Christianity, Judaism and Passion Plays

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In the German village of Oberammergau, both theater and life intermingle to the point where it has become difficult to tell which is which - and in more ways than one. Here we have the oldest continuous staging of a "Passion Play" - the drama of Jesus' arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. We also have, as a result, one of the oldest continuous debates about the presence of anti-semitism in Christian theology - and whether or not that anti-semitism can ever be removed.

This book, more than many other volumes on Christian anti-semitism, offers readers not merely a vivid but also very contemporary and relevant explanation of the conflict between Jewish leaders and conservative Christian theology. This isn't just a historical treatise on medieval pogroms: this is a demonstration of how Christian theology, and its role in live theater, can still exercise power over the minds and lives of people.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Oberammergau (and there are surely many), the historical situation is this: As local legend tells it, in 1633, the residents of the small Bavarian village of Oberammergau were being decimated by the plague. A few who were still struggling to survive made a vow that, if they were spared from the wave of plague that was sweeping the countryside, they would perform a Passion play in perpetuity.

Supposedly, no more villagers died and the town has kept its vow. Records verify, with surviving scripts, the staging of a passion play as early as the late 1600s, and they have only had to skip a couple of their once-a-decade production. One time was during WWII and another when the Catholic Church was attempting to ban all such biblically-based plays.

The story of the Oberammergau production is a fascinating for its cultural, commercial, and religious elements. For example, the village itself survives almost entirely because of tourists coming to see the play and purchase souvenirs, like hand-carved wooden figurines and crucifixes. Despite that, one of the first scenes in the play is that of Jesus attacking the moneylenders in the Temple and their efforts to make money off of religion. Irony doesn't get much thicker than that!

The sharpest analysis, however, is obviously about the village's ambivalent efforts to deal with the harsh anti-semitism which has been characteristic not only of their play (no Jew is known to have ever performed in it), but all German passion plays through history. Shapiro briefly describes some of the horrors which befell Jews in earlier centuries after the staging of passion plays. For example, in 1539, the shows had to be stopped in Rome because they were regularly followed by a sacking of the Jewish ghetto.

That they have had a role in at least encouraging radical anti-semitism even in the twentieth-century is also undeniable. Hitler attended the play twice and specifically praised it for its convincing portrayal of "the menace of Jewry" and the "whole muck and mire of Jewry." The man who twice played Jesus himself was an early convert to Nazism and participated in running out of the town the only Jew. Even the youngest children participate in the anti-semitism by portraying Jews in the play, gleefully shouting and jeering at Jesus and saying that his blood is to be on them and their children's children.

For the longest time, the play's anti-semitism was defended by people saying that it was in line with Vatican teaching - and this was true. But that changed after the Vatican II Council in which the Jewish role in killing Jesus was greatly reduced, and thus official approval of the play's theology was actually denied for the first time. It was only because of this that pressure from Jewish groups was given more weight and attention.

The 1970 showing was boycotted by many people, and a lot of attention was given to this fact. Even the archbishop of nearby Munich publicly complained about it, stating that it contained "anti-Semitic elements" and needed revision. This became a test case for many Jews: how far had the Catholic church really come in repudiating anti-semitism, or were there pronoucements all talk and lacking in real action?

Recently, due in part to the combined pressure from Jewish groups and the Vatican, changes have been made to the script, making it both more historically accurate and adding a stronger Hebrew quality to Jesus and his disciples. But that hasn't eliminated all of the offensive aspects of the play.

Previously, the offensiveness of the play was centered on things like the way Jews were dressed and the things they said. Now, it can be seen in something which lies at the heart of Christian theology: the idea that Christianity has triumphed over and replaced Judaism. It isn't possible for Jews to see this without some offense possibly being taken, but it also isn't possible to portray the story of Christianity without that message being delivered:

...by scraping away the incrustation of offensive passages he had suddenly exposed more profound problems with the gospel narratives and with the Vatican position on how the story of the Passion should be told. Moreover, the extraordinary emphasis on the Jewishness of Jesus highlighted as never before the sharp disjunction between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. It was one thing, in the old days, to see an ethereal and passive Christ, familiar from two thousand years of Christian iconography, undergo death and resurrection. It was quite another to see a resurrected Jewish Jesus.

People today are still having trouble dealing with the fact that Jesus, while he lived, was Jewish. But should he be considered Jewish even after he was resurrected? Would he have prayed as a Jew and followed Jewish laws?

For all the ecumenical attention to a shared spiritual heritage, the play forces Jews and Christians to face the painful fact that they read differently and that a single version of the founding story of Christianity cannot be comfortably shared.

So what are people to do? Is it even possible to do a good Passion play? Shapiro doesn't answer this question, but he does give readers a lot to think about.