Shylock's children

Derek J. Penslar
University of California Press
 9780520225909
0-520-22590-2

Throughout much of European history, Jews have been strongly associated with commerce and the money trade, rendered both visible and vulnerable, like Shakespeare's Shylock, by their economic distinctiveness..

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Shylock's Children tells the story of Jewish perceptions of this economic difference and its effects on modern Jewish identity. Derek Penslar explains how Jews in modern Europe developed the notion of a distinct "Jewish economic man," an image that grew ever more complex and nuanced between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.