Moses Was a Picker

Today I found myself in the wikipedia entry for the Merchant of Venice for some superficial fact-checking and was curious to see if the "references" section had "the Pick"'s brilliant parody of Shylock's final speech.  It did not, although the reference is catalogued in the "Trivia" section of the page for "the Pick." This did not seem fair that Shakespeare is good enough for Seinfeld but that Seinfeld is not good enough for Shakespeare.  The situation is rectified as long as the collaborative authorities let it stand:

"The Pick" episode of the sitcom Seinfeld parodies the antisemitism of the play with an extended joke that Moses picked his nose, making it inherent in jewishness. When Jerry is persecuted for picking his nose he parodies Shylock's speech with a plea to a crowd "If we pick, do we not bleed?"

This appropriation of the infamous moment of Shakespeare's most unsettling comedy is by no means a straightforward joke, a humorous collision of high and low culture, changing the beautiful plea "if you prick us do we not bleed?" into a discussion of nose-picking.   Shylock's presence in the play deconstructs its existence as a straight-forward comedy.  His tragic end unsettles the marriages that make up the otherwise typical happy ending, and the antisemitism of the characters makes us doubt whether we want them to live happily ever after.  "The Pick" creates the parallel between jewishness and nose-picking when George justifies picking when Jerry's (anglo) girlfriend thinks she "caught [him] in a pick"

Jerry, "Is that so unforgivable? Is that like breaking a commandment? Did God say to Moses thou shalt not pick?"

George, "I guarantee you that Moses was a picker. You wander through the desert for forty years with that dry air. Are you telling me you're not going to have occasion to clean house a little bit."

However, everything ends badly in Seinfeld—Elaine's relationship ends because the guy she's seeing doesn't want to be with someone whose nipple was exposed on her Christmas card (a failed attempt to reach out and be accepted by anglo culture), and Jerry's ends because of the pick.  It is not simply that Jerry's jewishness leads to his persecution in an anglo comedic context: the entire show is a compromise between jewish tragedy and anglo comedy.  While the situation comedy began in the firmly WASP tradition of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver and Seinfeld places a jewish comedian in this context, the show deconstructs its tradition at every turn, it foils the happy, clean ending, the lesson with which the initial folly provides us.  If we read the Merchant of Venice as Seinfeld wants us to this cycle of folly, punishment, redemption falls apart because Shylock receives no redemption and the merchants receive no punishment for their humiliation of Shylock.  

Those who judge and have the authority to provide the lessons, the fathers as the early suburban sitcom, are worse than those who have erred.  Jerry's girlfriend is shallow, superficial, and ashamed of Jerry's jewishness, as symbolized by his supposed pick, and the man who stops calling Elaine is revealed more crassly than she ever was:

I did not bare myself deliberately, but I tell you, I wish now that I had! Because it is not me that has been exposed, but you! For I have seen the nipple on your soul!