Word: oberammergau
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Nine years out of ten, the peasants who live in the mountain-ringed Bavarian village of Oberammergau (pop. 4,800) devote themselves mainly to such tasks as herding cows, carving wooden figurines and drinking beer. Every tenth year, however, Oberammergau is transfigured into the site of the world-renowned Passion Play put on by a cast and crew of 1,400 villagers. So it has been ever since the 17th century, when the pageant was started after an epidemic of bubonic plague. During the last run in 1970, the 93 performances of the daylong Roman Catholic folk drama drew...
...YOUR STORY TWISTED! JESUS is THE LORD. The American Jewish Committee soberly considered whether Jesus Christ Superstar is good or bad for the Jews and decided that it's bad. It issued a seven-page study asserting that the show's creators rival even the Passion Play of Oberammergau in blackening Jewish character and posing a threat to "Christian-Jewish relations...
...Orleans, Trillin probes anti-Semitism at the Mardi Gras, an event which, he also notes, is the homosexual's Harvard-Yale game. In Arkansas, he looks into aging Gerald L.K.. Smith's religious real-estate schemes that include an Oberammergau in the Ozarks. In Atlanta, examining Governor Lester Maddox's "New Morality." Trillin records a Maddox Christmas message in which the former restaurateur noted, "There will be more automobiles, more shoes, more record-players, more television sets, more ties, more shirts, more dresses, more cosmetics, more watches and diamonds sold in the name of Christ this...
Swirling Controversy. Last week Oberammergau's 1970 production−the 36th in the festival's 336-year history opened amid the usual festivity, but also amid a swirling religious controversy. Since the mid-1960s, a growing body of critics have charged that the town's reenactment of Christ's passion and death defames the role and character of Jews. This spring the American Jewish Committee termed the play "fundamentally hostile to Jews and Judaism" and released a 24-page critique to support the charge. In a separate statement, seven U.S. Christian scholars−including Catholic Raymond...
Cackling Caiaphas. When Schaller submitted his script to Oberammergau's 26-man Passion Play committee, it was rejected as too bland and muted. By then there was no time for another revision, so the committee merely used bits of Schaller's version for a cosmetic touch-up on their old one. The result last week was an uneasy jumble. Some of the sweeping references to the guilt of all Jews were deleted. Others were toned down, but almost imperceptibly: the crucifixion is demanded by "the whole of Jerusalem" instead of "the whole nation." God condemns "these sinners" rather...