The American Jewish Committee has compared the script of the 1970 Oberammergau Passion Play with the 1960 script and finds that it is still fundamentally anti-Jewish in content although the new version which opens May 18 will contain fewer overtly anti-Semitic references. AJ Committee president Philip E. Hoffman said the result of the textual analysis has been communicated to West German ecclesiastical and government authorities and will be published shortly in German, French, Spanish and English. The content analysis was conducted by the AJ Committee’s interreligious affairs department headed by Rabbi Marc H. Tannenbaum. The 1960 script was analyzed by Mrs. Judith H. Banki, associate director of the department and the 1970 version by Dr. Gerald S. Strober, a Presbyterian educator who serves as an AJ Committee consultant. While many grossly anti-Jewish words and passages have been removed in revising the pageant for this year’s performances, other equally objectionable material has been left in, the analyses found. Moreover, the study found the entire story line and the underlying conceptions of the play unchanged in the new version and clearly incompatible with the policy adopted in 1965 by Vatican Council II in its declaration on non-Christian religions, Mr. Hoffman said.
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