by Rabbi Noam Marans

At a time when active antisemitism is surging worldwide to its highest levels since the Shoah, it behooves us to do whatever we can in the context of Christian-Jewish relations to assure that our own house is in order and to sustain the gains of more than a half century in neutering anti-Jewish tropes in Christian religious contexts. As we approach Holy Week, Good Friday liturgies, and high season for Passion dramatizations, our vigilance should be heightened. A recent study of Catholics in America, for example, demonstrates that we still have work to do, perhaps even more so with younger adherents. And thankfully, some are not resting on any perceived laurels, including the Episcopal Church, which is experimenting with a new and more sensitive Good Friday liturgy.

Since 2009, I have been fortunate in my American Jewish Committee (AJC) role to lead a process of constructive engagement of the Oberammergau Passion Play, once notorious for its Bavarian post-Shoah anti-Jewish intransigence. Today, that gold standard of Passion plays has become a model of transformation and its director, Christian Stückl, has received AJC’s prestigious Isaiah Award for Exemplary Interreligious Leadership. That is saying a lot, given my legendary AJC predecessors’ characterizations of Oberammergau as “the international capital …of religious antisemitism” (1980) and “unmistakably antisemitic” (1984).

How did it happen? In order of importance: Stückl’s singular leadership, Jewish organizational willingness to engage, and diligence.

Stückl’s singular leadership: The play is performed decennially to a half million “pilgrims” over a 100-performance season and equally, looked to by other Passion play organizers as a quintessential paradigm for all. Stückl, who directed the 1990, 2000, 2010, and pandemic-delayed 2022 plays, realized early on that Oberammergau could become a living laboratory for transformation of both Christian-Jewish and German-Jewish relations. He took on the traditionalists who resisted change at every turn. He convinced enough townspeople that there was a new direction to be taken that was right, meaningful, and good for business. In 2022 he famously said, “Let there be no doubt: in Oberammergau, in the play, antisemitism has no place, and it has no place in the lives of the performers either.”

Jewish organizational willingness to engage: Stückl could not do it alone. He needed Jewish partners. We established the AJC Oberammergau Academic Advisory Group, which included both Jewish and Christian scholars, including my key partner in this endeavor, the Rev. Dr. Peter Pettit, a Lutheran leader in Christian-Jewish relations. We reviewed scripts, visited Oberammergau repeatedly to understand the relevance of scenery, costumes, and staging to transformation of the play, and made innumerable recommendations for changes, many of which were ultimately incorporated by Stückl.

Diligence: Peter Pettit and I spent a few days in Oberammergau in May 2022 and sat through the two full dress rehearsals just before the previews. We still had some concerns. We brought them to our friend, Christian Stückl. Even at the eleventh hour, Christian insisted on making the tweaks and directed the village actors to incorporate the last-minute changes.

May this story inspire others, Christians and Jews, to persist in the reconciliation and transformation process and take on the sacred cows that require our vigilance. There is still much to be done and world events tell us that the time is now. As leaders of Christian-Jewish dialogue, we have an important role to play.

Rabbi Noam Marans is the American Jewish Committee’s director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations and past chair of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), which is recognized by the Vatican and other faith bodies as their official dialogue partner with world Jewry.