultural renaissance that took place in there. Gates and walls notwithstanding, for the first time in European history Jews and Christians mingled intellectually, learned from each other, shared ideas and entered modernity together. When it came to culture, the ghetto walls were porous.
The cultural and political revival in the Venice ghetto is often obscured from history by Shakespeare’s Shylock. Would the people of Venice have recognized him and what did Shakespeare really think of him? Shakespeare's ambivalent antisemitism reflects attitudes to Jews in Elizabethan England – but as Freedman demonstrates, Shakespeare's myth is wholly ignorant of the literary, cultural and interfaith revival that Shylock would have experienced.
Harry Freedman is Britain’s leading author of popular works of Jewish culture and history. His forthcoming Book is Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soul. Previous publications include Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius, Britain's Jews and The Talmud- A Biography. His books are published in the USA and UK by Bloomsbury and have been praised in major newspapers, on radio and TV. He lives in London and writes regular articles on Jewish history at Substack.