Catholics versus Jews, a big deal.

In this review I am going to talk about a movie which is called “The Merchant of Venice”, and I am going to relate its main topic with reality. This movie it is based on a William Shakespeare play and it was written in 1598, but there is not an exact date.

William Shakespeare was a really famous British writer who was born in April 26th, 1564 and he died in May 3rd, 1616. He has been known as one of the most famous writers around the world. Shakespeare had written a lot of important and known movies, such as Romeo and Juliet (1595), Hamlet (1601), Otelo (1603-1604), The tempest (1610) and some others.

“The Merchant of Venice” took place in Britain, during the 16th Century. This movie principaly narrates the differences between Jews and Catholics. In this case, we can find two main characters of it who were Antonio and Shylock. Antonio was a Catholic man who was known as the merchant. On the other hand, Shylock was rich Jew man, known as the usurer. The movie started when Bassanio asked Antonio for some money that he needed to travel to Belmont because he wanted to visit Portia, a rich woman. The problem starts because Antonio did not have any money to lend him. For that reason, Bassanio went to visit Shylock and he asked him for the money. This is how the story goes.

During the movie I could notice that Shylock and Antonio were enemies. So it is really important to say that at that age, Jews and Catholics were adversaries, because Jewish people were not considered as normal citizens. At one moment, Shylock said to Antonio, Why we can not have the same rights? We have the same blood, the same feelings, we are all equals. That calls my attention because I agree with Shylock and I think the same as him.

In the past, Catholic religion was the main belief around the world. They were like the owners of everything; they were the ones who had more power. Jewish people have different beliefs, they are completely different from Catholics and for that reason they treated Jews as the worse thing of the world. This means that Catholics hated Jews because of their beliefs and from the other side Jews hated Catholics because of the same reason and also because they were always discriminating them.

Jewish´s beliefs are very different from Catholic´s beliefs, for example: Jews do not believe in Jesus, they believe in Yavhé; they read the Ancient Testament; their Church is called synagogue; their Leader is called Rabbi; and their most important day is Saturday (Sabhat). From the other side, Catholics believe in Jesus; they read the Bible; the Church is their temple; their religious leaders are Priest, Archbishop, etc; and their most important day is Sunday. As you can see there are a lot of differences and probably that caused the problems between Jews and Catholics. During the 1600 c, the Catholic Church was the one that had more power around the world.

During the Second War World, we could find those kinds of problems, because Jewish people were not considered in the society. There is another movie which is called “The beautiful life” (La vida es bella), it is an Italian movie that talks about what happened with Jews all along the Second War World. In that movie we could see how Italian Jews were treated by Catholics, and how they abused of them.

As you can see, even during the Second War World was present that problem, and now it is not the exception, because we still have those problems between these two religions. “Christians have criticized Jews for rejecting Jesus as their messiah, and Jews have criticized Christians for corrupting the concept of one God and following a false messiah” (http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/christianity_judaism.htm), for that reason they do not tolerate each other.

I think that problems between different beliefs and religions had always been here, especially between Catholics and Jews. Probably there is a prejudice in relation to Jewish people. As I said before, Jews have different beliefs from Catholics, but that does not mean that they do not have the same rights. I am not in favour of discrimination because in my opinion, every person has the same rights, even though they have different thoughts. I do not like to see how people are discriminating others because of their beliefs. I believe that this problem is because we are not accustomed to accept a variety of ideas and thoughts. We are all different and for that reason we have different beliefs and we have to accept that. It does not matter what happen, we are all equals and that is the only important thing.

References:

http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/charts/christianity_judaism.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice