Might be worth investigating whether Shakespeare had contacts amongst Christian Hebraists, who were something of a feature of the Renaissance. Oxford and Cambridge both had Regius Professors of Hebrew when Merchant of Venice was written, both of whom went on to work on the Hebrew translations for the King James Bible.
An alternative hypothesis, which fits with speculation that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic, is that he might have come into contact with conversos who disguised themselves as Catholics in order to flee from England to the Low Countries after the arrest of the converso Rodrigo Lopez in 1596 on treason charges (he had been physician to Elizabeth I). Some conversos are thought to have continued to worship as Jews in secret, so would presumably have been able to read enough Hebrew to suggest some names.
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An alternative hypothesis, which fits with speculation that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic, is that he might have come into contact with conversos who disguised themselves as Catholics in order to flee from England to the Low Countries after the arrest of the converso Rodrigo Lopez in 1596 on treason charges (he had been physician to Elizabeth I). Some conversos are thought to have continued to worship as Jews in secret, so would presumably have been able to read enough Hebrew to suggest some names.