When I first saw the Rock Musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar”, I took my boys to see it at the Gym at the then Monmouth College.  It is now a university but then even the Gym was not large enough for the eager crowd that came to see the hit show that was traveling around the country with many companies trying to satisfy the viewers.

Carol and I saw it today at the Broward Arts Theater and there were many empty seats.  Even so, there was a loudly enthusiastic reception to the story of how Jesus was betrayed by two of his disciples, turned over to the Romans by perfidious Jews and suffered a terrible death by crucifixion after being charged as a spurious “King of the Jews”. I do not know what the cheering was about for Jesus, accepted by “Christians” ever afterward was “Christ” or “Messiah” the ancient Jews were waiting for.

For someone who is not a Christian this is very confusing as was this production of “Superstar”.  I would characterize it as a British conceived Americanized Passion Play with all the anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic overtones that every Passion Play either in Germany or out in the American Mid-West perpetuates.  As a musical, it is better described as “all shrieking”, “all screaming” and “all caterwauling”. Carol, whose hearing is 150% better than I could not make out the words of the book although the endless repetition of phrases could not be evaded.

I must say the following:  The first time I saw “Superstar” it was exciting theater. Then I found it interesting that the actors portraying evil people all had bass voices.  The good ones were tenors and higher.  In the production we witnessed today the costuming had the circle around Jesus dressed in jeans and shirts like ordinary people and were mainly shorthaired and dark while the “Star” wore white and was blond with very long tresses.  The Jews were all dressed alike in Black. They wore coats and hats and the few women had long dresses – all in modern attire tending to look like chasidim. The Romans wore cloaks and Darth Vader type headgear. The priests were mainly recognized because they gathered menacingly around the hapless Jewish followers of this uncharacteristic Jewish Rabbi. (Significantly and curiously, a scientific anthropological reconstruction of a typical resident in the Jewish nation now called Israel was short, curly headed and Semitic looking. This reconstruction of JESUS appeared in lasts month’s Popular Mechanics – if you can believe it.) The priests seemed to all have shaven heads, but at the curtain call when they bowed, several had ultra short hair.

Now, the best scene involved King Herod.  It was a striking visual effect and Herod came off as a sleazy Jewish merchant showing off his wealth and smoking a big cigar. A chorus line of scantily dressed dancers recapitulating scenes from “Cabaret” surrounded him.

My conclusion about this “musical” is that it was not very musical.  It was very “Rock” and the libretto may have made sense at one time but we could hardly understand a word they were screaming, shrieking and/or caterwauling.

I was offended by, to me, the anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic baldness of the presentation.  It fits right in with the Jew baiting and Israel bashing on American College Campuses and in nations all around the world.

I have some questions I must ask Christians who know that I do not hate Arabs or Palestinians or feel blame for killing “Christ”. I am also not responsible for the libel about the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. Question one is about the belief that Jesus was a supernatural being. The second is, was his mother a virgin and the third why his father (the Jewish Yahweh) used him as a sacrifice for the sins of the human race? I also must ask a fourth question. Do people believe that Christians must eat of the body and blood of Jesus as a ritual enactment of the last supper of Passover - a celebration of the freeing of Egyptian slaves – the Hebrews? Do Christians believe as I have laid it out? This is a perverse extension of the libel that Jews use the blood of Christian children in order to make Matzo, the unleavened bread eaten during Passover.

My reservations include only the person of Jesus and the stories circulating about his personhood and his divinity.  You know, I could accept the religion of what more properly should be called “Jesianity” if the person of Jesus was absent. It is a perfectly good religion without all the material on Jesus.  I do not believe that Jesus was anything other than an actual person reported by none other than Josephus, a Jewish apostate who lived as a Roman just after Jesus appeared on the scene. It is hard to believe Christians revere the instrument of his death.

I find the story as a religious account, as history or as representations in “passion plays” or a “musical” difficult to accept. I cannot see how anyone can accept the preposterous premise that a special human being was born of a Jewish virgin wife of a Jewish man after “GOD” impregnated her.  I am sorry, but Jesus as the STAR of this musical passion play is asking too much.