KEHILAT ARIEL MESSIANIC SYNAGOGUE NEWSLETTER Volume 22, Number 6, July/August 2006 Tamuz/Av 5766 Email- ka@KehilatAriel.org Mail- P.O. Box 178755, San Diego, CA 92177 Phone- (858) 490-4355 Barney Kasdan Messianic Rabbi

Judas, the Archetypal Jew

by Ari’el Tauber

“Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money.” (Luke, 22:3-5, KJV)

Judas, the very name has come to mean, “one who betrays under the guise of friendship.”

 His real name, Yehuda, was common enough at the time and is shared by many other, nobler figures including Judah, tribal patriarch; Judas Maccabeus, the hero of Hanukah; and Jude, the brother of James and servant of the Lord.

In Europe, the Jew was conspicuously different from his Christian neighbors. He looked different, dressed differently and prayed differently. He lived in a ghetto, preferring the safety of isolation to the larger world. He prayed in a language the Christian could not comprehend and therefore regarded with suspicion. Moreover, he refused to bow to the graven images the Christian revered. If he would not acknowledge the Christian’s god, his prayers must be therefore directed to the devil.

When Christendom sought an archetype for the Jewish people they chose not Moshe Rabeinu, our greatest teacher, nor David, our greatest king (Thanks to Da Vinci we all know him to be an uncircumcised nudist.), nor a host of other worthy candidates. No, to the Christian world, the archetypal Jew was their religion’s greatest villain, Judas Iscariot, who betrayed the Lord to death in exchange for thirty pieces of silver.

Cycle Plays

This image of the money-hungry betrayer and its relation to our people goes back to the year 900 CE to the town of Öberammergau in Germany. Theatre had been banned by the Church for the past 500 years. But when they sought a way to teach a largely illiterate populace the stories of the Bible, they revived this powerful tool. All the various guilds got involved. Tailors made costumes. Carpenters built Noah’s ark. Mason’s made Cain’s altar and even rigged it to explode. The Cycle Play was a great piece of community theatre and everyone in the community was somehow involved.

The character of Judas Iscariot was a caricature of himself, an easily identifiable, melodramatic villain --not unlike Haman in our own Purimspiels. He was played in a black coat, a red, curly wig and beard, and a hawkish, fake nose. How the crowds of eager peasants must have jeered his entrances and cheered at his hanging. It was a great spectacle and a tradition that spread throughout much of Europe. It is still observed in isolated towns to this day. It is a grand event that brings people together in the telling of their favorite story and celebrates their faith. The caricature of Judas would be fine if only it were confined to this one character in one story, but the fake nose and “Judas wig” would haunt our people for many years to come.

Tudor England

Fast forward to the 1500s. The Inquisition of Catholic Europe brought thousands of Sephardic Jews to England. Like any other new ethnic minority, the Jews were subject to suspicion, prejudice and caricature in popular culture, and nothing was more popular than the stage.

Christopher Marlowe penned The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta and William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. The central characters of both plays were played with false noses and Judas wigs. Like Al Jolson’s blackface, which would shock and offend today’s audience, it was accepted convention at the time.

Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Barabas, was a treacherous, conniving usurer who thought of nothing save his own advantage. We might feel sorry for him in Act I when his house is confiscated by the state and turned into a nunnery. But we lose all sympathy when he murders all the nuns by donating a bag of poisoned rice. In one soliloquy, Barabas not only boasts of his own treachery, but calls it an ethnic trait.

“We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please:

And when we grin we bite: yet are our looks

As innocent and harmless as a lamb’s ...(II;iii)

Barabas betrays Malta to the invading Turks and when the Turks make him the governor, he agrees to betray them for a large sum of money. When he falls into his own trap of a vat of boiling oil he, like the villain he resembles, gets his just desserts.

Shakespeare also gives us a Jewish usurer who thirsts for vengeance. But Shylock is a more complex character. Comfortable within the walls of his ghetto, he draws clear lines for his dealings with Gentiles, lines which he will not cross.

        “I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.” (I;iii)

Yet for all of the things which distinguish him as a Jew -as different from his Christian neighbors- Shylock is best known for his passionate appeal to be treated as a fellow human being.

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.” (III;i)

For all his depth and humanity, he was still played in the false nose and Judas wig. Notable exceptions were performances by Charles Macklin and Bill Kean who played him sympathetically. But they are notable because they are exceptions. The image of the devilish Judas was the norm.

In this picture, German actor Albert Basserman has not only the Judas beard and nose, but the gleeful expression of a homicidal psychopath. Clearly, he is a danger not to be trusted.