Rabbi Barry Leff Digest
Number 73 Date  2/24/04

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Reviewed by Rabbi Barry Leff

        Mel Gibon’s new movie, The Passion of The Christ, is the bloodiest, goriest, ugliest movie I’ve seen in some time.  There is not much “passion” in evidence.  The movie would more accurately be called the beating, scourging, tearing the flesh from, abusing, vilifying, and crucifying of The Christ.  The term the “passion” comes from the Latin for suffering, and suffering doesn’t begin to describe this movie.

        I’m not a fan of “realistic” violence.  I grew up on cartoon violence.  The safe gets dropped on the head of Wile E. Coyote, and he gets up and dusts himself off and goes on his way.  The bad guy get shot in a Western, there’s a puff of smoke, a clutching of the chest, and a quick expiration with a minimum of blood.  Just on violence, this movie should be rated NC-17.  The Roman soldiers are the most vicious sadists imaginable, delighting in ripping the flesh off of this poor person, while the Jews callously stand around watching.  Many Christians complain (quite rightly) about excessive violence in the movies and on TV.  Does putting the violence in a religious context somehow make it acceptable?

        I do not claim to be a movie critic.  So I am not going to write about whether the movie was a “good” movie, or whether it was effective, or emotionally engaging, or any of those other artistic issues.  I will leave that to others.  As a rabbi, my interest in the movie centers on two issues:  1) What impact will the movie have on Jewish-Christian relations?  2) Will it encourage anti-Semitism?

        To take the last question first, 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.  Watching the Prince of Egypt did not make Jews hate modern Egyptians, watching The Passion is not going to make Christians hate Jews.  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.  It wasn’t the passion plays themselves that caused the violence—it was the anti-Semitic sermons that went with them.  Even though many Jews fear Mel Gibson’s movie is nothing but a modern version of the old passion play, the results are not likely to be the same.

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

        Movie is midrash—interpretation.  Mel 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 even dressed up in an outfit that looks like a nun’s habit.  In fact, Gibson makes the stereotypes if anything even starker—Caiaphas leads a kangaroo court.  Pilate is made far more sympathetic than the hand-washer of scripture.  In fact, Pilate comes across as far too nice to be a successful Roman governor in an age when the Roman governors were noted for their cruelty, and the peasants were frequently revolting.

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

        Gibson’s midrash has all the echoes of the old anti-Semitism because it continues to treat “the Jews” as a group totally distinct from Jesus and his disciples.  And 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 sub-title “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 would suggest that he was an observant Jew who kept the commandments.  In Matthew Jesus is quoted as saying he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.  A few more scenes—perhaps one with Jesus washing his hands, and then reciting the blessing for eating bread, and a scene that showed Caiaphas and some others doing the same thing—could have reinforced the message that this was a struggle amongst Jews, not between Jews and others.

There was even a line in the movie itself, which could have contributed to the sense of Jesus being a Jew talking to Jews, which unfortunately did not merit a sub-title.  In one scene, Jesus says (in Aramaic) that he spoke his message to the Jews…but that line did not merit a sub-title.

        The movie fails to provide a context, and it fails to provide additional details that could have been readily available from Jewish sources.  The Jews are portrayed as mindless, irrational, and bloodthirsty.  Yet if in constructing his midrash Gibson had drawn on some additional sources—such as the Mishnah—he could have learned something about how the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Court, functioned in the late 2^nd Temple period.  He could have stayed true to the story from the gospels, but he could have informed his interpretation with details from other sources that could easily have shown the Jews in a much more sympathetic light.  Why did Caiaphas want to see Jesus executed?  What was his great crime?  No one would be put to death for claiming to be the Messiah—Judaism has had lots of people making that claim.  A close reading of the Gospel according to Mark shows that the real issue was Jesus claiming to be God, therefore leading people into idol worship, because only God is God.  But this was glossed over in the movie.  Jesus was also accused of sorcery, likewise a capital offense (you shall not suffer a witch to live).

        Pilate speculated that if he didn’t kill Jesus, Caiaphas would rise up in revolt, and if he DID kill Jesus, Jesus’ followers would rise up in revolt.  If this was true, where were all of the followers of Jesus who would lead a revolt?  All we see is a few disciples and a few teary eyed women—nothing that could cause a civil war. 

        When I saw the crowd chant “crucify him!” I cringed.  Because at that moment  I felt I was watching the excuse for centuries and centuries of misdirected violence against Jews.  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 the Aramaic.  The filmmaker left the subtitles off.  Which is a small concession.  Only rabbis, students of Talmud, and Syrian Orthodox priests will know that the line is still there.  But I suspect Christians will hear the line playing in their head when they see the scene, even without the benefit of sub-titles—it’s a well known line from Matthew.

        The Passion is an excursion down an unfortunate path blazed by Constantine in the 4^th century.  Which is the path of emphasizing the cross and the death of Jesus over the life of Jesus.  The path of seeing the point of Jesus’ life as being salvation through his suffering, instead of seeing the point of his life as an inspirational example for how to treat others.  If there is a point to the movie for Christians, I suppose it would be “look at how much suffering Jesus endured for you.”  It would have been better for all of us—Jews, Christians, and everyone else—if Mel Gibson had instead chosen to focus his cinematic talents on love, tolerance, and forgiveness, on miracles and healing, rather than on pain, suffering, and brutality.  But maybe that would be asking too much of someone whose career was made by Lethal Weapon.

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