Going Against the Grain: and Passion Plays on the American Mainstream Stage, 1879–1929

Edna Nahshon

From a Jewish standpoint, Passion plays are generally relegated to the same camp as accusations of host desecration, ritual murders, and well poisoning. Grounded in medieval religious intolerance, Passion plays, which were historically performed as part of Lent in Catholic lands, presented their audience with embodied and often sensational reenact- ments of Jesus’ last days, usually beginning with his entry to Jerusalem and culminating with his Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Adoration. For both theological and dramatic reasons, these plays presented a mythically-proportioned conflict between Christianity’s gospel of mercy and Judaism’s vindictive materialism. Jews were mostly depicted as a homogeneous, vicious, and sub-human lot, and the as blood- thirsty manipulators, the perpetrators of the Son of God’s horrendous sufferings and death. Only in the second half of the 20th century, after the monstrosity of the Holocaust had seeped into Catholic conscious- ness, did the fiercely anti-Jewish tenor of Passion plays begin tobe modified. The turning point was the Catholic Church’s 1965 publica- tion of Nostra Aetate, a ground-breaking statement that removed from Jews the blanket indictment for Jesus’ death.1 Traditional Passion plays, which stigmatized all Jews as villainous outcasts destined to bear their guilt of deicide to the end of time, have led to considerable Jewish anxiety, not only in places where anti- Semitism was an integral part of the socio-cultural landscape, but also in America where Jews feared that the rhetoric of such theatrical pre- sentations may lead to adverse consequences. Jewish alarm reflected a collective memory of bloody assaults on Jews in the aftermath of

1 the document known as Nostra Aetate states that “what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God . . .” Full text is available at: http:// www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_ decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html. 60 edna nahshon performances of Passion plays. Fear was also triggered by the rise of modern anti-Semitism and the persistence of blood libels.2 Ritual murder accusations made their way into the 20th century—nota- bly in czarist where it was exemplified in 1912 in the sensa- tional Mendel Beilis Affair—and even infiltrated the , where the best known ritual murder accusation took place in 1928 in Massena, NY.3 The link between Passion plays and blood libels—and an implied suggestion that in the Christian world Jews were victimized like the martyred Jesus—was brought up in 1899 by Joseph Krauskopf of , who delivered a powerful sermon, “The Passion Play at Polna,” in which he discussed the false accusation made against Leopold Hilsner, a young Czech Jew, for murdering two Christian women for Passover ritual purposes. The trial and the fiercely anti- Semitic outbursts surrounding it, said the Rabbi, were “simply a play—a passion play, in which the Hebrew plays a leading part, a tragic part, as he has in every passion play that has ever been brought upon the world’s stage.”4 Some of America’s best known rabbis spoke about the inherent dan- ger presented by Passion plays. In 1880, when one such production was scheduled to open in New York—the plan was later aborted due to fierce opposition—Rabbi Frederick de Sola Mendes (1850–1927) spoke against the presentation of Passion plays and other sacred mate- rial on the secular, entertainment-oriented stage.5 In 1896, Rabbi Leo M. Frankin (1870–1948) of Omaha, Nebraska, came out strongly against a proposed production of a Passion play for fear it might stir up anti-Jewish feelings.6 In 1900, Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf (1858–1923) embarked on a series of lectures on the Oberammergau Passion Play,

2 rapahael Patai commented that even in the 19th century, well after the Euro- pean Enlightenment had taken hold, more than 48 cases of ritual murder accusations were reported. See: Raphael and Jennifer Patai, The Myth of the Jewish Race (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989) 177. 3 For a survey of ritual murder accusations in the United States see Abraham C. Duker, “Twentieth-Century Blood Libels in the United States,” A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore, ed. Alan Dandes (Madison,Wis: University of Wisconsin Press) 233–260. For a detailed account of the Massena affair see Saul S. Friedman, The Incident at Massena (New York: Stein and Day, 1978). 4 “The Passion Play,” Philadelphia Inquirer 141: 150, 17 November 1899: 5. 5 “Raised in Condemnation of the Proposed Passion play in New York,” Daily Gazette, 13 Nov. 1880: 10. 6 “Discuss the Passion play,” Omaha World Herald, 16 Feb. 1896, XXXI:139: 5.