HOLY WEEK is nearly here — a time when churches around the country will gather in services big and small to mark the holy time of Jesus’s last days. The retelling of the story of Jesus in local settings is intrinsic to Christian faith; a way that we make the events real in our own lives and communities. In the Easter garden tomb display in my local church, the stone will be rolled away again — praise God.

Holy Week this year is different. The week arrives in a context of increased religious prejudice on our streets and real tensions between faiths. Incidents of both antisemitism and Islamophobia are at record levels, according to agencies that record that data. Debates about religious extremism are headline news.

This atmosphere of tension should concern Christians. Holy Week is the holiest time of year for Christians, but for those of other faiths — Jews, in particular — Holy Week has been a time of abuse and even, awful to say, physical attacks.

Well into the 20th century, it was still common to blame Jews and Judaism for the death of Jesus of Nazareth — himself, of course, a Jew. Not until the 1960s did Christians organise themselves to overturn centuries of anti-Jewish teaching. At the Second Vatican Council, Roman Catholic bishops formally agreed to end the teaching of “deicide”, the idea that the Jewish people collectively were responsible for the murder of Christ. Other Churches followed suit. Today, in my view, there is genuine revulsion among Christians to the lie that the Jewish people en masse were “Christ killers”.

We should take heart in this sea change. A major staging of a Passion play in Trafalgar Square takes proactive steps to ensure that it projects a properly respectful image of Jewish people. Internationally, the famous Oberammergau Passion play in Germany, once praised by Hitler, has overhauled its entire production in recent decades. Its director, Christian Stückl, formed a consultation group of rabbis and scholars, and looked intensively at all aspects of the play, including, even, the cast. In 2022, he said, in widely reported comments: “Let there be no doubt: in Oberammergau, in the play, antisemitism has no place, and it has no place in the lives of the performers, either.”

BUT there is still work for all of us to do in our churches locally. Churches staging a Holy Week re-enactment should take immediate steps to remove identifiably Jewish dress such as a kippah, worn on the head, if one is in the costume box. So-called “Christian Seders” are similarly inadvisable, as they co-opt Jewish tradition in offensive ways (Comment, 9 April 2021).

Language is crucial, too: phrases such as “religious authorities” may seem better than direct references to Jewish leaders, but, in practice, they still single out Jews rather than Romans. Churches with specific practical questions should take advantage of local expertise from their deaneries or dioceses, the presence-and-engagement team, or a local branch of the Council of Christians and Jews.

The deeper and harder work relates to our attitudes towards Judaism. In my experience, ordinary Christians recoil at antisemitism as they would at any racism, but negative stereotypes of Pharisees, temple priests, scribes, and the Old Testament in general still persist in the pews.

One scholar speaks of the “oppositional imagination” in the Church: the idea that Judaism, in Jesus’s time or our own, is an implacable enemy of the gospel. In fact, Judaism nurtured Jesus and his family, Paul, and all the disciples and apostles. The Old Testament is the indispensable life-giving and awe-inspiring context for Jesus’s teaching.

In a Passion play, and in our preaching and praying during Holy Week, we must share a gospel that is purified from anti-Jewish bias. We have a duty to ensure that our Christian sisters and brothers are joining with us in this effort.

Nathan Eddy is Co-Director of the Council of Christians and Jews.