Friday, June 13, 1980 5
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7.... 'WI , Daily—Hospital ...,
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
U.S. Cancels Oberammergau Passion Play Tours
NEW YORK (JTA) —
The Defense Department
has ordered the U.S. armed
forces to "cease im-
mediately" all promotion of
the Oberammergau Passion
Play in West Germany be-
cause of its "sectarian na-
ture" and "anti-Semitic
tone," the Anti-Defamation
League of Bnai Brith has
revealed.
The ban, specifically di-
rected to the Armed Forces
Recreation Center, West
Germany, which had been
arranging tours to the con-
troversial pageant, declared
promotion "inappro-
; p e" and ordered that "no
efforts be made in the future
to promote similar commer-
cial sectarian events."
The Defense Department
memorandum came in re-
sponse to an ADL inquiry
and information on the
play.
Disclosure of the ban
was made in a report on
the 1980 version of the
Passion Play by Nat
Kameny, chairman of
ADL's program commit-
tee, at the closing session
of the 67th annual meet-
ing of the agency's Na-
tional Commission.
Kameny said that while a
"genuine effort" has been
made to eliminate objec-
tionable elements in the
drama, "these . changes do
not go nearly far enough."
Noting that the villagers
"emphatically deny" anti-
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Semitic intent, he said that
they nevertheless "do not
comprehend the anti-
Jewishness emanating from
the traditional passion
story accusation that the
Jews collectively are eter-
nally guilty of deicide."
He declared that the cur-
rent version, which incorpo-
rates revisions suggested by
ADL after analysis of the
play's script, does reflect
greater historical accuracy
and today's enlightened
Catholic theological atti-
tudes.
"But," Kameny went on
to say, "although di-
minished when com-
pared to its predecessors,
serious problems and
major concerns remain."
By RABBI MARC H.
TANENBAUM
(A Seven Arts Feature)
I came, I saw, and I was
appalled. I went to the
Bavarian village of
Oberammergau with a
delegation of American
Jewish Committee leaders
to view an opening per-
formance of the famed Pas-
sion Play.
Mayor Ernst Zwink of
Oberammergau has made a
number of widely-
publicized statements to the
effect that the play has been
revised and purged of its
anti-Semitic content.
Would that were so!
Three statements were
added to the preface and
prologue of the drama deny-
ing the collective guilt of the
Jews for the death of Jesus.
But virtually everything
that follows in the 51/2 hour
drama makes powerfully
the contrary statement:
The Jewish High
Priests and "the people of
Jerusalem" are por-
trayed as a virtual lynch
,
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SPITZER'S
presentations anywhere in production because four
earlier AJCommittee mis-
the world.
Some 2,000,000 people sions had met with
had been "exposed to its Oberammergau Mayor
emotion-laden, anti-Jewish Ernst Zwink and with town
message since World War officials who had assured
II," Rabbi Tanenbaum said. the AJCommittee that they
He said more than would make a "genuine ef-
500,000 persons from all fort to remove every vestige
over the world are ex- of anti-Semitism in the
pected to see the 1980 1980 production."
Passion Play, which
opened May 25 and will
run through September.
Performed every ten.
FOR FATHERS
years, the play follows
Jesus into Jerusalem,
through his arrest, trial,
crucifixion and resurrec-
tion.
Tanenbaum stressed that
the delegation had been
shocked by the current
Sympathy
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From OHRENSTEIN'S
& TRAVELERS
Tanenbaum Appalled by '80 Version
of the Oberammergau Passion Play
SPITZER'S
FATHER'S DAY SPECIALS
BOOK: People of the Book
1
Hopefully, he added,
these will be addressed in
time to revise the script
and staging for special
300th anniversary pre-
sentations already
scheduled for 1984.
Oberammergau has be-
come "the international
capital" of religious anti-
Semitism, an AJCommittee
delegation charged after
having seen the opening
performance of the 1980
Oberammergau Passion
Play.
Rabbi Marc H. Tanen-
baum, the American Jewish
Committee interreligious
affairs director, said the
Passion Play remained,
after widespread protests,
one of the most anti-Semitic
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contrary to historic fact,
is shown as a noble
weakling forced by the
bloodthirsty, relentless
Jews to crucify him.
Bad as the text is, the cos- .
turning and acting are even
.- worse. The priests and rab-
bis wear hats with horns,
recalling the medieval
image of the Jews as being
in a league with the devil —
the anti-Christ.
The only consolation, and
it is a scant one, is that
many friends in Oberam-
mergau, the reformers, are
distributing German and
English language studies
RABBI TANENBAUM
that the AJC prepared to
mob who lust for Jesus' thousands of Christians
death. Pontius Pilate, who will attend.
Weizmann U. Developments
Include Grants for Study
REHOVOT, Israel — An
unparalleled opportunity to
understand one of the stor-
miest periods in Jewish his-
tory, stretching from the
first years of political
Zionism at the turn of the
century to the early years of
the state of Israel in the
1950s, is provided by the
collected Letters of Dr.
Chaim Weizmann, the 23rd
and last volume of which
has just been published by
Yad Chaim Weizmann, the
Weizmann National Memo-
rial, in Rehovot, Israel.
Israel President' Yitzhak
Navon was presented with
the first full set of these
books in a ceremony at his
official residence in
Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, some of the
still mysterious aspects of
immune system operation
— details which may better
explain certain inherited
defects in immune system
performance — will be
studied under a $100,000
grant awarded by the Vol-
kswagenwerk Foundation
to the Weizmann Institute
of Science in Rehovot and to
Mainz University in the
German Federal Republic.
In a related development,
the mechanism by which a
newly isolated virus causes
fatal tumors in animals will
be studied.
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