REFLECTIONS ON “THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST”

Rabbi Gary S. Gerson
March 5, 2004

I don’t like to go to movies by myself – I’m more likely to eat too much popcorn, though this was a movie at which I can’t conceive of wanting to snack. So I went with a friend. My friend is a former Roman Catholic seminarian, with great knowledge of Church teachings and a deep respect for all religious paths. And so I hoped we would be able to draw insight from each others’ background and experience.

As the movie ended, the first thought that came to mind was that I had just seen a bad comic book or Classics Illustrated brought to the screen. The actors had been shaped by Gibson into caricatures, representing age-old canards and stereotypes. And the Jesus of Mel Gibson seemed little more than a two-dimensional cardboard cut out, a vehicle for witnessing a most disturbing two hours of sadomasochism. Instead of finding meaning and spiritual renewal, I left feeling numb and angry. I had gone hoping to find a Jesus who was rabbi, spiritual healer, and exemplar. But the lofty teachings of Christianity were barely present – only a sound bite from the Sermon on the Mount and nothing else. I felt defrauded.

My friend confirmed my reaction and said “it’s flat, lifeless in every sense.”

The movie was trite, too, as when one of the characters asked concerning the brutalizing of Jesus, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I was reminded of Cecil B. DeMille’s “Ten Commandments” in which Charlton Heston as Moses mouthed words taken from the Book of Ruth -- words spoken by Ruth and Naomi. Then there were the pyrotechnics at the end of the movie. The quaking of the ground and the storm clouds that filled the sky seemed little more than an updated version of the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Now I don’t claim to be a film critic, though I do love movies and find some of them to be great homilies. But as I began to read the movie reviews of others, I found I was often in agreement with those whose views I respect.
Jami Bernard, movie critic of the New York Daily News, describes the movie as “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie since the German propaganda films of WWII. It is sickening….”

Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader writes: “...director Mel Gibson stresses only cruelty and suffering, complete with slow motion and masochistic point-of-view shots. The charges of anti-Semitism and homophobia being hurled at the movie seem too narrow; its general disgust for humanity is so unrelenting that the military-sounding drums at the end seem to be welcoming the apocalypse.... If I were a Christian, I’d be appalled to have this primitive and pornographic bloodbath presume to speak for me.”

"It is a pornographic celebration of suffering," says James Carroll, a former Catholic priest, a novelist, and the author of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.

And perhaps most to the point, A. O. Scott of the New York Times, writes: "The Passion of the Christ" is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it."

In reflection, I think the movie covers no new territory; it is simply a Passion Play but with more violence
What is a Passion Play? “Passion” in Latin means “suffering.” For some 800 years the Passion Play has been a Christian religious teaching tool that focuses on the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, in order to rouse Christian religious fervor -- but almost always with an anti-Jewish bias. Passion Plays contributed to anti-Semitism throughout the ages -- depicting Jews as evil killers of God. After the Holocaust, the second Vatican Council came to the realization that these portrayals must end once and for all. In 1997, Pope John Paul II said that “erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their alleged culpability (for the crucifixion) have circulated for too long, rendering feelings of hostility toward this people.” The Pope recognized what Passion Plays have led to, and has encouraged Catholics to revise and reconsider such presentations. And the presentation that was considered the worst of all -- the Passion Play at Oberammergau -- which Hitler praised, presented a revised version several years ago.

So why doesn’t Mel Gibson listen to his Pope? Because he is part of a conservative branch of Catholicism that doesn’t accept the Pope; he doesn’t accept the changes made by the second Vatican Council. Rather, he sees things from an atavistic perspective, represented by Catholic renegades such as the late Bishop Marcel Lefebvre (and exemplified by Our Lady Immaculate Church on Washington and Ridgeland, which describes itself as a Traditional Roman Catholic Church, Pius X Society).

And so Mel Gibson gives us what is essentially his own version of a Passion Play. An R rated Passion Play, which, were it not for Gibson’s clout, would more accurately be rated NC-17, for pornographic violence and brutality. As one of my senior colleagues internationally known for his interfaith work put it, The Passion is a snuff film.
And not only this, it is poor history. The movie is tendentious, reflecting a very selective reading of the Gospels. It is not, as some, such as Paul Harvey, have written, faithful to the Gospel narratives. Rather, Gibson draws primarily from a vision of a 19th century mystic nun, Ann Catherine Emmerich, who labeled Jesus’ death “the crime of the Jews”. Gibson then picks and chooses from among the Gospels for whatever text he wishes to illustrate.
In doing this, Gibson rewrites history: For example, he reverses the power relationship between Pontius Pilate and the High Priest Caiaphas. For Gibson, Pilate is simply a tool of the Jews, at worst an ineffectual governor and at best a decent man who does not wish to harm Jesus. As Leon Wieseltier puts it, “Pilate is the liberal in Gibson’s film.”
Yet every thing we know about Pontius Pilate, as embodied in the writings of Josephus and Philo and the Roman historian Tacitus, indicates that he was a strong willed, inflexible military governor who was insensitive to the religious scruples of his Jewish and Samaritan subjects and relentless in suppressing any potential disturbance. This stands in sharp contrast to the impression conveyed in the Christian gospels which, for apologetic reasons, portray him as reluctant to execute Jesus.

