Posted on 02/28/2004 9:09:32 PM PST by Alouette
Jews concerned about Mel Gibson's The Passion face a classic tar-baby situation: The harder they struggle, the worse they make their situation. Though the battle may have helped a few Jewish defense organizations replenish their coffers, its principal achievement to date has been to ensure The Passion one of the largest first-week grosses in Hollywood history, and to allow Gibson to skillfully portray himself as the Defender of the Gospels under siege.
From whom? The Jews.
As Melanie Phillips astutely observes, the more Jews complain about anti-Semitism, the greater the anti-Semitism. Charges of anti-Semitism enrage real anti-Semites, who dismiss such charges as more Jewish whining, and dismay Christians who do not recognize any hatred of Jews in their hearts.
An even more fundamental problem confronts those worried about the effect of The Passion. It is impossible for Jews to criticize Gibson's film without being perceived as attacking the Christian Gospels upon which it is largely based. Given the relative number of Jews and Christians in the world, that is a losing proposition.
That is not to say that Jewish concern is unfounded. Passion plays, even without the mesmerizing effect of the big screen and Technicolor special effects available to Gibson, have a long and ignominious history of inciting pogroms.
As the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby points out, Gibson seems to have no interest in Jesus's life as a Jew, or even in why he would have been of concern to either Roman or Jewish authorities. His almost exclusive focus is on his brutal death at the hands - primarily - of the Jews.
Gibson belongs to a breakaway sect of Catholic "traditionalists" that rejects as illegitimate the reforms of Vatican II, including the absolving of the Jewish people of collective guilt for Jesus's death. Gibson's father, Hutton, dismisses Vatican II as a "conspiracy of Freemasons and Jews." (Last week, Hutton Gibson insisted that the extermination camps were merely work camps.) About his father Mel says: "That man never lied to me in his life."
Faced with the threat posed by Gibson's film, Jews needed a good measure of the brains for which former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad so "praised" us. The tragedy is that American Jewry today lacks a leader of the stature of the late Rabbi Moshe Sherer, long-time head of Agudath Israel, capable of activating an extensive network of Christian allies for common causes.
HAD JEWISH spokesmen been less eager to thrust themselves front and center, plenty of Christian allies could have been found to help blunt the impact of The Passion.
The Catholic Church cannot be terribly enthusiastic about a cinematic presentation of a theology that rejects current papal teaching on the Jews. Indeed, a group of mostly Catholic New Testament scholars, affiliated with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, submitted a study pointing out the departures of Gibson's original script from the Gospels and from papal teaching, as well as the "lurid details" imported from the ecstatic visions of an 18th-century German nun.
Catholic scholars are aware of the numerous contradictions between the four Gospels. They acknowledge that the different human authors wrote in a particular historical context that made it necessary to deliberately downplay the Roman agenda for Jesus's execution. Coming from Catholics, such comments may have some positive impact without any of the inevitable negatives when Shmuley Boteach says the same thing.
While evangelical Protestants will have little truck with such historical analysis of New Testament texts, they tend to overwhelmingly be philo-Semites and, unlike the Catholic Church, continue to view Jews as the Chosen People. With them, the proper approach is that adopted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center: an open appeal to Christians of goodwill to do for Jews what we cannot do for ourselves - i.e., work to ensure that The Passion does not become a vehicle for arousing anti-Semitic furies.
The Wiesenthal Center's "Appeal to People of Faith" expressly eschews any request that Christians renounce or censor their most holy texts. It places the focus on actions, not beliefs. And that is as it should be.
Believing Jews have no interest in dictating others' theology or demanding that they reject their most sacred texts. (One more reason for religious Jews to avoid a frontal confrontation with Mel Gibson.) All religion suffers when any religion is subjected to the strictures of modern-day political correctness. Already on many university campuses, it is a "hate crime," punishable by expulsion, to express the biblical abhorrence of homosexual acts.
