SHYLOCK - David Berner Profile and "Shylock" Review in Being Jewish Review
Man of Many Parts Explores Being Jewish in our Contemporary World
By Estelle Melzer
David Berner is a man of many parts. He is a playwright, actor, broadcaster, teacher, social activist, novelist, and currently a very successful talk show host on CKNW Radio in Vancouver.
Berner is also a Jew wrestling with what that means in our contemporary world.
It was primarily the Jew and the actor who took centre stage on Sunday night, June 1st, to present the 15th annual Imre R. Rosenberg memorial Lecture at Temple Israel. His topic was Being a Jew in the 21st Century: Notes from the Theatrical Edge.
Berner started his talk musing about roots and the powerful pull of family and heritage. He talked intimately about how, in the middle of his life as a busy public figure, an incident or a momento would draw him back to who he is essentially, to the Jewish core of his identity. Although the experiences he related were personal, the feelings he described were familiar to most in the receptive audience.
He then went on to explain his own odyssey in search of his identity as a Jew living in a mostly non-Jewish world.
David Berner was born into an Orthodox Jewish immigrant family on the north side of Winnipeg. His grandfather was a Rabbi and his mother a prodigy in both Jewish and secular scholarship. Berner took a different route, living a mostly secular life, throwing himself into social causes, founding a treatment home for addicts, acting in theatre and hosting various radio and television shows across Canada.
While saying Kaddish after the death of his mother, he began to reconnect to his Jewish roots, and now attends Jewish studies classes on a regular basis.
He has also thought a great deal about what being a Jew in this contemporary world means to him.
First of all, a Jew, he feels must react to the world with “mindfulness.” “The first gift G-d gave us was day and night – Time,” he explained. “Thus we must live in the moment and notice what is going on now. As Jews, we owe our community, friends and family the response of noticing and caring.
Secondly, Jews have always revered learning, but in our tradition, learning is not an end in itself; it is combined with chesed, loving kindness. (Berner pointed out that all of the Nazis at the Wansee Conference had Ph.D.’s, but their learning was of the mind, not of the heart.)
Thirdly, a Jew must have, for obvious reasons, perseverance, lasting power. Sooner or later, every Jew comes up against anti-Semitism, and the greatest strength we have is a strong sense of identity and pride.
He then went on the discuss anti-Semitism in the portrayal of Jews in his world of show business. He observed that often Jewish moviemakers or playwrights, uncomfortable with their own identity, create ambiguous images of Jewish characters. He derided both the hateful stereotypes and the “cute Jews.”
Berner then reverted to his actor mode and took the audience on a tour through various Jewish characters in theatre and film – Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, Fagin from Oliver!, the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, and the “cute” Holocaust victim in Life is Beautiful.
He concluded with a masterful exploration of Shylock. He utilized selected excerpts from the play, Shylock, written by Mark Leiren-Young, and performed by Berner in various venues in the Vancouver area and Venice, Italy. The play is essentially an exploration of political correctness as it relates to anti-Semitism. It revolves around an actor playing avillainous Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, who, in a “Talk Back” session after the play, gradually takes off his beard, wig, nose, and robe as he discusses the history of anti-Semitism, today’s political correctness on the subject, and what lurks behind it.
It was a mesmerizing, masterful performance.
