J.S. Bach: The Misunderstood Musician

The year 2012 is unlikely to go down well in the annals of Jewish-German relations.

In June, a German court ruled that religious circumcision of minors is a criminal act. Two months earlier, Germany's largest-selling daily broadsheet had published a poem by Nobel prize-winning author - and former SS recruit - Günter Grass, accusing Israel of endangering world peace.

A month before that, parishioners of Berlin's Cathedral threatened to leave their church should it allow an Easter performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St John Passion. The libretto had been altered by three Jews to make it less "Judeophobic". They had replaced passages depicting Jews calling for Jesus's crucifixion with extracts from Jewish liturgy and Muslim poetry. In the event, the altered version went ahead.