In the course of the action, Proteus disguises himself at one point as ‘Aaron the
Jew’, and his song in this character recounts Aaron's problems in courting Miss Levi, Miss Rachel and Miss Moses: this provoked demonstrations, including cat-calls, from Jews in the audience. Some historians have claimed that Jews in the audience objected to the reference in the song to "three Jewish whores" or even that the performance was " a deliberate attempt [by Dibdin] to please the government...to deflect attention away from the hardship, high taxation and repression...in Britain during the French revolutionary wars". The audience reaction has sometimes been described as a "riot", or more specifically as a "Jewish riot". However the music historian
David Conway has noted that there is no evidence for the latter claim, and that the descriptions in the song of Aaron's ladies is perfectly respectable. On referring to the actual music of the song, he attributes the disturbances to the use, in the song's
coda, of the melody and rhythm of the synagogue
Kaddish prayer. He adds "this musical parody can in fact only have been inserted by Braham himself", as Braham was Jewish and had begun his career as a
meshorrer (
treble) in the
Great Synagogue of London. Conway comments that the use of this sacred melody "may suggest why the Jews in the gallery (who were perhaps more regularly in attendance at synagogue) were more incensed than the gentrified Jews in the boxes, as was reported by
The Morning Chronicle", and notes that the song "is the very first presentation I have discovered of genuine Jewish synagogue music in the context of Gentile stage entertainment." Dibdin's autobiography, in a chapter entitled "And the Twelve Tribes Waxed Wroth", indicates that he included the song exactly in the hope of creating some sensational publicity. By the fourth performance, things had calmed down: Dibdin quotes the newspaper
The British Press: It was reported...that many Jews of the lower class had formed themselves into a regular phalanx, and were to renew their opposition, under the direction of the ass, whose cruel brayings were so successfully exerted the first night. No such occurrence, however, took place...the pedler's [sic] song...was encored amongst the loudest bursts of applause. ==Rowlandson's cartoon==