Germany’s Mega Passion Play Is Back, And Jews Are Watching Carefully

February 24, 2010

Author: Niels Sorrells

Source: Religion News Service

http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/germanys_mega_passion_play_is_back_and_jews_are_watching/

With its focus on the last days of Jesus’ life, a Passion play should, by its nature, arouse passions. But here, the world’s most famous Passion play keeps stirring the wrong kind.

As it has almost every 10 years since 1634, this Bavarian town is putting the final touches on the Oberammergau Passion Play, keeping up its end of a divine compact after residents survived the bubonic plague amidst the Thirty Years War.

And, as has become almost routine in recent decades, plans for the play—particularly the choice of words in the script—are causing heartburn among some of the world’s Jewish leaders.

“Passion plays, by their very nature, present serious problems,” says Rabbi James Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser. “It is possible to have a Passion play without the Jews as villains, but I have never seen one.”

The disagreement resurfaced last week (Feb. 19) when the play’s creative team officially presented the script to the archbishop of Munich. They noted to the media that the script had been reviewed by two Jewish organizations.