Posted on 02/13/2004 1:01:13 AM PST by ultima ratio
Why Mel owes one to the Jews
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Two weeks before Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" flashes onto two thousand screens, online ticket merchants are reporting that up to half their total sales are for advance purchases for the film. One Dallas multiplex has reserved all 20 of its screens for "The Passion." I am neither a prophet nor a movie critic. I am merely an Orthodox rabbi using ancient Jewish wisdom to make three predictions about "The Passion."
One, Mel Gibson and Icon Productions will make a great deal of money. Those distributors who surrendered to pressure from Jewish organizations and passed on the movie will be kicking themselves, while Newmarket Films will laugh all the way to the bank. Theater owners are going to love this film.
Two, "The Passion" will become famous as the most serious and substantive biblical movie ever made. It will be one of the most talked-about entertainment events in history. It is currently on the cover of Newsweek and Vanity Fair.
My third prediction is that the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent as "The Passion" uplifts and inspires them. It will propel vast numbers of unreligious Americans to embrace Christianity. The movie will one day be seen as a harbinger of America's third great religious reawakening.
Those Jewish organizations that have squandered both time and money futilely protesting "The Passion," ostensibly in order to prevent pogroms in Pittsburgh, can hardly be proud of their performance. They failed at everything they attempted. They were hoping to ruin Gibson rather than enrich him. They were hoping to suppress "The Passion" rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.
Here I digress slightly to exercise the Jewish value of "giving the benefit of the doubt" by discounting cynical suggestions growing in popularity that the very public nature of their attack on Gibson exposed their real purpose-fund-raising. Apparently, frightening wealthy widows in Florida about anti-Semitic thugs prowling the streets of America causes them to open their pocketbooks and refill the coffers of groups with little other raison d'être. But let's assume the groups were hoping to help Jews.
However, instead of helping the Jewish community, they have inflicted lasting harm. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, they have triggered anger, hurt and resentment. Hosting the Toward Tradition radio show and speaking before many audiences nationwide, I enjoy extensive communication with Christian America, and what I hear is troubling. Fearful of attracting the ire of Jewish groups that are so quick to hurl the "anti-Semite" epithet, some Christians are reluctant to speak out. Although one can bludgeon resentful people into silence, behind closed doors emotions continue to simmer.
I consider it crucially important for Christians to know that not all Jews are in agreement with their self-appointed spokesmen. Most American Jews, experiencing warm and gracious interactions each day with their Christian fellow citizens, would feel awkward trying to explain why so many Jewish organizations seem focused on an agenda hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Many individual Jews have shared with me their embarrassment that groups, ostensibly representing them, attack "The Passion" but are silent about depraved entertainment that encourages killing cops and brutalizing women.
Citing artistic freedom, Jewish groups helped protect sacrilegious exhibits such as the anti-Christian feces extravaganza presented by the Brooklyn Museum four years ago. One can hardly blame Christians for assuming that Jews feel artistic freedom is important only when exercised by those hostile toward Christianity. However, this is not how all Jews feel.
From audiences around America, I am encountering bitterness at Jewish organizations insisting that belief in the New Testament is de facto evidence of anti-Semitism. Christians heard Jewish leaders denouncing Gibson for making a movie that follows Gospel accounts of the crucifixion long before any of them had even seen the movie.
Furthermore, Christians are hurt that Jewish groups are presuming to teach them what Christian Scripture "really means." Listen to a rabbi whom I debated on the Fox television show hosted by Bill O'Reilly last September. This is what he said, "We have a responsibility as Jews, as thinking Jews, as people of theology, to respond to our Christian brothers and to engage them, be it Protestants, be it Catholics, and say, 'Look, this is not your history, this is not your theology, this does not represent what you believe in.'"
He happens to be a respected rabbi and a good one, but he too has bought into the preposterous proposition that Jews will re-educate Christians about Christian theology and history. Is it any wonder that this breathtaking arrogance spurs bitterness?
Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews' best (and perhaps, only) friends also feel bitter at Jews believing that "The Passion" is revealing startling new information about the crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews thinking that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles of history into snarling, Jew-hating predators.
Christians are baffled by Jews who don't understand that President George Washington, who knew and revered every word of the Gospels, was still able to write that oft-quoted beautiful letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, offering friendship and full participation in America to the Jewish community.
One of the directors of the AJC recently warned that "The Passion" "could undermine the sense of community between Christians and Jews that's going on in this country. We're not allowing the film to do that." No sir, it isn't the film that threatens the sense of community; it is the arrogant and intemperate response of Jewish organizations that does so.
Jewish organizations, hoping to help but failing so spectacularly, refute all myths of Jewish intelligence. How could their plans have been so misguided and the execution so inept?
