A children’s production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat scheduled for New Zealand’s Artsplash Festival in September was called out by lyricist Tim Rice for replacing the phrase “Children of Israel” with “Children of Kindness” without his permission.

Song sheets were handed out to participants with the changed lyric and one woman took to Twitter to ask why the change was made and if the company had permission to alter the song “Close Every Door:”

After being notified, Rice responded on Twitter:

The Wellington City Council, which partially funds the art event, promised Rice that it will make the production company put the original lyric back in and added it had nothing to do with the initial change. But according to Artsplash coordinator Mary Prichard, her team made the change  to “keep life simple” for the schoolchildren, according to Christian Today.

“We always look to have music that covers and looks after kids from all countries, from all backgrounds,” Prichard said. “It was decided that small change of one word would be made. It's obviously gone down like a lead balloon.”

Prichard added that she has been involved with Artsplash for 30 years and has “always included children of all sorts of backgrounds including Jewish.” She issued an apology on Facebook:

You have my complete assurance that this was an unintentional and innocent error on the part of one of my team, and I apologise for it. The person concerned, and myself for that matter, are religious people and would never consider intentionally doing anything racist or anti any religion.

However, New Zealand Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman said this was a clear case of “people trying to be politically correct where it's unnecessary to be so.”

Dr. Irene Lancaster, a Jewish academic, said, “The decision to drop the word ‘Israel’ from the phrase ‘children of Israel,’ a generic term which all Christians know refers to the Jewish people and not to the State of Israel itself, is simply part of the anti-Semitic agenda currently in play in the West and particularly where the indigenous Jewish community is weak and falling in numbers.”

A day after Rice thanked the Wellington City Council for its “generous and speedy correction” to the lyric, he then discovered more things missing from his musical:

The WCC has assured him that the production in September will include all songs: