After negotiations involving producers, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, a play about the life of Jesus will open in New York on June 5, after a temporary delay in its schedule.
The negotiations took place after Protestant and Jewish leaders protested the way the play portrayed Jews and Judaism, which prompted the producers to suspend its New York debut.
The New York performances were scheduled midway through the show’s 32-city North American tour.
“Jesus Was His Name,” a $24 million spectacle, will change in several ways before another audience sees it, according to the ADL.
Critics said that the play’s visual effects, rather than the script itself, contain grotesquely anti-Semitic images of Jews and Judaism.
As a result of negotiations, the characters representing the Jewish Sanhedrin will no longer wear black robes and death masks, the ADL said in a statement.
An announcement will also be made before each performance to “reinforce the ADL statement in the program which stressed that virtually all Christian denominations reject the accusation of deicide against the Jewish people,” according to the ADL.
Rabbi A. James Rudin, national interreligious affairs director of the AJCommittee, saw the play with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy when it was performed in Cincinnati.
He described it this way: “The most negative anti-Jewish elements of ‘Jesus Was His Name’ are visual, not verbal.
“The priests wear large ominous black turbans that are without historical basis. Giant grotesque death masks, accompanied by a frightening death rattle, are projected on the enormous screen, easily identifying the ‘bad guys’ of the play: the ghoulish and wicked Jewish priests,” Rudin said in a statement.
JEWS ARE ‘MENACINGLY PORTRAYED’
“The followers of Jesus wear viewer-friendly pastel ‘humble tunics’ while ‘the powerful, insolent and violent’ Jewish religious leaders are menacingly portrayed in colors of black and gold replete with velvet, satin and lush jewelry,” he wrote in the statement.
“A false and dangerous dichotomy runs through the entire production: Jesus and his followers are good, true and rapturous while the Jewish religious and political leaders are villainous, cruel and corrupt,” Rudin wrote.
In the play, Jews are isolated as the villains, say those who saw the play.
The Pharisees are portrayed as the enemies of Jesus and in negative medieval stereotypes.
A Jewish scribe is played by a dwarf and the Jewish leaders are dressed in black hoods with death heads that make snake-like hissing sounds, say those who have seen the production.
According to Eugene Fisher, director of Catholic-Jewish relations for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “It is hard to imagine a more negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism than equating the people and their faith with death itself.”
Fisher saw the play in Baltimore on May 6th in the company of five Jewish, Catholic and Protestant members of the clergy.
Cardinal John O’Connor, the prominent and influential Catholic leader of the New York archdiocese, read the script, though he did not see the production.
But on the basis of the script, he put out a statement in which he said that it does not “lend itself to the charge (of blaming the Jews for Jesus’ death) or encourage hostility against the Jewish people.”
In response to requests for comment before postponing the New York run, the producers of the tour, Radio City Music Hall Productions, released a statement saying the organization had “a dialogue with a wide range of responsible religious organizations in order to hear their views about the performance of ‘Jesus Was His Name.’
“Religious organizations of many faiths, Christian and Jewish alike — along with the show’s director, Robert Hossein, and Radio City Music Hall Productions — have said that nothing in this show should be interpreted in any way that is anti-Jewish,” the statement said.
The statement also referred to the program notes that are given to every member of the audience.
PROGRAM NOTES INCLUDE ADL STATEMENT
The notes include a statement by the ADL, which says that the producers were “sensitive” to issues involving the portrayal of Jews and “actively initiated meetings to seek the advice and judgment of responsible agencies within the Jewish community.”
But Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of ADL’s interfaith affairs department, who was involved in writing the statement, said in an interview before the latest round of negotiations that it was “not our intention to endorse” the play.
“I am not happy with the production. Such a presentation does not contribute to peace,” he said.
The new modifications of the play include an oral announcement before each performance to reinforce the ADL program note, which stresses that virtually all Christian denominations reject the accusation of deicide against the Jewish people, the ADL said in a statement Wednesday.
The show is now in the middle of its tour across North America. It has already been seen in Worcester, Mass.; Cincinnati; Milwaukee; and Minneapolis.
After a two-week New York run, the show will continue to wend its way across the continent, playing in El Paso, Texas; Indianapolis; Mexico City; Philadelphia; Albany, N.Y.; and Cleveland. It winds up in Montreal and Quebec.
It is a multimedia presentation, which combines film projected on an 80-ft.-wide screen, combined with powerful sound effects and a live cast of 58.
Jewish and Christian critics alike noted that as a commercial production, the show is not linked to any church group.
And the nearly unanimous reaction against the anti-Jewish images, according to Rudin, is the result of two decades’ worth of work between Christians and Jews.
“Jews and Christians are aware that this isn’t just a Sunday school production, but that the potency of these images can be damaging,” he said. “This is a tribute to interreligious efforts. This shows that the relationship works.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
