(Jewish Telegraphic Agency) Since 1634 the Passion Play has been traditionally staged in Oberammergau, Germany every decade — and now finally after years of complaints from Jewish supremacy groups, the play has finally been sanitized of any “anti-semitic” content which portrays Jews in a way they don’t find flattering:
Nestled in the Bavarian alps, the city of Oberammergau has one major claim to fame: every 10 years, it hosts the world-famous Passion Play, which tells the New Testament story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
It has been doing so since the 17th century, almost without fail, and it happens to be on now, after a two-year, pandemic-related delay. About half a million spectators are expected to flock to the town by the time this season is over, on Oct. 2.
Over the centuries, the play — in which all roles are filled by local residents — has been a vessel for some of Germany’s most virulent, religious-based Jew-hatred, feeding into the antisemitic conspiracy theories of the Nazi years and beyond.
But things have changed, observers say.
No longer are Jews depicted as eternal murderers of Jesus. The play now highlights the Jewishness of Jesus and his followers and clarifies that only the Roman Pontius Pilate — and not the Jews — could condemn Jesus to death.
Such shifts came about largely through the commitment of Passion Play director Christian Stückl, himself a native son, who has now helmed four rounds of the production. He has worked with Jewish organizations including the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as with educational groups in Germany, to raise awareness about antisemitism and reshape the narrative.
This week, the AJC recognized Stückl’s commitment with its Isaiah Award for Exemplary Interreligious Leadership. Stückl has helped turn the Passion Play into “an educational tool for post-Shoah Christian and German self-reflection,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, AJC’s Director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations, in an award ceremony held Wednesday in Oberammergau. Stückl has been engaged in dialogue with AJC leaders since the late 1980s.
At the award ceremony, he said his greatest concern upon becoming the play’s director in 1990 “was to eliminate [its] anti-Judaism.”
The Passion Play was initiated in 1634 as a religious offering against the return of the plague to the alpine village. In keeping with contemporary Church teachings, the play depicted Jews as greedy and deicidal, proclaiming them guilty for all time. According to local legend, the plague never returned to Oberammergau, so to keep it that way, the town staged the play every 10 years…
…Ahead of this year’s performances, Stückl inaugurated a pilgrimage to Israel for the principal actors. He has been trying to view the play through the eyes of Jewish viewers, and to that end has met with Jewish leaders and with students, noted Jo Frank, director of the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk, a Berlin-based scholarship program for gifted Jewish students. ELES students first met with Stückl in Oberammergau some 11 years ago, and they have met with him again recently, Frank said.
Stückl had invited them not just to have Jews in the audience, but so that he could get their feedback before and after.
“It was really impressive, because he is always trying to reform the text in particular,” Frank said in a telephone interview. “And within the Christian setting, this is an interesting task to undertake, because the Oberammergau Festspiele still has this very strange papal status: the idea that what they show is basically the truth.”
In that context, to change things is “highly commendable. What he has done is reform and bend the rules as far as he could.”
This year, Stückl also engaged a Muslim actor, which “would have been unthinkable 10 years ago,” Frank added. “He really does deserve all the praise that he gets.”
“For over 300 years we have told the story of Jesus in a spirit that has led to prejudice and hatred. For over 1,900 years the Church had told that the Jews murdered Jesus,” Stückl said at the award ceremony, noting that an American rabbi who saw the play in 1901 — Josepf Krauskopf — came away despondent, doubting that Jews would ever be “cleared of the heinous accusations that have been heaped upon [them].”
It is doubtful that such hate can be fully eradicated, but Christian Stückl “has demonstrated the power of one individual to make a tremendous difference,” Marans said.
Clearly, the Passion Play has been rewritten to conform to the compromises of Vatican II — and the more recent International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) new and improved definition of “antisemtism.”
And still the Jews will not be satisfied — they never are even when they get their way — they approve of the changes, but what they really want is for the play to be completely canceled — preferably banned forever.
True Christianity — not the ersatz “judeo-Christianity” currently preached from most pulpits — is implicitly “anti-Jewish” — and no amount of tinkering with the narrative will change that.
Sure, they’ve successfully coerced the Catholic Church to go along with the idea that it was the “Romans” idea to crucify Christ — but clearly the disciples themselves put the blame squarely on the shoulders of “men of Israel” (Acts 2:22).
But we know that today’s “Jews” are not Israelites — by their own admission — but in falsely claiming that they are, they have to accept the baggage as “Christ killers” that comes with that identity.
The Jews want the entire Gospel of John thrown out of the New Testament — and all unflattering references to “Jews” removed — in fact, at the 1947 International Emergency Conference on Anti-Semitism, Christian leaders agreed to the following principle of “reconciliation” with Jews concerning John:
“Since medieval times the Passion texts and presentations on the crucifixion of Jesus have led
acts of violence against Jews. The Gospel of John is especially prone to anti-Judaic interpretation, given the manner in which it presents a collective role for the Jews in Jesus’ trial. Therefore, the commission requests the composition of a very careful interpretation which will not incite hatred against Jews.”
They especially don’t like the part in Matthew 23:33 where Jews are called a “brood of vipers” — so Matthew has got to go too.
They are also moving toward replacing references to “Israelites” with “Jews” — and the “land of Israel” to the “land of the Jews.”
Perhaps that’s why Jews want to institute communism — rebranded as “inclusive capitalism” — here in the West with The Great Reset — so that they can simply outlaw Christianity just as their Bolshevik predecessors did when they took over Russia and murdered 60 million Christians.
Why change a winning formula?
