Vatican silent on Jewish villains in U.S. Catholic church pageants – The Forward

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NewsJewish villains out to destroy Jesus are a staple of Ukrainian Catholic church pageants in the U.S. The Vatican has remained silent.<br>Giant noses, peyos and booze are props in the Christmas-season plays called verteps, hosted and attended by church officials

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Participants in a vertep in Mshanets, Ukraine, in January 2026, including two Jewish characters. Photo by Mykola Tys/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld and Lev GolinkinJuly 21, 2026

For this special investigation, the Forward reviewed more than 200 videos and hundreds of photos of verteps from 17 countries and 11 states, involving over 100 churches, and asked priests, leadership and the Vatican to respond to the use of Jewish characters in the plays portrayed as enemies of Jesus. As a result of our reporting, church leadership is committing to "work with our clergy and parishes to make sure that such expressions will not be repeated."

At a pizza restaurant in Baltimore last year, a church youth group performed a Ukrainian Christmas pageant that promised patrons “carols, jokes and well wishes for a great year ahead.”

What the audience received was a character called Moshko, a Jewish merchant. Moshko was dressed in black with long sideburns — a villain disrupting the Nativity story.

“Wait, don’t be in a hurry, maybe you’ll get something from Moshko,” the character urges townspeople who are trying to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

After the admirers of infant Jesus reject his overtures, Moshko rushes off to betray the infant Jesus to King Herod.

It was a traditional scene in a vertep, the popular Ukrainian pageant performed during the Christmas season, and the actors came from St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church in suburban Philadelphia.

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Verteps draw on Ukraine’s rich culture, weaving together caroling, dancing, brightly embroidered shirts called vyshyvanky, and elaborate floral crowns into a show that runs for about 10 to 25 minutes. The storylines vary. Many pageants do not include the blatant antisemitic stereotype of the devious Jew who sets out to sabotage Christ. But plenty do.

Ukrainian Catholic religious leaders in the U.S. — appointed to their posts by the pope — have been photographed at verteps featuring the bad-guy Jewish character. Such pageants are also promoted in many instances by churches that they oversee.

They include the church’s highest-ranking leader in the U.S., Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak, who heads the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the United States. Gudziak addressed and then joined the audience for a performance by the St. Michael group days after it performed in Baltimore, a moment documented in photos the church posted to Facebook.

Gudziak was deeply familiar with the problematic elements of verteps.

Fifteen years ago, when he was running the largest Catholic university in Ukraine, Gudziak and two colleagues penned an emotional call to remove the Jewish character, often referred to using the antisemitic slur “zhyd,” from performances. He described a sense of foreboding each holiday season.

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“At the moment of the highest spiritual culmination of holy Christmas, the vertep ‘Zhyd’ will once again burst into our home — and the seed of evil that the vertep performance was meant to uproot will once again make a nest in our soul,” Gudziak and his colleagues wrote.

In 2019, Pope Francis appointed him to the position of Metropolitan Archbishop of Philadelphia, charged with overseeing U.S. districts for the Ukrainian Catholic church. Gudziak continued to call for friendship between Jews and Catholics. He is on a committee of Interfaith Philadelphia and released a statement following the Capital Jewish Museum shooting last year that condemned antisemitism: “As Catholics, we are called not only to reject such hatred, but to actively foster mutual understanding, respect, and solidarity with the Jewish people.”

But despite these expressions of solidarity, churches within Gudziak’s own archeparchy (the equivalent of an archdiocese) have promoted, organized or hosted pageants featuring negative depictions of Jews. So have other Ukrainian Catholic churches and institutions in the U.S.

Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, March 15, 2022 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images<br>The Forward compiled and reviewed video of 10 pageants in the U.S. since 2020 that feature a Jewish character named “zhyd,” “Moshko” or “Chaim,” and sometimes his wife, usually named Sarah. All were posted to...