Is the Merchant of Venice a Racist Antisemitic Play?

The Merchant of Venice is often regarded or criticized as a racist antisemitic play. There does seem to be implicit in it this claim that Jews are greedy, and Shylock is representative of them. So what merchant of Venice is speaking of is not just what Shylock did, but it's saying something anti-Semitic about Jews. The fact that this seems to be a feature of poetry raises all kinds of interesting questions.