The 1980 Oberammergau Passion Play began in that Bavarian, West German village Sunday as the American Jewish Committee warned potential visitors that the play still can be viewed as hostile to Jews. A half million people are expected to see the play this summer which villagers have performed of the beginning of every decade since 1680.
In a 20-page booklet the AJ Committee has prepared for potential visitors to Oberammergau, they were warned that despite “a serious effort to cleanse the play of anti-Jewish polemic and prejudice,” the pageant remains “rooted in a tradition of hostility and contempt toward Jews and Judaism which prevailed for centuries and shaped the attitudes of generations of Christians.”
The booklet, entitled “What Viewers Should Know about the Oberammergau” and prepared by Judith Herscopf Banki, the AJ Committee’s assistant national director of interreligious affairs, was published under a grant from the Nathan Appleman Institute for the Advancement of Christian-Jewish Understanding. It was released last week at the AJ Committee’s 74th annual meeting here.
TEXT CUT, BUT NOT RETHOUGHT
The Oberammergau Passion Play is a work of fiction, incorporating some episodes from the Gospels, ignoring others and freely inventing scenes and characters with no basis in Christian Scripture Mrs. Banki said. She said the play was written with a deliberate effort “to make the Jewish people and their leaders appear as villainous and evil as possible.”
At the time the play was written, Jews were charged with collective guilt for the death of Jesus and regarded as rejected by God for refusing to accept Jesus, Mrs. Banki pointed out. She said today this anti-Jewish theology has been “repudiated by major Christian churches and replaced by policies of respect and understanding.” But she said this has not been reflected in the 1980 Oberammergau script.
“The text has only been out, not rethought,” Mrs. Banki said. “The traditional anti-Jewish polemic which shaped the earlier text has not been questioned, nor have the insights of modern biblical and extrabiblical scholarship been incorporated into the dynamics of the play.”
REMINDER: These will be no Daily News Bulletin dated May 26 due to Memorial Day, a postal holiday.
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