(Photo the Last Supper: Matthias Rutkowski – Creative Commons)

During the Middle Ages, Jews were presented in Christian European art as monsters, ugly and evil. They were marked by pointed hats, bent backs, crooked noses, and shady facial expressions. These images are particularly stressed in Passion Story art where Jews hold a major role in the week of suffering leading to the crucifixion of the Messiah Yeshua, as described in the New Testament.

Except in one German Cathedral where the Passion Story turns the Jewish world upside down to teach a lesson on civic responsibility and the separation of, or harmony between, Church and State.

Amid the judicial revolution that changed Europe, the Passion sculptures along the frieze of the Naumberg Cathedral in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany call for an uprising against the waning authority of the Church in politics and civic life, which was being replaced with secular law. This bold and dangerous step by the church exemplifies the same struggle...