Controversial 'Passion' presents priceless opportunity for education

Will "Passion" have a negative effect on society? Might it promote anti-Jewish violence? I think it well might. Long cultural habits die hard. Debate around the film has already occasioned ugly anti-Semitic slurs. My university and I have received ominous threats from a furious Christian "Passion" fan. ("I am telling you now that if this woman continues to be employed as a professor, you will be putting your university at risk.") If the publicity-oriented "debate" stirs such feelings now, will the true debate stir fewer feelings once the public can actually view the movie? I doubt it.

Gibson reshot some scenes after the prerelease attention. Will he actually follow some of the scholars' suggestions and make his Bad Guys - the Jewish high priest, most of his council, and most of Jerusalem's Jews - less extreme? I don't know.

Will the anti-Semitism the movie has already stirred lead to violence? I think in the US it won't, despite the violence of our culture. Anti-Semitism just hasn't had the defining role here, historically, that it has had elsewhere. The long tolerance of anti-Jewish violence in Europe, and the current climate of violence against Jews - in Istanbul, South America, Britain, and France - inclines me to be much less sanguine about the effects of "Passion" there.

In recent years in Europe, violence against Jews - if those Jews are Israelis - has been explicitly excused by appeal to the tradition that "the Jews killed Christ." Horrific suicide bombings during the current intifada inspired a church in Edinburgh, over Easter 2001, to display a painting of the crucifixion with Roman centurions and officers of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) at the foot of the cross. A political cartoon in Italy's La Stampa commented on the IDF's cordon around armed Palestinian gunmen in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity with a baby Jesus, crouching in his manger at the sight of an Israeli tank, crying out, "Oh, no. They don't want to kill me again?!?"

My point is that the toxic tradition - Jews killed Jesus; all Jews everywhere are culpable; when something bad happens to them, it is no less than they deserve - is very much alive. The film, if unaltered, is inflammatory, and potentially dangerous.

My responsibility is to speak out - not against the film so much as against the ignorance and the unselfconscious anti-Judaism that it so dramatically embodies. Gibson has given us a priceless opportunity for public education. Out of the ivory tower, past the Cineplex, into the churches and interfaith communities, this teachable moment now serves as the silver lining that shines within the looming dark cloud of Gibson's "Passion."

• Paula Fredriksen, a Bible scholar, is a professor at Boston University. This article is reprinted with permission from the Winter 2003/2004 issue of The Responsive Community.

Page: 1 | 2