The Venetian merchant Antonio is in a difficult financial situation. To help his friend Bassanio, who is campaigning for the heiress Portia, he goes, although in mutual disgust, to the Jewish money lender Shylock to borrow money from him. If Antonio can not repay the debt Shylock is allowed to cut a pound of meat out of Antonio's body. That is the deal.

Baruch Mayr, son of an orthodox rabbi from a poor shtetl in Galizia, decides to break with the family tradition and leave the shtetl to become an actor. Due to this behaviour his father bans him from his family. Baruch, who joined a small burlesque troupe is discovered by an Austrian Erzherzogin (archdutchess) who introduces him to the director of the most important Theater in Vienna, the Burgtheater. Baruch receives a contract there and becomes more and more an assimilated jew. But his relation with the Erzherzogin isn't approved by the Austrian court, so they have to end it. When an old friend of his father, who is always traveling from one Jewish community to the next (and has told him first about the theatres in the world), Baruch becomes a little bit homesick and returns for a holiday to his old shtetl to see his folks and to pick up his childhood sweetheart. But his father wants him not to enter his house, so he returns to Vienna, with his bride. But his old friend does not stop trying to convince his father of his errors.
—Stephan Eichenberg