Mel Gibson and the Maccabees

Beliefnet ^ | Dec 8th, 2004

[missyme]

Anyone who took offense at Mel Gibson’s "The Passion of the Christ", with its depiction of Jewish leaders condemning Jesus, should get ready soon to be offended all over again.

Gibson, it is reported, has his heart set on doing a movie version of the story commemorated by Hanukkah. His text will be the novel "My Glorious Brothers" by Howard Fast.

Ironically, this book is a sentimental favorite with the older-generation Jewish audience that also tends to be the main financial supporter of Gibson’s primary antagonist, the Anti-Defamation League, which led the drive to condemn "The Passion" as anti-Semitic.

The Fast novel tells the story of Jewish heroes, circa 167 B.C.E., who defeat Greek oppressors of the Jewish people, retake the Jerusalem Temple, and relight the great menorah.

So what’s so offensive? If this sounds, on the contrary, like a mollifying gesture to ADL national director Abraham Foxman, you might want to look a little more closely at what Hanukkah is actually about.

Many Jews grew up thinking of Hanukkah (which in 2004 falls on December 8-15) as an innocuous children’s festival. Actually the Maccabean revolt was deadly serious business, and it recalls one of the great tensions in our own modern American society: the conflict was between what today one might call religious fundamentalists and the secular elite.

Here’s what happened. Jewish Palestine had fallen into the clutches of the Greek kingdom of the Seleucids, with their tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes, headquartered in Syria. While the Greeks were not anti-Jewish per se, they had little patience with the perceived particularism and parochialism of Judaism. (I say "perceived" because Judaism’s vision, when properly understood, is in fact highly universal.)

The Greek vision was one of mutual theological acceptance. They were relativists, in the sense we know today, believing that not only the God of Israel but all the gods should be worshipped at the Jerusalem Temple--and believing that dissenters from their “tolerance” deserved to be suppressed.

Religiously committed Jews, however, were less troubled by the Greek Syrians themselves than by Jewish “Hellenists” in Palestine, and in the holy city itself, who had thrown in their lot with the Greeks. This was a way of social climbing. By embracing Greek culture, with its aggressive relativism, ambitious Jewish elites hoped to improve their own social standing in Greek eyes.

They embraced Greek customs that religious Jews found disturbing – exercising naked in the gymnasium, with an emphasis on discus-throwing in the nude, or (far worse) effacing their circumcisions through a surgical operation involving cutting a flap of skin around the penis and letting it hang by weights.

In his standard history of the period, "Alexander to Actium," Professor Peter Green calls this “select club of progressive Hellenizers” a “specially favored cosmopolitan class dedicated to social and political self-advancement,” seeking “sociological privilege and status.”

[missyme]

A BIT MORE:
When the news of Gibson’s interest in Howard Fast’s novel was picked up in the media, Foxman reportedly told Fast’s widow he would “feel more comfortable putting it in the hands of Mr. [Harvey] Weinstein than Mr. Gibson.” The irony is delicious.

Weinstein is the Hollywood producer who co-founded Miramax and made X-rated art movies like "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" as well as, more recently, "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Kill Bill: Vol. 2." If Harvey Weinstein and motion pictures had been around in 167 B.C.E., Weinstein would have been the guy making “controversial” films about naked discus-throwing

How secular liberals, Jewish and otherwise, will respond to the new Gibson effort is an interesting question. "The Passion" proved to be an embarrassment for the ADL and others who predicted that the film’s supposed anti-Semitism would expose America’s Jewish community to medieval-style perils. Of course, no such thing came to pass.

All that the protests succeeded in doing was to ensure that many, many more people would see Gibson’s film than would have done so had there (without the ADL’s efforts) been no controversy to begin with.

For the folks who made such an aggressive and pointless fuss about "The Passion," there would seem to be two choices. The first is, once again, to raise a ruckus about how Gibson again casts Jews (in this case the secular liberal Hellenizers) as bad guys, and accomplish nothing positive. The other is to let Gibson alone. Personally, not myself being a big fan of the overlong, gratuitously violent "Passion," I would like to see him get back to the kind of spiritual thriller that caught his imagination when he starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s fabulously gripping "Signs."

