MEL GIBSON’S PASSION – NO BIG WHOOP

You know what I think about all the hoohah over Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus’s trial and execution, The Passion of the Christ? z-z-zzz . . .

Is it anti-Semitic? Is Mel Gibson a well-motivated or ill-intentioned fanatic crackpot? Is his intention and/or mission to tell a revisionist “real truth” about culpability for Jesus’s death and pin it on the Jews? Does he want Christendom to declare a Holy War to avenge the Jews’ guilt?

Does any of this really matter? Nope.

The only question of any relevance is if this potboiler will change anyone’s mind about Jews and their intended destiny. I weigh in on the side of “no one.”

Moderate, open-minded Christians will remain moderate and open-minded. They will continue to accept Jews as friends and Judaism as another legitimate path toward God, like their own. Even if they wish for Jews to embrace Christianity, they will witness through their works, not their browbeating, to win our hearts to their Christian beneficence.

The Catholics? The vast majority of Catholics already think that Gibson is loose-cannon-cum-nutcase, and for nearly four decades, Papal authority itself has declared anti-Semitism taboo. So, if the Knights Templar are going to mount a crusade against the Jews, it better be a quiet one.

Conservative Christians who are faithful to fundamentalist doctrines certainly do not want Jews persecuted or dead. Indeed, to the Fundamentalist, the very redemption of the world depends on the exaltation of the Jew, not his undoing. If there is any rub between Jews and Fundamentalists, it is over the Fundamentalist claim to the exclusivity of salvation and the dynamic tension that inheres in any avowedly loving relationship that revolves around “I love you. You’re perfect. Now change.” But, to this I will attest: Some bellicose Fundamentalists may annoy us, but they do not hate us. And, the wacky perspective of an off-the-deep-end Catholic will certainly not change their minds.

What about the secular humanists? Well, despite the pronouncements of some conservatives, lots of secular humanists are truly warm, compassionate, ethical people. They truly do walk the talk about universal harmony. Yes, the more contentious among them also have their minion. But, they are invariably more wrapped up in keeping the Christmas tree and/or Chanukah menorah off the village square. Somehow, avenging Jesus’s death does not even make it to the agenda.

So, whom does that leave? Hindus? Buddhists? Baha’i? Zoroastrians? Moderate Muslims? Somehow, I am not scared.

Ah, the radical Islamists? Well, if you give a gander at the bilious anti-Semitism, secular and religious, vomited forth each day by the Saudi press and Al-Jazeera, you will immediately realize that anything Gibson has produced looks like a Hadassah convention.

I guess that leaves just the folks who are already anti-Semites. And, since most of them hate the Catholics as much as they hate the Jews, chances are that Mel’s movie will do little more to stoke the fires. We have had to worry about the hardcore anti-Semites all along, and one way or another, we will have to worry about them forever. They come in all shapes and flavors, but lowest on their list of “things we can blame on the Jews” is the death of Jesus.

You may say that I sound sarcastic, even cynical. Nope, I am just jaded. I am a thirty-plus year rabbinic veteran of the maelstrom of Jewish life. In that time, I have heard doomsayers declare countless irreparable breaches in Jewish-Christian relations and anti-Semitic watersheds. (Remember the ruckuses over Jesus Christ Superstar, Passover Plot and Last Temptation of Christ?) Now, I simply nod my head and wearily say, “Here we go again.” Why? Because at the end of the day, the apocalypse had not arrived, and the ominous threats and explosive issues had made little more than a dull thud. Honorable people stayed honorable, scoundrels remained scoundrels, and ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life somehow goes on.

So, go see Gibson’s magnum opus, if you wish. Or, stay home and watch Friends. If you do decide to go, good luck trying to decipher the Aramaic. If you ask me nice, I may be willing to give you a hand.