Who controls a person's identity; a society's notion of who is noble and good - and who should be shunned and despised? What should a person do, when they see censorship of people and opposing ideas spinning dangerously out of control? For Paul Hoffmann, an aspiring Shakespearean scholar in 1930s Berlin, disturbing questions about his own Jewish identity have suddenly become a matter of life and death-and to his dismay, it's a despised moneylender named Shylock who seems to have the answers.