"The Passion" is Most Anticipated Movie

There have been several recent movie releases that I've awaited with eager anticipation. As a big fan of the respective books, I would place "The Lord of the Rings" and "Master and Commander" near the top of my list. Next year's most anticipated release is already a foregone conclusion: Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ." Due for release on Ash Wednesday in 2004, it is intended to be a faithful rendition of the scriptural accounts of Jesus' Crucifixion.

"The Passion" is going to be a very unusual production. All of its dialog will be in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew, with English subtitles. It will cover the last 12 hours of Jesus' life prior to the Crucifixion. Jesus will be represented by James Caviezel; the Virgin Mary by Maia Morgenstern, a Jewish actress from Romania; and Mary Magdalene by Monica Bellucci. Its script is supposed to have been essentially lifted from the four Gospels.

Gibson's work on producing "The Passion" (including his personal investment of over $25 million) has made him one of the most controversial figures of 2003. Fear and hatred of the movie's message have prompted many secularist Jews and liberal Christians to denounce Gibson and "The Passion" as anti-Semitic.

For example, James Rudin has demanded that he and his fellow Passion detractors be allowed to make major alterations to the script, costumes and even music to make the movie less "offensive." This is the same Rudin who had earlier demanded tolerance for the blasphemous movie "The Last Temptation of Christ."

In an August 2003 editorial for the "Kansas City Star," Rabbi Morris B. Margolies opposed the movie because he fears that the Christian Gospel is the root of hatred of Jews. He wrote that "For 2,000 years the narrative of the New Testament about Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion has been one of the main ingredients in fomenting anti-Semitism. The churches - Catholic and Protestant - have propagated the notion of the Jews as Christ- killers who are therefore forever consigned to be the pariahs of humankind and whose suffering is punishment for their never-to-be-forgiven crime…I have always maintained that there is a direct road leading from Calvary to Auschwitz." I don't know what Christians Margolies talks to. As far as I know, only neo-Nazis and the like hold the views that he describes; and they hardly qualify as Christian.

Margolies further maligned the Gospel accounts as false and unhistorical: "As to the New Testament accusation that the Jews killed Jesus, the Christian Bible is not a book of history. It was composed decades after the crucifixion, is inherently contradictory and was designed as a polemic writing in the propagation of the newly emergent religion." Here Margolies gets to the crux of all the vilification of the movie: the real objection is to the New Testament itself and its Gospel message.

Abraham Foxman, spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League, is one of the most outspoken critics of Mel Gibson and his movie. Foxman said of Gibson, "I think he's infected, seriously infected, with some very, very serious anti-Semitic views." That isn't too surprising, given the broad range of people who have been similarly defamed by that ironically-named organization.

Liberal Christians could hardly be left out of the action. According to a September 9, 2003 "Jewish Week" article, "Rev. John Pawlikowki, director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union, who criticized the script as being anti-Jewish and violating Church teachings last April with an ad hoc group of Catholic and Jewish scholars, said the Church officials are ignoring the real issue. 'I regret that none of the Catholic leaders … have addressed the substance of our critique,' he told The Jewish Week Monday. 'That substance is that the main story line puts the primary responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Jewish cabal led by Caiphas [the Jewish high priest]. This is contrary to the recent Catholic documents and modern biblical scholarship. Until they show in a concrete way how the script squares with these documents and with modern biblical scholarship their endorsements ring hollow.'"

Thankfully, the leader of Rev. Pawlikowki's own church, Pope John Paul II approvingly said of the movie, "It is as it was." Presumably the Pope is a credible authority on Catholic interpretations of Scripture. Pawlikowki and other Christian critics find themselves in the difficult position of having to condemn the New Testament in order to condemn the movie script. The claim that the Gospels foment anti-Semitism is simply bizarre. All of the writers and main characters in the New Testament are Jews. Jesus Himself was born a Jew. His redemptive work is depicted as a gift of God through the Jewish bloodline for the benefit of all mankind.

Yes, the Gospels describe the perfidy of those Jewish leaders who conspired to kill their own Messiah, but it does not indict the Jews as a whole for that crime. In fact, the whole Bible makes it clear that the sins of all of us made Jesus' mission, including His death and resurrection, necessary for our salvation. Christ Himself forgave even the very people, Jews and Romans, who had crucified Him, "for they know not what they do." Anyone who can see anti-Semitism in this has to twist the meaning of Scripture beyond recognition.

A number of religious Jews have had the chance to pre-screen the movie. What do they say about it? Matt Drudge of the internet's "Drudge Report" said of it "It's a miracle…the best movie I've seen in a long time."

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox Jew, wrote an article for "JewsWeek.com" in which he warns that American Christians are the Jews' best defense against religious intolerance. Attacks on Christian films like "The Passion" are harmful to the good relations between Jews and American Christians. "Do we really want to open up the Pandora's Box of suggesting that any faith may demand the removal of material that it finds offensive from the doctrines of any other faith? Do we really want to return to those dark times when Catholic authorities attempted to strip from the Talmud those passages that they found offensive?" Many other testimonials from prominent Jews have been published in recent months.

Finally, Maia Morgenstern, who portrays the Virgin Mary in Gibson's movie, is enthusiastic about her role. If anyone should be sensitive to anti- Semitism it should be this daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust victims. She claims that the "characters such as Mary and St. John are sympathetic Jews" and Gibson "allowed me to make suggestions based on my Jewish culture." Clearly religiously tolerant Jews understand that they have nothing to fear from the Gospel or from Gibson's film.

The Gospel of Christ is the ultimate expression of love. It is incompatible with anti-Semitism or any other form of hate. If "The Passion of Christ" does indeed faithfully depict the Crucifixion as described in the New Testament, it will prove to be the greatest blessing ever to come through the medium of film.