A Rabbis Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play

This edition is comes with active table of contents, index and very well formatted.

Four centuries ago a village high in the Bavarian Alps, Oberammergau, promised that, if God interceded against the bubonic plague, they would stage a Passion play every ten years. A Passion play is a medieval dramatic form which depicts the life and (principally) death of Jesus. All of the actors are residents, and the entire community participates in one way or another. The pageant continues in the 21st century.

This book is an American Reform Rabbi's encounter with this quaint, and at the time insidiously anti-Semitic, production. He vividly describes his own feelings at each stage of the play. Krauskopf uses the 1900 Oberammergau Passion as a springboard to examine a whole set of issues which will make both Jews and Christians uncomfortable, but which need looking at, even today. He is a virtual attorney-for-the-defense, working every angle to clear the reputation of the Jews.

Krauskopf points out many inconsistencies in the narrative. He describes how bits of folklore accreted to the story, and how the four Gospel accounts don't match up. In particular he illustrates how the legal procedures don't remotely match what was customary at the time, let alone the question of why such a trial would even be conducted during the high holy days. He exhibits a long (but unfortunately unattributed) list of parallels between the teachings attributed to Jesus and the Talmud.

Author:

Joseph Krauskopf (born January 21, 1858, Ostrowo) was a prominent American Rabbi, author, and leader of Reform Judaism.