Ancient Jewish wisdom teaches that nothing confuses one's thinking more than being in the grip of the two powerful emotions, love and hate. The actions of these Jewish organizations sadly suggest that they are in the grip of a hatred for Christianity that is only harming Jews.
Today, peril threatens all Americans, both Jews and Christians. Many of the men and women in the front lines find great support in their Christian faith. It is strange that Jewish organizations, purporting to protect Jews, think that insulting allies is the preferred way to carry out that mandate.
A ferocious Rottweiler dog in your suburban home will quickly estrange your family from the neighborhood. For those of us in the Jewish community who cherish friendship with our neighbors, some Jewish organizations have become our Rottweilers. God help us.
Without beginining a un-needed theological discussion I understand your center now, but vehemently disagree with it. The idea of doubting the accuracy of the Word is beyond unfathomable to me.
No wonder we weren't seeing the same argument, we were on different planets here. Thank you for the insight, you have to forgive my ignorance on this subject of your form of worship.
I will say I love the way your clergy dresses!
I must have eaten 20 Kalamata olives and I am more thirsty than I have ever been in my life. The price of gluttony.
We are very different churches with very different approaches and ways. It is good to share. Our family has been to Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian, Pentcostal, and Presbyterian churches. I wonder how many here have visited us in the Orthodox church.
There are, first of all, dozens of different Bible versions. The Gospels themselves are not the original manuscripts (which doesn't mean they are not true to the original), there are numerical and other inconsistencies, sometimes even contradictions in the Bible, there are additions and deletions, translational errors, you name it, but they don't invalidate or change the message the Bible contains -- our knowledge of God.
Secondly, Orthodoxy is not "orthodoxy" any more than Catholicism is "catholicism." We are both "catholic" and you may be "orthodox" but I am not (Roman) Catholic and you are not (Eastern) Orthodox.
Third, there is nothing disproving the Bible except that there are others who have different "bibles" (Jews, Muslims) who will tell you that we Christians are polytheists and idolaters. There is nothing to disprove; there are historical and mathematical issues one can dissect and often independent historical sources are missing to compare factual claims made in the Bible.
Take, for instance, the OT. The oldest version found is in Greek (Septuagint). It doesn't agree fully with the oldest Hebrew version which is of much more recent date. They both partially agree and partially disagree with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written about 150 years after the Greek version. Which one is true? The Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint. The Protestants use the Hebrew (Messoretic Text). The Catholic and Orthodox Bibles have Apocrypha (not the same number but close), the Protestant Bible doesn't. So which one of these man-made version of the "word of God" is the true source? Easy! They all are because they contain the same essential message of God's revelation.
But when you take things word by word, differences, sometimes essential begin to evolve. When the angel announced to Mary (Isa 7:14) that a [ ] will conceive, we (Orthodox and Catholic Christians) and Orthodox Jews interpret that she was a virgin. The Messoretic Text (and the Protestants who use it) claims it was just a woman. Depending then whose "word of God" you take to be genuine, different churches have developed different teaching about Theotokos. Whereas we venerate her as the most Blessed Mother of God, the Protestants -- and their feminine pastors -- treat her as just another "woman."
The physical make-up of the Bible, the sources it uses, and the historical context in which they were put together all play a role in the doctrinal teachings of different churches. The Catholic doctrines of the purgatory and Immaculate Conception come from apocryphal writings (St. Thomas Aquinas, of all the people, did not believe in Immaculate Conception), whereas the Protestants and the Orthodox reject them on different grounds, etc.
Finally, Orthodox vestments are what they were from the beginning. Orthodox priests dress like Jewish priests used to look because that's who the original Christians were and where various forms of worship were handed down to us from. We haven't essentially changed. Everyone else has.
This is the brilliance of the East. It remains to be seen if the West can accept this.
All denominations that can be considered Christian agree on only a few points: (1) that God is Triune, (2) that Jesus is one of the three Persons of one God, (3) that there are no other gods, (4) that Jesus died and resurrected for our sins.
Other than that, Christians agree on nothing else.
Orthodox priest
Jewish priests
I absolutely love it. Holy people are a blessing to this world and their fashion is timeless!
Rabbis too. While I might not agree with everthing a Rabbi says, I can listen to them talk all day long. They dresss kool too.
But to our western-trained eyes, these unkempt individuals who look like "homless" people, spark no intetrest because they don't shine on the outside. If one would only know the light they carry inside! They have devoted 24/7 to God, own nothing, nothing to them is of any importance; God is their passion and love above all. Very few of us have that.
I am reading now "I Love, Therefore I Am" (Sakharov).
Discussion of Tradition and Scripture.
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