Pilate's decade long tenure [26-36 CE] testifies to both his relative effectiveness in maintaining order and to the aging emperor's lack of personal attention to administrative affairs. The ruthless slaughter of thousands of Samaritan pilgrims by Pilate's cavalry [ca. 36 CE], however, led to such a strong Palestinian protest that Pilate was eventually recalled to Rome. Tiberius died before his return; but the new emperor [Caligula] relieved Pilate of his command and exiled him to Gaul [Vienne-on-Rhone]. In good Roman military fashion, as one who had suffered defeat and public disgrace, he committed suicide.

As I understand Jesus, he was crucified by the Romans for sedition. As for the accounts in the Gospels, upon which Gibson draws, it must be remembered that Jesus was a Jew and that his earliest followers were Jews who followed Jewish law. Peter and James argued that circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, and observing Kashrut were requisites for following Jesus. But by a stroke of fate, the Jewish-Roman War (66-70 C.E.) dealt a devastating blow to these, as they were called, “Nazarenes”. Their traditions and writings were lost or forgotten, and instead, Paul’s churches, which were scattered in the Diaspora and which drew primarily on Gentiles, gained ascendancy and became the basis for Christianity. Jewish law was set aside. In order for the early Church to survive in the midst of the conflict between Rome and Jerusalem, it became essential to distance from the Jewish community and faith. The felt need to dissociate became written into the Gospels, which were written not in Eretz Israel, but in Rome and elsewhere in the Diaspora, and not in Aramaic or Hebrew, but in Greek. They told the story of Jesus in such a way that it seemed as if his real enemies were not Gentiles, or even the Romans, but rather Jews – Pharisees, priests, and the Jewish people in general. If you trace the development of the Gospels, this becomes all the more evident in that the first Gospel, Mark, written ca. 70 C.E., puts the onus on, as he puts it, “the crowd.” By the time you get to Luke, written 15 years later, the culprits are “the chief priests” and “the crowds.” And when you get to the most anti-Jewish of the Gospels, John, written about 10 years after Luke, the culprits are simply identified as “the Jews.”
As reported in U.S. News and World Report:

Geza Vermes, emeritus professor of Jewish studies at Oxford University, is arguably the dean of this recent scholarly enterprise….The Gospels can be read in many ways, Vermes acknowledges, and he does not disparage orthodox Christian interpretations. "But if you read them literally," he cautions, "without knowledge of what they describe in terms of institutions and politics, then suddenly the Jews can become different, the enemies, the opposition. What is really going on in them is a family quarrel within Judaism."

This is not strictly an academic matter for Vermes. In his view, a willful disregard of the Jewishness of Jesus and his teaching has been partly responsible for "all the nasty things" that are associated with Christian anti-Semitism. And it is not only Jews who share that concern. New Testament specialist Margaret Mitchell, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago and a Roman Catholic, worries that Gibson's movie, like all uncritical, ahistorical readings of the Gospels, will potentially "flatten what ought to be a curriculum for each generation of Christians to struggle with, including this strange fact of a religion starting in Judaism and then moving away from it."
For most Jews, the big question is “Will this movie cause anti-Semitism?” I concur with Bill Straus of the Arizona ADL, who writes, “I don’t believe that people will necessarily come out of the movie feeling any animosity to Jews, but I wonder about people going in with a predisposition to anti-Semitism.”

For example, Gibson buys into the stereotype of Jews as pecuniary, as loving money. Indeed, it is the gospel depiction of Judas selling out Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, which was the paradigm on which this stereotype is based. Gibson’s movie goes out of its way to bring this stereotype to life.

Then there is the old canard that Jews control everything – from the government to the economy, certainly the media, and from Mel Gibson’s standpoint, Hollywood. It is but a short step to this stereotype from Gibson’s delight in raising up the High Priest Caiaphas and his minions as pulling the strings of Pontius Pilate to achieve their diabolical ends.
Then there is the Jewish mob in the movie, calling for Jesus’ crucifixion. I won’t say that it was Gibson had in mind, but when I closed my eyes and tried to understand what the mob was saying, what I heard sounded less like Aramaic and more like the German words “Sieg Heil”.

