Across North America, “Messiah Sing-Ins”—performances of Handel's oratorio with the audience joining in the choruses—are a musical and social highlight of the winter holiday season. Christians, Jews, and others come together to delight in one of the consummate masterpieces of Western music. Little do they know that Handel and his librettist Charles Jennens's work, compiled and adapted from various passages in the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, appears to have been designed, in part, to rejoice over God's purported punishment of Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as the Me ... More

Across North America, “Messiah Sing-Ins”—performances of Handel's oratorio with the audience joining in the choruses—are a musical and social highlight of the winter holiday season. Christians, Jews, and others come together to delight in one of the consummate masterpieces of Western music. Little do they know that Handel and his librettist Charles Jennens's work, compiled and adapted from various passages in the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, appears to have been designed, in part, to rejoice over God's purported punishment of Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah. In a final insult, the innocently blissful audience traditionally stands to cheer “Hallelujah!” in a chorus that expresses a powerful Christian triumphalism at the “dashing to pieces” of God's enemies, among them “the people of Israel.” Using previously unidentified historical source materials, this book investigates what went into the creation of Messiah, showing how even the most widely cherished artworks can mask hateful sentiments of anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism.