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The controversial Nazi-era production of The Merchant of Venice that led a Toronto private school to fire its principal included a “game,” styled like a Baptist sermon, in which the audience shouted “Hallelujah” in response to slogans about persecuting Jews.

But contrary to complaints from parents at Toronto’s Bishop Strachan School, there was no chanting of “Burn the Jews,” according to Iqbal Khan of Box Clever Theatre, who directed the play at this and many other high schools in Britain.

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Rather, the anti-Semitic slogans were explicitly presented as quotations from On the Jews and their Lies, a notorious ant-Semitic sermon by the German early Protestant reformer Martin Luther.

Early in this adapted version of Shakespeare’s morality tale, the narrator is making a point about how dangerous it can be for an audience to get riled up at the thought of someone else being “brought down a peg or two,” Khan said. He talks about the role of stereotypes and caricatures, and as an example uses the actual words of Luther’s sermon, calling them out like a Baptist preacher, inviting the gleeful Hallelujah response.