THE ROTHSCHILDS
That said, it must be acknowledged that the musical The Rothschilds is strangely undramatic. But it makes up for that with heart and intelligence.
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The story of the Rothschilds would be astounding no matter what the family’s ethnic heritage. But their rise occurred at a time of intense anti-Semitism–the late 18th and early 19th centuries–and their pride in their roots makes it a story worth listening to. Though the tale has several heroes, its center is the family’s formidable patriarch, Mayer Rothschild, who rose from rags to riches through his sons but refused to leave the ghetto himself until all his family were free to do so.
It’s possible to consider the inherent misogyny and Jewish stereotyping another flaw. But to me this flaw is minor, because those faults are part of the show’s truth. The Rothschilds lived in a time when misogyny was simply the way of the world; and the show explains many of the reasons behind the Jewish stereotypes. For instance, because Jews weren’t allowed to hold land outside the ghetto, or indeed walk outside the ghetto after curfew, to make a living they often had no recourse but to become middlemen of some sort–merchants and bankers were the most common. Some of the negative stereotypes, such as the international Jewish banking conspiracy theory, come directly from the Rothschilds’ history itself.