People will see what they bring to the movie based on their ways of looking at the world -- the nature of the religious forms to which they adhere and the values that inform their lives. Some, coming to find their faith renewed, will find in the sufferings of Jesus a basis for reappropriating the message that he died for the sins of humankind. Others, with a predilection to look upon Jews according to old canards, will easily find those reinforced.
And others, who come, as I did, with the hope of finding faith and spirit renewed in the life and teachings of a great religious figure, will come away disappointed. The parables and teachings of Jesus -- much in the character of the teachings of modern liberal rabbis -- are nowhere to be found.

The Jesus I have come to know through my studies was a God-intoxicated man – a devout Jew and mystic – of sorts, a rebbe for his time. He spoke truth to power and the nature of that truth was consonant with Torah. Remember that the Sermon on the Mount is based on the words of the Shema and V’ahavta – that God is One and that we should love God with all our heart and soul and might.

And viewed from the standpoint of Christian theology, rather than treating the dualistic nature of Jesus the Christ as both God and man, Gibson’s brutal dehumanization of Jesus in the film strips away any divinity, and, as one Christian viewer described it in the New York Times, made him “feel more like a voyeur than a witness.”
I would argue that Gibson’s movie is the expression of a culture war – in his case reflecting a view of the world as a scary place where one must ever be on the defensive, ever ready and willing to fight; and that the world to come is far better than this vale of wrath and tears. Then there are those of us who hold that the world is a place of our making, a place in which we have God-given covenants to fulfill, and by so doing, to bring about a heaven on earth.
The enthusiastic reaction to the movie by many Christian Evangelicals could well punctuate the point that Jewish and Evangelical interests are fundamentally at odds, despite the vocal support for Israel of this politically potent segment.
So how are we to respond to this movie?

First of all, we ought to honor the positive affects of this film on our neighbors while not failing to raise up our valid concerns and criticisms. We must take comfort in the response by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which, in anticipation of the film, rushed into print a pamphlet which clearly lays out church teaching and makes it very clear that Jews are not to be blamed for Jesus’ death.

Secondly, we ought not be over reactive about our concerns of anti-Semitism. By this, I mean the type of reaction we witnessed from Abe Foxman of the ADL and Marvin Heir of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Their charges of anti-Semitism without having actually seen the film have provided the kind of sensationalism that simply feeds the publicity surrounding the film, strengthens the film’s appeal, and which may have been a set back to Jewish-Christian relations. Instead of reactive, emotional responses, they would have done better to have waited to actually see the film before reacting, and then to have worked with Christian religious leaders who have taken note of its many problems, excesses, and stereotypes.

Jonathan Schwartz, the director of interreligious affairs of the Chicago Chapter of the American Jewish Committee puts it well when he writes, “…the Jewish community…must be very careful about how it responds to this film. We have no more business telling Christians how to read their holy scripture or saying the Gospels cannot be trusted, than Christians would have to suggest a preferred reading of or revision of a section of our Torah. Jewish criticism should be focused on the film’s reassertion of the blood curse and collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. We must be clear that our unhappiness stems from the introduction of hurtful, offensive and discredited anti-Jewish stereotypes that serve no fruitful purpose. And that are an affront to God and to all who recognize the divine spark in all of humanity. Our response to this offensive film should be measured and focused. It should not be disproportionate to the size of the actual threat it poses to Jewish welfare and safety. This film makes it more important than ever for like-minded Christians and Jews to reassert their dedication to promoting interfaith harmony and continue to work towards genuine understanding and acceptance.”

It follows from this that we would do well to draw from this film an impetus to implement the URJ program of outreach “Open Doors, Open Minds: Churches and Synagogues Studying Together”. This program was proposed by Rabbi Eric Yoffie at the most recent Biennial of the Reform Movement at which he said, “We must reach out to our neighbors and listen for God’s presence in their voices. Only in this way, speaking our fears while hearing the fears of others, will we build a shared commitment to a moral future….(And so) I ask this Assembly to recommend that each of our member congregations invite a church in their community to participate in a dialogue during the coming year. This initiative will require the participation of rabbis, cantors, ministers, and priests, but is directed primarily at congregational members.”

I hope that you will join me in responding to Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” by joining with our lay leaders, Cantor Green, and me in establishing this program in our community. Let us work for compassion. And to this, let us all say, Amen.

REFLECTIONS ON “THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST”

Rabbi Gary S. Gerson March 5, 2004

Rabbi Gary S. Gerson
March 5, 2004