Religion is drained of all its power and majesty when its adherents witness its sacred texts and thousands of years of exegesis adjusted in accord with the demands of the local thought police. Recently, I was asked by a BBC moderator of a discussion of the Women of the Wall: "But don't you think that a religion must update in accord with the times?"
"Not unless it wishes to be as irrelevant to the lives of believers as the modern Church of England," I replied.
I ASKED: "Could someone...ANYONE...please point out exactly where that Scripture mentions that Jews are to be blamed for Jesus' death?"
DIALUP LLAMA RESPONDED: "Nowhere. If one group can be blamed for Jesus' death, then Christianity is short ciruited because it would make a lie of Jesus' words that "I lay down my life willingly and can take it up again." It would also mean that Jesus didn't suffer for the worlds' sins if Jesus was merely a good teacher who was killed by a more powerful rival religious group."
I AM RESPONDING BACK: BINGO!!!
I ADDED EARLIER: "As a Christian, I don't BLAME the Jews...I THANK the LORD!!! Jesus' death and resurrection are the BEST things that have EVER happened! And we should all be THANKFUL that God is so loving, thoughtful and full of grace that He provided a way back to Him."
DIALUP LLAMA RESPONDED: "Anyone who says the Gospel teaches that the Jews are to be blamed will eventually claim that Jesus was just a good teacher, not the savior. Check it out, the two beliefs go together like hand-in-glove."
I AM RESPONDING AGAIN: "I agree completely! See Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12---the general synopsis of "The Passion" movie. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John provide the details.
I say "might be".
If you "might be" referring to me, you "might be" wrong, since I married into a large Catholic family, and, my mother, as a young child, spent some time in an orphanage, cared for by nuns, whom she treasured for all her living days.
A better analogy might be governors and presidents who weigh clemency decisions on the basis of public opinion rather than the actual merits of the case.
For two reasons. First, because you made the statement, and second, because I am (as far as I'm aware) the only one in the thread who related actual acts of persecution at the hands of Catholics.
I've already said I was not referring to you.
Except when making statements like, "But some here might be anti-catholic. ... I say "might be"? :)
Patience is a virtue.
Good f'n grief.
You make veiled statements, and then wax indignant when someone wonders if you were talking about him? And then you've got the chutzpah to assert that "I when I refer to people, I address them directly"???
Let's strike a deal, shall we? You don't hold your breath waiting for an apology from me and I won't hold mine waiting for an apology from you.
Deal?
(Hint: take it. It won't get any better. :)
Huh?
You keep asking questions, and when I answer them, I'm in need of getting over myself?
Pot, Kettle, Black.
Do you not understand plain English or what? I've made several posts explaining, yet you prefer to play the martyr.
GFYS *, dear.
I was not referring to you, no matter how much you wish for it to be so.
1. I didn't say you did. I ASKED if you did.
2. I accepted your explanation, yet you won't let it go.
Hmm...
Methinks the lady might be protesting too much.
I said might be.
* "F" = "Find." I suggest you FIND yourself. You seem quite lost...
Yes, you certainly did.
AFTER the fact.
and far from "veiled", I was plain spoken. What is so hard for you to understand?
Statements like, "But some here might be anti-catholic. ... I say 'might be'" are veiled statements in the common parlance. Why is that so hard for YOU to understand?
You keep insisting I was referring to you
No I don't. So you can politely retract that accusation, TUVM.
Hardly indignant, just wondering why you do not accept my explanation that I was not referring to you and my subsequent amplification.
There are none so blind as those who WILL not see. I accepted it. I confirmed that I accepted it. Yet, you continue to wax indignant that I did NOT accept it.
Get back with me when you can grasp these simple facts, OK?
When you make veiled accusations, you should not be surprised if someone ASKS if you were accusing them. ASKING if YOU were making an accusation is NOT the same as MAKING an accusation. Good grief.
I have to wonder why you are acting so strangely about this. It's as if I struck a nerve by accident.
Give it up.
Get lost. I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with your sort.
Actually, it is clear that you are the one who had a nerve struck somehow.
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