When Christians spoke of Jesus as JEwish they meant that they acknowledged his JEwish origins and the historical world out of which he emergerd. But when Jews stressed the Jewishness of JEsus they often meant that the whole story was simply an internecine squablle between competing Jewish factions--an intra-Jewish controversy that Christians had badly misread. In so doing , they were implicitly calling into question the foundations on which Christianiy rested. (24)

The church, for its oart,was not blind to the enormous value of the art form, for communicating the story of Jesus and for strenghtings the faith; but neither was it comfortable with the fact the Passion plays occupied some liminal space between the litrugical and the comerical--nor with the liklihood that commerical imperatives could easily override theological ones. And some in the church were deeply diturbedby the idea of an unordained man playing God(34)

One of the unspoken rules governing the search for the historical Jesus is that the search ends abruptly with the Crucifxion. Going any further than this is to introduce the Jewus of faith, a subject beyond the domain of historians. But the whole point of the Passion play, after all, to celebrate the Reseruction and the Ascention. The combination of pressure (to revise the Jesus of history) and silence (on the Jesus of faith)threatens to create a fissure bneween the two parts of the play. How far should the Jesus a history carry into the Jesus of faith on stage... (93)

...When the American Miltary Government surveyed attitudes towards Jews in 1946, 59 per cent Bavarians fell into the categories of racists, anti semites or intnese anti semites. An unpublishjed GErman public opinon poll taken a decade later showed that 39 per cent pf tje [p[ulation admitted to being defintiley anti semetic and another 29 per cent to be condionally anti semitic. Only 7 poer cent described themselves as philo semetic. Other findings were no less distrubing: the percentage of all germans who didnt want JEws livcing in the ir country was 37 per c ent in 1952 ( and had ony dropped to 19 per cent in 1965) As late as 191 , polls showed that one in secen GErmans did not want to live under the same roof or work alongside Jews...(148)

Of the 1934 passion play...leading performers, Jesus, played by Alois Lang, along with eight of his twelve apostles, were members of the Nazi party. So was the Virgin Mary, Anni Rutz. Ironically only Judas...is known to have been a strong Anti-Nazi. In fact, the high porpotion of Nazis in the main roles should not be surprising, since the selection was done under the supervision of HErmann Esser, a Hitler apointee. (149)

from the f ascianting and important history of James Shapiro's Obermmegau, the passion play which started in 1635, and has been happening every ten years since then...its a microcosm of the politics of typology, hermenutics, anti semitism, historical-social criticism, pyschogeography, etc etc. Well worth picking up. (this is the 19th)