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jewblog:

Coping With The Christian Gaze On Shakespeare's Jew | New Voices
Is "The Merchant of Venice" antisemitic? Yes, but not for the reason you might think.
New Voices
Shylock, the titular merchant and Jewish character, is perhaps most famous for his “hath not a Jew eyes” speech. This soliloquy is often cited by scholars and laypeople alike as exonerating the play (and by extension, Shakespeare) from accusations of antisemitism. If the Jewish character in question has a whole soliloquy on the inherent humanity of Jews, doesn’t that prove the play’s innocence?
The issue with this argument is that it ignores the last line of the soliloquy, the thesis of Shylock’s argument: “And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”
Shylock argues that if Jews are human, then they seek revenge when they are wronged, just like everyone else. There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong or inhuman in a desire for revenge. But this definition of humanity as being founded on revenge is stated by a Jewish character, set in contrast to how the Christian characters in the play define humanity. That’s a problem.
[ … ]
An Elizabethan Christian audience member might have seen Shylock’s downfall as poetic. Watch as Shylock, the Jew, is undone by the very justice system which he prioritizes over human safety. A Jew confronted with the text, however, whether in Shakespeare’s time or in ours, is struck with the disquieting realization of just how futile it would be for a Jew in 16th century Venice to seek redress against a Christian defendant before the court. Shylock is fighting a losing battle. As a Jew, he has no grounds on which to demand justice, mercy, or morality. Even when in the right, he is perpetually wronged by the very system that is supposed to uphold justice. This discomfort, however, would likely not have occurred to Elizabethan Christians. The concept of the Jew as a scheming villain in theater was previously established by Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’, and the categorization of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ as a comedy makes it unlikely that the Elizabethan audience would have sympathized with Shylock, the villain in the story. Nobody mourns when a monster is defeated when the monster looks nothing like them.
So how do Jews deal with this text?

catcrumb:

ALT

jojos-birdwatching-adventure:

(via todaysbird)

littlealienproducts:

to be loved is to be small (a5 cat art print) by robinillu

(via torahtot)

tuulikki:

brightwanderer:
petermorwood:
lloerwyn:
kontrollsysteme:
ladillados:
we’ve gone from the yee haw agenda to the ye olde thot programme
Ah yes, those slutty slutty Landsknecht shorts:
The bare-legged / hot-pants look was fairly common, since the whole point about being a Landsknecht (or Reislaufer, their Swiss equivalent) was to look outrageous.
Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcuts…
…though in 1905 a book called „Geschichte des Kostüms“ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.
If they look excessively gaudy, they’re not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schön, and it’s fair to assume he was representing what he saw.
In short - or in shorts - those reenactor costumes are spot on. :->
Something mentioned nowhere in this post that I have just learned from googling: these guys were not Ye Olde Medieval Dandies. They were 15th-16th century mercenaries. Pretty hardcore, too. They were exempt from sumptuary laws (ie the rules that said you couldn’t wear certain colours or cloth or styles) and apparently their response to that was technicolour thotpants.
I was complaining earlier about costuming in both “historical” settings and in fantasy/scifi. This is exactly what I mean when I say a knowledge of actual history would enrich the conceptual creative palette for things like “hardcore mercenary outfits.”

(via seananmcguire)

byjove:

byjove:
byjove:
byjove:
humans will see a swamp and build a city on it and then spend the next 2,000+ years struggling to keep it from turning back into a swamp
everybody saying a different city is cracking me up
YES! MOST OF FLORIDA! And they keep destroying more swamp to build hideous condos on top of it and then the condos sink into the swamp and no one is happy. It gets to a point where you’re like. Go live anywhere else. Why are you still doing this to this poor wetland?

(via jabberwockypie)

capnsoapy:

capnsoapy:
Every time I see people misconstruing the definition of punk for meaningless semantic discourse I mentally substitute “punk” for “electro swing”
“Are public libraries punk?” trite.
“Are public libraries electro swing?” immediately a better post

(via arionwind)

britain-offical:

“I asked chatgpt-” NEXT TIME DON’T. ask ME choose ME, I can misinform you. I do it with love and affection

(via tijuanabiblestudies)

directactionforhope:

partisan-by-default:
pscottm:
Avelo Airlines cuts ties with ICE, ends deportation flights - al.com
Airline cuts ties with ICE, ends deportation flights after protests, spamming
The budget carrier signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security in April 2025.
al
Avelo Airlines, the only commercial carrier believed to have been operating full deportation flights on a regular basis for the Trump administration, is ending its relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and will no longer charter those deportations.
The budget carrier signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security in April 2025 to operate ICE flights out of Arizona, drawing immediate protests and calls to boycott.
At the time, the airline acknowledged the decision may be controversial but said it was expected to support company expansion and job protection. However, after less than a year since inking the deal, Avelo has admitted that the program became too costly and complex to continue.
CEO Andrew Levy acknowledged the backlash in an email to employees late Tuesday.
“We moved a portion of our fleet into a government program which promised more financial stability but placed us in the center of a political controversy,” Levy wrote in the email, obtained by CNBC.
“The program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.” (aph)
KEEP PROTESTING AND KEEP MOBILIZING. IT WORKS. IT IS NOT HOPELESS AND IT WORKS.