[Red Badger]

The Fast novel tells the story of Jewish heroes, circa 167 B.C.E., who defeat Greek oppressors of the Jewish people, retake the Jerusalem Temple, and relight the great menorah.

The great menorah?........Is that like the great Pumpkin?.....

[Austin Willard Wright]

This guy likes "Signs?" That movie was a yawner.

[oldleft]

"Jewish Palestine?"

It's called I S R A E L!

[ElkGroveDan]

The Greek vision was one of mutual theological acceptance. They were relativists, in the sense we know today, believing that not only the God of Israel but all the gods should be worshipped at the Jerusalem Temple--and believing that dissenters from their “tolerance” deserved to be suppressed.

Ah yes! We won't tolerate intolerance. We've heard that many times of late.

[Borges]

Weinstein is the Hollywood producer who co-founded Miramax and made X-rated art movies like "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" Both of those films were British/European productions. Not Mirimax.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

So what’s so offensive? If this sounds, on the contrary, like a mollifying gesture to ADL national director Abraham Foxman, you might want to look a little more closely at what Hanukkah is actually about.

Translation: We really can't find anything to complain about, but we will anyway.

[joesnuffy]

These same 'Greek' customs went a wee bit farther...and the young Jews were being enticed away from Judaism by the worldly Greeks

Saint Paul also addressed these same proclivities during his ministry to the Greeks

Hitler and friends also greatly admired the 'Greek' lifestyle of the day...

Read all about it....The Pink Swastika

[marsh_of_mists]

I hope Gibson does this. I hope he portrays the Hanukkah story as a story of orthodox religious believers triumping over urban secular oppressors. I hope he uses all Jewish actors too. The social fallout from that would be a magnificent sight to behold. Do you suppose the liberal elite would cry out against it, even though they might be percieved as anti-Semetic? Or would they dare to grin and bear it?

[elbucko]

This was a way of social climbing. By embracing Greek culture, with its aggressive relativism, ambitious Jewish elites hoped to improve their own social standing in Greek eyes.

Like John kerry's Jewish ancestor became Catholic when the boat landed in Boston

[dljordan]

"effacing their circumcisions through a surgical operation involving cutting a flap of skin around the penis and letting it hang by weights."

OOOWWW!

[missyme]

I think many of the Nazi's were closet homosexuals....

[workerbee]

Okay...? What offense is this supposed to be warning me about? Unless Mel is planning to show men "effacing their circumcisions through a surgical operation involving cutting a flap of skin around the penis and letting it hang by weights", I'm not sure what the problem is.

(now that's GOTTA hurt!)

[Mark in the Old South]

Re: "The Greek vision was one of mutual theological acceptance. They were relativists, in the sense we know today, believing that not only the God of Israel but all the gods should be worshiped at the Jerusalem Temple--and believing that dissenters from their “tolerance” deserved to be suppressed."

It isn't just secular-humanist that will be offended. Expect many Bishops and Cardinals in the Catholic Church to take offense. Maccabees is ripe for comparison with the post-Vatican II Church's abandonment of old Catholic dogma, including but not limited to "Outside the Church there is no salvation" and the changes to the liturgy;. Expect Protestants to be offended as well.

[CGVet58]

bttt

[missyme]

I am not sure what this procedure is but the Greek GOD's were pretty whacked like flaming homosexuals at the local Gay Parade....

[Mark in the Old South]

The Greeks never had same sex marriage. It took whack jobs in black robes in Mass-ass-achoosuse to come up with that one.

[pikachu]

A Mel Gibson movie without Danny Glover or Joe Pesci? Where do I get tickets?

[Dunstan McShane]

There already is a movie about the Maccabees. I had never heard of it till I came across it as a used VHS tape in a second-hand bookstore a couple of months back. Misleadingly titled "The Old Testament" (for its American release), it's one of those Italian spaghetti epics from the early sixties, about Matthias and Judas Maccabeus and the revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes.

Not likely to win any film awards. Has anyone else ever heard of it (or seen it)?