Christians of the era received the message on Good Friday that the Jews in their midst were their enemies, having killed their savior only by converting to Christianity could they escape divine punishment. Good Friday was especially notorious, and often priests/pastors themselves would lead their congregations in stoning Jewish houses, burning ghettos, and far worse. This was not at all rare – these Holy Week massacres happened so often that surviving records are often cursory and formulaic.
What many today do not know is what used to happen when these Passions were sung during Holy Week in Europe in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and well beyond – they were sung in church, accompanied by fiery sermons also blaming the Jews for the murder of Jesus, and then the riled-up congregation would go out and murder a bunch of Jews. Note to figure: The contradiction at the crux, the most sublime & the ugliest: the congregation joins with the disciples in a gorgeous, heartfelt chorale taking collective responsibility for Christ’s death with “I am the one, I should pay for this ” a few pages later, the mob of Jews willfully curse themselves and their descendants with “His blood be upon us and on our children.” Johann Sebastian Bach, Matthäuspassion, BWV 244, images from Complete Score #569101, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, IMSLP It is the Gospels, not only Bach, who quote the murderous Jewish mob as cursing themselves: “his blood be upon us and on our children.” (See figure below.) It would never do to blame the Romans for Jesus’ death if they were trying to convert them instead, the authors of the Gospels made the Jews the central villains of their story. Those were written in Greek, not Hebrew, for a reason: to try to persuade the Romans and other pagans, not fellow Jews, of the tenets of Christianity. The sound of a noisy obstinate lynch mob, sometimes with caricatured witchy voices, are added by the composers and their interpreters, but the text is from the Gospels. In the great classic Passions, there are always several anti-Semitic scenes, most obvious of which is the one where we, the chorus of Jews, sing of our blood lust and of how much we want Jesus killed. Matthew Passion, as I have done with countless Passions over the years, and as always I am steeling myself for the isolation and alienation I feel as a Jew singing this intrinsically and unquestionably anti-Semitic text of an equally unquestionable masterpiece. Tomorrow I begin rehearsals on Bach’s St.
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