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Study of Bavaria's Passion Play Focuses on Its Depiction of Jews REVIEWED BY Cynthia Haven |
Sunday, August 13, 2000
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OBERAMMERGAUThe Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play By James Shapiro Pantheon; 238 pages; $24
First, what this book is not: ``Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play'' gives readers little sense of why half a million people will see the Passion Play this year during its once-a-decade run. It's not a spiritual map for the faithful pilgrims who trek to the Bavarian village of Oberammergau -- nor a nasty expose for the skeptical. James Shapiro concentrates on only one aspect of this passion play: its depiction of Jews. In exploring it, he rakes up the village's pro-Nazi past and its sincere attempts to redress that past in its passion play, which has continued for 366 years despite wars, military occupation, religious censorship and boycotts. Shapiro's book is as fast-paced as a thriller; it's more journalistic than scholarly in its compelling interview style. While airing the Passionsspiele's problems in so coherent and comprehensive a way is not likely to please Oberammergauers, they emerge from Shapiro's pages as ear nest and dedicated people trapped in an impossible situation. Shapiro exposes the basic human desire to rewrite the past: The villagers want to erase their Nazi history; the Jews want to red-pencil themselves out of the Crucifixion. (As one villager wisecracks when a reporter asked who crucified Jesus, ``It wasn't the Chinese.'' ) Jewish grievances are understandable, considering how the performance of passion plays in the past was linked with violence. In 1539, for example, the performances were canceled in Rome because they were regularly followed by the sacking of the Jewish ghetto. The anti- Semitic flavor continued into this century: Oberammergau's Passionsspiele once featured orientalized, money-grubbing, back-stabbing Jews shouting ``crucify him'' in concert. The Resurrection scene presented a prostrate Sanhedrin trampled underfoot. Jews wore dark clothes and horned hats. Shapiro cannot prove, except in an anecdotal fashion, that the play's anti-Semitic elements predisposed the villagers to Nazism, but he notes they ``converted'' in record proportions. Significantly, Hitler had praised the play for exposing ``the menace of Jewry'' -- and saw it twice. Shapiro does show how the villagers' carefully cultivated reputation for superhuman piety had set them up for a fall. (A typical attitude: A Munich cardinal told current director Christian Stuckl that ``the person imitating Jesus doesn't act the part, he has to be Jesus. To act it is impossible.'' ). Nazi elements have clung like a bad odor to the Passion Play in the years following, and so have anti-Semitic aspects in the presentation. In 1960, for example, the villagers preferred an ex-Nazi to play Jesus rather than give the part to a man who had married a non-Catholic. (Non-Catholics were allowed to perform only recently; non-Christians only this year.) The same ex-Nazi directed the play in 1970, the year that prominent intellectuals called for an international boycott. Oberammergau had to reform, but there was a major barrier: To wash out the anti-Semitic stains, the play's directors had to deal with a host of Jewish groups and their conflicting opinions. One wanted the play scrapped entirely: ``Give me another play; if it's about a crucifixion in which the Jews kill Christ, you can never clean it up enough.'' The Jews, too, are understandably frustrated: ``(A)fter Auschwitz, (that) we should have to fight for this . . . it's stupid.'' This year's text (the passion play runs until early October) removes all references to Pharisees and the word Christ, and also deletes the Jews' explosive line from the Gospels: ``His blood be upon us, and upon our children.'' But bedrock differences remain. The play's text and 70-plus tableaux vivants still imply that the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Jewish teaching. Shapiro admits that these obstacles may be insuperable, because they involve fundamental issues of Christian faith. Shapiro, whose previous book was ``Shakespeare and the Jews,'' is a New York Times book critic and professor at Columbia University who grew up in a Jewish household that didn't ``buy German, speak German, or visit Germany.'' One is then pleasantly surprised by his even- handed portrayal of the difficulties of both sides and their real concerns about balancing justice, faith and tradition. Shapiro dives into deeper questions: How much can you change a matter of faith and still be true to its essence? How much can religious faith accommodate rewriting from others? Do the Buddhists, for example, get to edit the Torah to conform to their own understanding? Do Hindus get to blackball offensive bits from the Koran? He points out that no contemporary record exists of the 1633 vow to perform the play every 10 years for divine relief from the plague, and the accuracy of subsequent chronicles testifying to that have been challenged. This leads to bigger questions of how we remake history: Whether the vow ever happened, it is now the reason for Oberammergau's existence. Cynthia Haven attended this year's Oberammergau passion play and wrote about it for Civilization. |
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