Posted on 03/04/2004 6:59:48 PM PST by gobucks
"Well," people ask me, "did you finally see the movie?"
The answer is yes -- and no. I went to a showing of "The Passion of the Christ," I watched for as long as I could bear it, and then, when the scenes of sadistic torture began to make me feel physically ill, I closed my eyes. True, I had been duly warned by reviewers that this is no less than "The Goriest Story Ever Told," a Marquis de Sade version of the Gospels; in the words of Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, "a repulsive, masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film." And still I was not prepared for what appeared on the screen.
As the movie mercifully came to an end and the lights went on in the theater, the woman seated next to me, a total stranger, turned and asked how I had liked it. I was in no mood for a theological discussion so I simply said I was appalled by the violence. "You must be Jewish," she said.
For a moment I felt complimented. Surely what she meant was that I had reacted by way of my religion's sensitivity and abhorrence of bloodshed. But her anger and the words that followed made me understand the real problem with a film that has already achieved not only unparalleled press but also a veritable cult following. "Jews are always going to find fault," she said, "with a story that tells the truth about our Lord!"
And then I understood. How is it possible for so many to witness graphic images that ensure nightmares -- and happily bring their children along with them? How can an American society that becomes frantic at the momentary sight of a breast at the Super Bowl be so indifferent to the 90-minute display of unimaginable cruelty?
The answer? Americans have profound respect for religion, and the genius of Mel Gibson is that he has marketed this film as a spiritual experience. It masquerades as a sacred work of art, a Hollywood production disguised as the holy wood of the cross. It asks to float above criticism because the theater has become a cathedral and you, the viewer, are privileged -- just like the specially invited guests of evangelicals who were for two months invited to pre-screenings for "the faithful" --- to be witness to the word of God.
Don't be grossed out by the blood and the gore -- or even watching a raven pluck out the eye of the thief on the cross next to Jesus, a scriptwriter's pure fantasy -- because Gibson has successfully made it seem that his Mel O'Drama is nothing less than the Bible and a family outing to this film is as spiritually significant as a Sunday morning church service.
Disagree with any part of "The Passion" and for many you aren't anti-Gibson but anti-God, a non-believer who doesn't deserve the courtesy of a hearing because you're obviously simply a heretic.
But to my mind the most important truth that has to be publicized is that the movie isn't the New Testament, Gibson isn't the voice of God, and the Jews of the film aren't the Jews of church doctrine.
Jewish critics of "The Passion" have to be careful, as some have correctly pointed out, not to edit Christian doctrine. We don't have a right to tell others what to believe. But when Gibson tells Diane Sawyer, "Critics who have a problem with me don't really have a problem with me and this film; they have a problem with the four Gospels" -- well, to put it bluntly, he's not telling the gospel truth. It is Christian scholars who take Gibson to task for manipulating the Gospels he relies upon to tell an incomplete and distorted story; for fabricating events that appear in none of the Gospels and for incorporating as New Testament-verified history the visions of two nuns of the 17th and 18th centuries.
A panel of church leaders, not Jews, (as reported in the New York Times, Feb. 25), said the movie "deviated in bizarre ways from the Gospel accounts...and is numbingly violent." The Rev. Philip Blackwell put it succinctly: "Mel Gibson says it's a literal interpretation. It's not. It's Mel Gibson's interpretation."
And when it comes to the way the movie treats Jews, it's crucial for us to remember that Gibson doesn't have the right or the moral authority to speak for the Church.
What makes the dispute so unnerving, though, is the surfacing hatred that threatens to overwhelm any dialogue.
By now we've got to pretty much agree to disagree on the question of whether "The Passion" is anti-Semitic. The argument rages beyond the assumed biases of viewers. There are Jews who are satisfied with the fact that the Romans are identified as the actual executioners. There are Christians who are disturbed by the portrayal of a Jewish mob demanding Jesus' crucifixion from a supposedly unwilling Pontius Pilate. What makes the dispute so unnerving, though, is the surfacing hatred that threatens to overwhelm any dialogue -- an unfortunate consequence of Gibson's claim to the depiction of truth by virtue of his having had "the help of the Holy Ghost" when he made this film so that whatever he did can't be questioned.
