The Early Enlightenment, Jews, and Bach

Abstract

The uncomfortable subject of possible anti-Semitism1 in the music of J. S. Bach is one that only since the 1980s has been considered seriously, hence under the dark shadow of the Holocaust and with full awareness of the centuries of Judenverfolgung that led up to it. The original basis for anti-Jewish prejudice and the persecutory measures taken against the Jews in Europe was the allegation that the Jews killed Christ, specifically as represented in the Passion narratives of the New Testament with the participation of the Jewish authorities and especially the crowd (turba) of Jews calling for Christ's death. The modern listener, then, can easily be troubled by the powerful, repeated cries of “Crucify Him!” found in the Matthew and especially John Passions as set by Bach.2 Bach's music is so convincing that it is not difficult to believe that this great admirer of Martin Luther, whose virulent 1543 tract Von den Juden und ihren Lügen (On the Jews and Their Lies) was in the composer's library (although not necessarily already in 1724, the year the St. John Passion was composed), shared the reformer's antipathy toward the Jews.3