There has been much ink spilled of late on the subject of Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ.” As an Orthodox Jew and ordained rabbi, I, like so many others, was disappointed by Gibson’s new venture as I have been a longtime fan of his movies. I felt that at the very least a latent form of anti-Semitism was being brought to the screen in the guise of presenting a religious movie about the last hours of Christ’s suffering. Yet I didn’t quite know how to respond publicly to this event.
On the one hand, I understood the desire to counter this movie as a possible stimulus for the re-awakening of religion-based anti-Semitism. This was Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman’s approach. But I disagreed with him because I felt that even though he was quite possibly correct that this movie is not conducive to better relations between Christians and Jews, it would be a far better approach to simply not comment on it at all.
The events surrounding the Crucifixion are, after all, a part of the Gospels and public condemnations such as Foxman’s could produce a very negative and unnecessary backlash.
In the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church came out with the Nostra Aetate, which is now church dogma and states in the clearest of language (and I quote in part):
” . . . the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ. Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
These words clearly change the entire complexion of the Catholic Church as it concerns the Jewish people. Whereas in pre-Vatican II days there was the belief that the Jews, including all subsequent generations, shared in the collective guilt of the Crucifixion, it is no longer a part of church doctrine and in fact it is the opposite that is now believed.
Additionally the same attitudes are now expressed by all mainstream Protestant denominations as well as the Catholic Church. There is now (as compared to the past) hardly any missionary activity at all to the Jewish people except by some fringe groups.
This brings me back to Gibson. His denomination rejects Vatican II. He believes with all sincerity that the Jews of that generation are to blame for the Crucifixion, at least in part. But as I have watched him, I have come to the conclusion that he is not an anti-Semite at all. He is simply a believer in the fundamentals of the Gospels as he understands them. He is a man with a mission to spread what he believes to be the truth about the events of that day but, perhaps even more important, to spread the truth about belief in a power higher than ourselves. He places no blame on the Jewish people of today and said that such an attitude would be completely un-Christian.
I perceive that he is a man of complete faith who wants to transmit those beliefs to his fellow man. What I have heard is a man of faith talk about theological issues of a God-centered world, a God who really controls the world, and about the ultimate value of spirituality versus materialism.
Here is a man who acknowledged that he has been handed on a platter all the material goods that any man could ever want. And he imbibed with complete gusto and abandon. Yet having all of that, he realized that he was incomplete and that the ultimate goal of man is the spiritualism that seeks unity with God. It is this that motivated him to spend $25 million of his own money on producing this movie.
To be sure, Gibson’s theology is not Jewish theology. The two are incompatible, at least from a Jewish perspective. But his belief about man’s importance relative to God is almost identical with Judaism’s. So instead of condemning his acts, I now applaud his motivations as having far more relevance.
All people of faith would do well to take a lesson for our own lives as to what is really important and what is not.
