[HANASHIR:16911] RE: Mel Gibson's Passion

[Barry Pilson <bpilson...>]

I was hesitant about bringing this subject up to the list. But If you have not 
read this column by  Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman ('The G-d 
Squad') it's worth the read. It is, I believe the most objective piece I have 
seen. I know it has gone out on the Rabbi's listserve, and my Rabbi shared it 
with the congregation on Friday night. 

Barry Pilson
Northern Virginia Hebrew Cong.

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A common passion between Jews and Christians 
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Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman

February 19, 2004

The central problem we all must face regarding Mel Gibson's culturally and 
spiritually cataclysmic movie, "The Passion of the Christ," is that although 
Jews and Christians can sit in the same theater, they cannot see the same movie.

Christians will see a powerful, inspiring movie about the sacrificial, 
redemptive suffering of their Savior and emerge wondering what all the yelling 
is about. Jews will see a threatening, ominous film reviving the Medieval curse 
of deicide on the Jewish people and emerge wondering how this vile blood libel 
could surface again in our time.

Until we can see this film through each other's eyes, we can't find one 
another, and if we can't find each other, we can't find God. We believe, 
however, that there is a way for us to receive a new heart, new eyes and new 
compassion for each other and each other's stories.

The beginning of the way back is for all of us to remember and understand that 
the death of Jesus was not a murder but a gift. If his death was just the 
torturous murder of an innocent teacher, the central question of the Passion is 
indeed, "Who killed Jesus?" But if Christ's death was a gift to save the world 
from sin, the central question of the Passion is, "Who gave us this gift?"

We suspect the reason Gibson is so bewildered by criticism of the film -- and 
why Jewish leaders are bewildered by Gibson's bewilderment -- is that they're 
asking different questions. Jews see "The Passion" as the story of a murder for 
which they've been blamed, while Christians see it as the story of a gift 
they've received to share with the world.

The answer to the question of who killed Jesus is simple, yet complex. 
Obviously, the Romans actually crucified Jesus because the Jews were under 
Roman domination at the time and because crucifixion was against Jewish law. 
However, the story taught to so many Jews over the centuries that the Jewish 
leaders were only passive observers to the death of Jesus is not true.

Jesus was a Pharisee, a member of a group of itinerant scribes and scholars who 
would become the founders of rabbinic Judaism. Caiphas, the high priest, was a 
Sadducee, a member of the priestly ruling class who disputed the new Pharisaic 
teachings of a personal Messiah and life after death. The Pharisees taught 
these new ideas by ascribing them to an oral law supposedly revealed to Moses 
when he received the written law on Mount Sinai. So Caiphas hated not only 
Jesus, but all Pharisees.

The leaders of the Pharisees also hated Jesus because, against rabbinic law, he 
taught in his own name rather than in the name of previous rabbis, and because 
his followers claimed he was the Messiah even though he didn't gather the 
exiles or defeat the forces of evil in the world, as required by Jewish 
messianic teachings. It is long past time for Jews to say that no Jews at the 
time wanted Jesus dead; they are strong enough and secure enough to admit this.

Christians must also own not just their formative story but also its historical 
consequences. The Christian story has anti-Jewish elements at its core because 
it cannot comprehend how the people who knew Jesus best, and among whom Jesus 
was born and raised, rejected him as Messiah despite evidence of his 
resurrection and the messianic promise of their faith.

To say that the Christian story is anti-Jewish, however, is not to say it's 
anti-Semitic. Anti-Judaism is the view that Judaism has been superceded by 
Christianity and that Jews should be warmly welcomed into Christendom after 
they convert. Anti-Semitism, by contrast, does not seek to produce living 
converted Jews, but only to produce dead Jews.

Did the anti-Jewish elements of the Christian story lay the groundwork for 
anti-Christian Nazi anti-Semitism? Yes, but this doesn't mean Christianity is 
totally to blame for the immoral twisting of its teachings into the vile screed 
of racial genocide. It only means the Christian story has suffered dangerous 
but predictable perversions that must be admitted by every honest, sensitive 
Christian and zealously guarded against.

Pope John XXIII saw this clearly. That's why the 1965 papal encyclical, Nostra 
Aetate, absolved the Jewish people of collective guilt for Jesus' death. Sadly, 
Pope John XXIII learned from the work of sociologists at the time that the most 
religious Catholics were also the most likely to be prejudiced against Jews. 
His efforts and the recent efforts of Pope John Paul II to offer a sincere 
atonement and educational purification of Catholic teachings are compassionate 
and hopeful achievements.

