Primary Source: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

04/12/24 • 38 min

This guest episode from Primary Source, a limited series podcast from the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University, explores the notorious and fraudulent antisemitic text most commonly known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, taking a look at its history and its impact on world politics. This episode from our colleagues is a meaningful companion to our popular Season 1 episode, "The Protocols, Henry Ford, and The International Jew," co-produced with the Association for Jewish Studies, which investigated, in part, the ways in which The Protocols were distributed in the United States and beyond.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

Previous Episode

The Merchant of Venice: Annotated

Dr. Jennifer Wells, former Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at the George Washington University, takes us through the social, economic, and political landscape of Elizabethan England as Aaron Henne, the writer and director of our latest work, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad, and artistic director of theatre dybbuk, illuminates that history's impact on our interpretation of Shakespeare's Merchant.

This episode is presented in collaboration with the George Washington University Department of History.

This is the third and final episode in our series connected to concepts that intersect with The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad. That production combines text from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Elizabethan history and news from 2020 to the present. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate how, during times of upheaval, some people may place blame for their anxieties on an “other.”

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

Next Episode

At Newport

In this episode, presented in collaboration with Hebrew College, we begin by exploring two poems from the second half of the 19th century by prominent American poets. One, "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is generally thought to have been written during a visit to Newport in 1852 and was then published in 1854. The other, a response to that work by Emma Lazarus, called "In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport," was likely written in 1867 and then published in 1871.

Rabbi Dan Judson, Provost of Hebrew College, discusses how the poem by Lazarus both builds upon and deviates from Longfellow's poem. He also shares about the artistic and ideological journey that Emma Lazarus, as a Jewish American writer, took over the course of her career, using her poem "The Banner of the Jew," published in 1882, as an entry point to understand this journey, and touches on the ways in which her evolution speaks to Jewish identity in America and the American experience overall.

Support for this episode is provided in part by A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.