Passion: A rabbi's view

RABBI BARRY LEFF SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

Mel Gibson's new movie The Passion of the Christ is the goriest movie I've seen in some time. Many Christians complain (quite rightly) about excessive violence in movies and on TV, and I question whether putting the violence in a religious context somehow makes it acceptable. However, as a rabbi, my interest in the movie centres on two other issues: Will it encourage anti-Semitism? What impact will the movie have on Jewish-Christian relations?

I do not think the movie will encourage a big rise in anti-Semitism. Anti-Semites do not need a movie or further excuses to hate Jews. Christians who do not hate Jews today will not come out of the movie hating Jews – everything in the movie is an old, well-known story. I am confident that the average Christian of today is more sophisticated than the average Christian who watched the passion plays in the Middle Ages. Moreover, it wasn't the plays themselves that caused the violence, it was the anti-Semitic sermons that went with them.

The impact the movie will have on Jewish-Christian relations, or on how Christians understand Jesus, is probably not much. That is the real pity here.

Movie is midrash, interpretation. Gibson decided to write his own midrash on the death of Jesus. The sad thing is that the movie relies on all the old stereotypes. The Jews are wicked and bloodthirsty. The Roman soldiers are sadistic. Mary is dressed in an outfit that looks like a nun's habit. Caiaphas leads a kangaroo court. Pilate is made far more sympathetic than in scripture.

Gibson had an opportunity to take the story in a different direction. Ever since Nostra Aetate, the Catholic church's groundbreaking statement in 1965 that absolved Jews of responsibility for the death of Jesus, interest has grown among Christians in understanding Jesus' Jewish roots.

Gibson's midrash echoes the old anti-Semitism because it continues to treat "the Jews" as a group totally distinct from Jesus and his disciples. That's not accurate: Jesus was a Jew. In the movie, in the Aramaic, his disciples call him rabbi, you lose a little of the flavor of that when you read the subtitle "teacher." If you read the Gospels as internal criticism, Jew criticizing Jew, it does not read as any more anti-Semitic than Isaiah or Jeremiah. But if you read it as an outside group ("Christians") criticizing a different group ("Jews"), it does read as anti-Semitic.

Everything we know about Jesus suggests that he was an observant Jew who kept the commandments. In Matthew, he is quoted as saying he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. A few more scenes – perhaps one with Jesus washing his hands and reciting the blessing for eating bread, and a scene that showed Caiaphas and others doing the same – would have reinforced the message that this was a struggle among Jews.

But the movie fails to provide a context and it fails to provide details that are readily available from Jewish sources. If Gibson had drawn on some additional sources, such as the Mishnah, he could have learned how the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Court, functioned in the late Second Temple period. He could have stayed true to the story in the Gospels, but informed his interpretation with other sources that show the Jews in a much more sympathetic light.

Why did Caiaphas want Jesus executed? No one would be put to death for claiming to be the Messiah – Judaism has had lots of people making that claim. The real issue was Jesus claiming to be God, therefore leading people into idol worship, because only God is God. This was glossed over in the movie. Jesus was also accused of sorcery, likewise a capital offence at the time.

Gibson did one thing to try and mitigate the potential of the film to incite anti-Semitism. The line "his blood be upon us" is still in the movie, but only in Aramaic. Even so, I suspect Christians will hear it in their head when they see the scene, as it is a well-known verse in Matthew.

The Passion is an excursion down an unfortunate path blazed by Constantine in the fourth century, emphasizing the cross and the death of Jesus over his life. It shows Jesus' life as being salvation through his suffering, instead of his life as an inspirational example for how to treat others. It would have been better for all of us – Jews, Christians and everyone else – if Gibson had chosen to focus his cinematic talents on love, tolerance and forgiveness, rather than on pain, suffering and brutality. But maybe that is asking too much of someone whose career was made by Lethal Weapon.

Rabbi Barry Leff is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Tikvah in Richmond.

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