We fear that "The Passion," even without the now deleted scene from Matthew 
27:26 in which the Jews say, "His blood be upon us and upon our children," may 
cause Christians, particularly Catholics, to forget these changes to their 
teachings. They may return to the wrong question about the Passion and reach 
for the old, hurtful answers.

Christianity did not end with the death of Jesus; it only began there and 
continues to evolve to embrace new and humane interpretations of its core 
story. Whether it grows to embrace its Jewish roots or falls into revulsion of 
them is the question "The Passion" brings searingly into focus.

The challenge to Jews on their side of the ugly shouting match is equally 
poignant and profound. They must freely and finally grant to Christians the 
right to tell their story in their own way. That story will always have rough 
edges because Christians came from Jews and must try to understand how and why 
the Jews did not come along with them in hearing the good news of the risen 
Christ. But Jews must be confident that the Christian story will never again 
lead to crusades, inquisitions or pogroms.

The same story that produced the anti-Semitic Pope Innocent III and Torquemada 
the Grand Inquisitor in the Middle Ages has produced in our own time John 
XXIII, John Paul II, Mother Teresa and priests and sisters like Fr. Maximillian 
Kolbe who went to their deaths defending their faith and their Jewish brothers 
and sisters in the midst of the kingdom of night. Their sacrifices and example 
of true Christian love should remind us there is nothing essentially corrupt or 
prejudiced, demeaning, destructive or anti-Semitic about the story of a 
Galilean Jewish carpenter who was given to all humanity to save it from sin.

We are very concerned about the numbing power of the violence depicted in "The 
Passion." The ocean of blood may make it difficult for audiences to emerge from 
this cinematic ordeal filled with Christian love rather than sharp, vengeful 
hatreds. A movie that forces us to witness hours of torture and only 15 seconds 
of resurrection is in danger of transforming Christ's blessed gift into nothing 
but a crude and mangling murder.

But even for this we don't blame Mel Gibson, nor will we join the chorus of 
those who call him an anti-Semite. We believe he has both the artistic and 
spiritual right to explore the meaning of Jesus' suffering and death because 
that suffering, in all its bloody reality, remains the truest and most moving 
measure of Christ's sacrifice and gift.

We call upon Jews to let Christians have their story, and we call upon 
Christians to show Jews that this story need not lead to cruelty. Mostly we 
call upon Mel Gibson to do something healing and hopeful.

If "The Passion" is used to foment violence against Jews, we hope Gibson will 
embrace the sacred responsibility that comes from the privilege of making the 
film and stand up and say, with all the passion and force that have fueled his 
art and his faith: "Have you no shame! This is not the way I wanted my movie to 
be used, and your vile hatreds of Jews are not the reason Jesus came and died 
for me and for all of us. I will not allow my work to be used as a new tool for 
Jew hating or as a manifesto for crucifying yet another Jew. I tried only to 
create a tool for the glory of God and the salvation of all sinners, including 
me, who live in our unredeemed, broken and sinful world."

Jews and Christians cannot watch "The Passion" with the same eyes, but we can 
watch it with the same heart. We can watch it with the love of the same God who 
bestows different gifts upon different people but the same hope to all 
humanity. If this happens, then the approaching celebrations of Easter and 
Passover will not be idle rituals. Instead, they will be transforming fires out 
of which we can emerge speaking calmly about the ways we're different and 
singing joyfully about the ways we are all the same.

----------

(Concerned about a religious, ethical or moral issue? Send questions to 
godsquad (at) telecaretv(dot)org, or visit www.askthegodsquad.com)


Copyright (c) 2004, Chicago Tribune

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-----Original Message-----
From: "Adrian A. Durlester" <adrian (at) durlester(dot)com>
Sent: Feb 24, 2004 12:41 PM
To: hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org
Subject: [HANASHIR:16905] RE: Mel Gibson's Passion

Chaverim:

I'll try and be a little tolerant of discussion of this subject here,
although there are many, many other online forums where such discussion
might be more appropriate and on-topic. If enough of you write me off-list
that you feel we should squelch this discussion, then I will follow the will
of the majority of those who express their opinions to me.)

-Adrian


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------------------------ hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org -----------------------+
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a service of Hebrew College, which offers online courses and an
online MA in Jewish Studies, http://hebrewcollege.edu/online/

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