Sister Mary Boys, a professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, who was part of an ad hoc group that was asked to read an early screenplay, publicly warned that it could inflame anti-Semitism. The result? Sister Boys said that not only was Gibson furious but since the group made those criticisms, she and other members have been attacked by supporters of the movie as "anti-Christ, the arrogant gang of so-called scholars, dupes of Satan, forces of Satan and other terms that I cannot use in polite company." Mess with Gibson's version, is the apparent message, and you're messing with God.
But the truth is that the Church is on the side of Sister Boys. For Jews who have used this movie to confirm their conviction that Christians will always hate Jews, Gibson has perpetrated an unforgivable crime that negates one of the most remarkable acts of communal religious repentance in history. The Second Vatican Council acknowledged the sin of the Church for almost 2000 years in blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. Neither the Jews of that generation or of those to come, they decreed, bear any guilt for deicide. In 1988, the Vatican published Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion, with a list of nine points that any future depictions of Passion Plays are to use as guides. Gibson's movie ignores every one of them.
To blame "the goyim" instead of Gibson is for Jews to ignore progress of incredible import in interfaith relations. Pope John Paul II just welcomed the Chief Rabbi of Israel as "my older brother." He has condemned anti-Semitism as "a sin not only against the Church but against mankind." We are no longer in the age of Christian-approved pogroms or Crusades and we dare not let a "Mel"-evolent lie blind us to a theological turning point of history.
"The Passion" is a movie that ought to give pause to Christians not only because it is unfaithful to Church doctrine. It is pornography that asks to be accepted as inspiration; it is violence in the misplaced service of veneration and love; it is the message of Jesus summarized not by the teachings of his life but by the horrors of his death. As Peter Rainer put it so well, "The real damage will not, I think, be in the realm of Jewish-Christian relations, at least not in this country. Anti-Semites don't need an excuse to be anti-Semites. The damage will be to those who come to believe that Gibson's crimson tide, with its jacked-up excruciations, is synonymous with true religious feeling."
For us that carries an important message as well. Jews who are upset with the movie have concentrated their outcry almost totally on its implicit anti-Semitism. But this New Testament a là Gibson has another agenda. The production company considers it "perhaps the best outreach opportunity in 2,000 years", and plans to market it worldwide to "the faithless." Soon we will be bombarded by "the good news" of salvation "through the blood of Jesus" for all mankind. "The Passion" is passionately interested in converting those who still don't believe that the crucifixion is our only hope for forgiveness.
"The Passion" doesn't connect with Jews because we reject the very notion that God can be tortured, can scream out in pain, and can die.
Perhaps our best response to this Hollywood missionary effort is to look inward and take pride in the beauty of our own faith. We need to use this as an opportunity to explain that for Jews personal accountability is the real path to heaven; that we do not believe someone can die for our sins, nor that God requires the death of His son to appease Him. At the end of the day, "The Passion" doesn't connect with Jews because we reject the very notion that God can be tortured, can scream out in pain and can die. Not only Christians, but all too many secular Jews still don't get the great theological issues we have with a movie that from a Jewish perspective distorts the definition of God and the relationship we have with Him.
Many years ago I met with Ernest Hemingway. In a remarkably frank conversation, the Pulitzer Prize winner confessed to me that there was something about Judaism that he admired more than any other religion. "From my understanding," he told me, "Judaism, unlike the Christianity in which I was raised, is a religion of life, not a religion of death."
That brilliant insight is what I wish Jews would stress as the ultimate reason why we can't relate to a film that is preoccupied with nine hours of dying. "Choose life" is the cardinal message of our religion. A movie that celebrates death, produced under the Icon Films label, can only make me regret as a Jew that Gibson didn't take to heart the Biblical prohibition of the Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not make for yourself any icons."
I was thinking the same thing subliminally, but thank you for articulating it so well. Let's face it, Rabbi, you're a liar. Just like the thread this morning about the letter to the editor of the LA Times from a teacher claiming that a student came into class after watching the movie and told her "Now I hate all Jews." Turns out another freeper located her as a teacher at a very rich and prestigious school that's practically all Jewish. Her statement is just as credible as the rabbi's.
