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As several posters have pointed out, a starting point is to understand why the other reacts as he does . . .

I agree with that point. I cannot know why, but nonetheless I am sharing my insights, flawed though they may be.

[Passion plays whipped Hitler's Germany into genocidal frenzy] ... weelll that would be an unfortunate oversimplification of a very complex situation; in any case, the Holocaust, Hitler, the Nazis, et al have been discredited and soundly denounced by just about everyone on the planet since 1945. Justifiably so.

Yet there are holocaust-deniers. If the underlying evil of Nazism is not well and truly dead, then there is a chance that re-enactments of the Passion may do again what it has (supposedly) done before. Can we sit here and guarantee to every Jew on the planet that nothing could bring back that evil? Or a different, perhaps more insidious, evil?

My opinion is that there is zero chance of a significant negative effect in the USA. I love Eastern Europe, but don't kid yourself. A Rumanian Christian girl told me "so many there hate Jews."

"Can we sit here and guarantee to every Jew on the planet that nothing could bring back that evil? Or a different, perhaps more insidious, evil?"

Well, no. Evil is waiting in the wings, ready to pounce, "when good men do nothing."

One thought I have long entertained: I think it is not enough to denounce Nazism, etc. People have long asked, how could something like that happen in a civilized country like Germany? SOME have blamed ALL Germans for it, the innocent as well as the guilty. An easy way to project the accommodation of evil away from the self, and onto "those other guys, over there." The point is, the accommodation to evil is not a peculiarly or particularly "German thing." The point is, the heart of man is the same, and great evil COULD happen elsewhere. (Stalin, Mao, etc. come to mind).

That is not to say that accommodation to evil would necessarily take the same form: an anti-Jewish pogrom, for example. For one thing, people's antennae are up for something like that -- as many reviews of the Passion demonstrate! ;)

I appreciate your logical conclusion that a pogrom is not likely in the US. I agree. And the more closely people follow Christ's message, the LESS likely it will be, and the less likely the acceptance of other evils will be.