Why is that virtually every rabbi who has written about "The Passion of the Christ" has misquoted the teachings of Vatican II on Jewish responsibility (or lack of it) for the death of Christ?
Nostra Aetate didn’t say no Jews bore any responsibility for the death of Christ. It simply said that it’s an error to blame all Jews of the era "indiscriminately" or to blame today’s Jews for Christ’s death. But then after absolving those who clearly had nothing to do with the matter, Nostra Aetate also went on to say that the "Jewish authorities" of the time, as well as "those who followed their lead" had in fact "pressed for the death of Christ."
I don't how many times I've heard this misstated in the last couple of weeks. But the fact that it happens so often makes me think there's more going on here than simple honest error.
Sorry, I went back and checked through all the threads that I had posted comments on, and it wasn't in them. It must have been on a thread that I just read and didn't posted anything. There have been so many Passion threads that I'm not sure how I could find it at this point. Wish I could be more help.
But I recall for certain that it was a letter to the editor of the LA Times from a teacher, and the student supposedly came in and said "Now I hate all Jews." Someone on the thread did a google search or something and found a teacher with the same name who taught at a very ritzy school with a predominantly Jewish student body.
What the hell would a "Deformed" so-called Jew know about Choosing Life. Deformed Judiasm is pro-Abortion. This guy makes me want to puke. "Jews" like this give Real Jews a bad name.
Real Jews support our Christian Brothers and Sisters, and RESPECT THEIR FAITH AND DON'T PATRONIZE THEM ABOUT IT!
We will NOT be divided!
Note that Rabbi Blech says that Sister Mary Boys "was asked to read" a screenplay. He neglects to say who asked her and makes it sound like the most casual of matters. I don't know how Gibson's screenplay got from his office into the hands of Sister Boys, but I do know that one of the "co-conveners" of the ad hoc "Get Mel" screenplay study group was Abe Foxman of the ADL.
.Psalm 22 begins with "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me.
It ends with what could be translated as "It is finished."
But that can be rationalized away by the modern day Sadducees -- Christian and Jewish liberals.
??? Are you saying Jewish conservatives believe that Psalm 22 affirms the Gospel account?
Anna Paikow works as a teacher in Los Angeles, according to the article. A simple Google cross reference will bring you to here, showing her to be associated with this high school, whose website confirms the truth of her claim to be a teacher in Los Angeles.
A simple review of the contents of the site confirm that there are quite a number of Jewish names among the alumni and faculty. "Predominately" cannot be proven.
But the high school is a public high school. Thus the teacher is a unionized public employee (I think). Given that, the story has to survive the very high probability that the event in the letter was explicitly fabricated for Leftist propoganda purposes (denigrating both Christianity and Judaism at the same time).
I don't think there's any way to prove she is lying. But a commonsense analysis of the factors involved make it improbable in the extreme for her story to be true in total: The school is familiar with Jewish people, having Jews among its staff and faculty. Thus the alleged student alleged to have said the alleged quote did not have her first impressions of Jews from this movie.
Having seen the movie, and also seen stuff like PLO propoganda, I can say that there is no way a person is going to come out of this movie hating Jews unless they have been pre-conditioned to do so. No way at all. It simply doesn't contain the message "All Jews are bad". Being a Jew myself, I think I'm a fair judge of that.
On the other hand, you have stuff like the PLO puts out, which is clearly and explicitly outright incitement to genocide, yet Arafat is protected by the same types of folks who are bitching about this movie.
So I'd say we have to conclude that there is a vanishingly small but not zero possibility the letter in the LA Times is true, and a tremendously large probability it is a simple socialist smear of the type we are very familiar with (e.g. "Bush was AWOL!" - never had any substance, but millions of people now believe it; now we have "Mel Gibson hates Jews"). FWIW
This is Blech's idea of "dialogue.
Disagree with any part of "The Passion" and for many you aren't anti-Gibson but anti-God, a non-believer who doesn't deserve the courtesy of a hearing because you're obviously simply a heretic.
I've seen this strawman before. Maybe calling a moviemaker a "criminal" is a little bit beyond aimple disagreement?
Am I the only one who found this line a little bit, oh...ironic?
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