In his 1968 novel Heaven Help Us, Herbert Tarr writes of a young rabbi who, as part of his efforts to teach comparative religions to a group of giggling adolescents, accepts an invitation to attend a sermon in the local Episcopal church:

"Dr. Larrabie began with a hoary anecdote about a Protestant minister, a Roman Catholic priest and a 'Jewish rabbi', one I had used myself to a respectful silence; only this time the minister had the punch line, not the rabbi. Then....Dr. Larrabie began to sell 'swelling Revelation,' contrasting 'the Old Testament God of Law' (here he made such a face, as if referring to something not only old but also decomposing under his nose) and 'the New Testament God of Love.'"

Growing up as I did in a nonobservant Jewish home in which the cultural identification with Jewishness was far more important than any kind of Jewish spiritual observance, my background in Christianity extended to the standard summing up of "the difference", i.e. Christians think we killed Jesus and they've been punishing us ever since; and my so-called friend Ruth Ann's insistence when we were eight years old that I was at best condemned to spend eternity in purgatory because I was not a Catholic. I knew that "they" thought he was the literal son of God, and we didn't. Later on, when I was running support groups for women in the basement of an Episcopal church in Hackensack,NJ during the 1980's, the priest there (who was one of the coolest people I've ever met) said, "The difference between Christians and Jews is that the Jews have different expectations of how the Messiah will manifest himself."

Difference without comparative value judgment. Whoa. What a concept.

During my life I've dealt with various degrees of cultural rather than religious anti-Semitism, from being told I looked just like Barbra Streisand (which I don't, but that was code for "Gee, you have a big nose!) to "If you're Jewish, how come you drive such an old car?" Some of it was the stereotyping born of ignorance, some of it was downright hostile. But overall, I've been blessed with spending most of my life in the aftermath of the 1964 Vatican II reforms, which essentially gave the Jews a retrial and found that there just wasn't enough evidence to convict people like me:

"...authorities of the Jews and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ....Still, what happened in His passion cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from the Holy Scriptures."

There are some Catholics who have rejected the Vatican II reforms, including the so-called "exoneration" of the Jews. One of them is actor/director Mel Gibson, whose new release THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST has revived the debate about anti-Semitism in America at the same time that such sentiment is on an alarming rise in France.

Gibson and the film's official site insist now that the version of the Passion depicted in the film are assembled from the four Biblical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which is all well and good, but earlier he had admitted that the film was inspired partly by the book The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the 18th century Catholic mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich. This book contains passages depicting Jews as bloodthirsty and venal; and describes an old Jewess who confessed to her "that Jews in our country and elsewhere strangled Christian children and used their blood for all sorts of suspicious and diabolical practices." Gibson carries a relic of Emmerich in the form of a faded piece of cloth from her habit and has rejected characterizations of the nun as anti-Semitic. I might be willing to accept Gibson's assertions in a recent interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer that he is not anti-Semitic, were it not for him resorting to the old Great Jewish Conspiracy defense in a New Yorker article by Peter Boyer when he claims that "modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church." Is Mel Gibson an anti-Semite? Only he knows, though my guess is that he may be without even being aware of it. Is the film anti-Semitic? The answer to that question is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder says "Yes." Your mileage may differ.

While I understand that this is Gibson's way of trying to demonstrate to Christians, particularly Roman Catholics, whom he presumably hopes will see the error of their ways and join his own "traditionalist" sect, just what their Savior endured for them, he seems to have anointed himself as Prophet of the Passion, wielding his own mighty sword to smite the ungrateful masses. Martyrdom has been a recurring theme in many of Gibson's portrayals, and I wonder here if he's beginning to come unhinged, confusing the martyrdom of his own characters with the martyrdom of his Savior. His recent work in front of the camera has been a litany of Jesus-surrogates, why shouldn't he now be wearied of forever playing God the Son and graduate to becoming God the Father? His meticulous attention to every blow, every chunk of flesh torn from his Messiah's body, every spurt of blood, much of it in slow-motion, so audience can enjoy the torture even longer, plays more like a chapter out of The Passion According to George Romero than a faithful translation of any kind of spiritually significant work.

Gibson is in such a hurry to get to the smiting, which starts about twenty minutes into the film, that the scenes which should set up the background for the scourging of Jesus are cursory and play like a series of disjointed vignettes. It's as if Gibson himself is champing at the bit for the beatings to begin. He might as well be Alex, the antihero of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, thumbing through all those psalms and commandments and begats to read "all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and then the cross veshch and and all that cal,” reveling in a bit of the old ultra-violence, while the clergy of America nod benevolently. Add to the escalating blood, gore, loud =splats= on the soundtrack, and James Debney's ponderous booming score, the fact that Gibson has made note of the fact that it is his own hand holding the hammer that nails Jesus' hands to the cross (in slow-motion, of course), and this particular nonbeliever is left with the impression of one angry Christian. The New Testament's God is a God of love? Not in Mel Gibson's world. Gibson may think he's angry at those who not fall in line and provide adequate recognition of the sufferings of Jesus and he's just laying a huge guilt trip on his audience (Look at how much pain he went through, and what thanks does he get? Blue jeans in church! Meat on Fridays!), but you don't have to be a psychiatrist to see that Gibson, by doing the dirty deed himself, is indulging in a kind of cheapened fast-food rendition of self-flagellation, one in which he can say only he truly understands Jesus' pain -- while all the while raking in the box office cash.

As for Gibson's denials that the film is anti-Semitic, his claims ring hollow in the face of his re-imagining of Pontius Pilate into a morally conflicted, almost tragic character. Here, not only is Satan an androgynous (!!) black-clad figure who seems to only appear when among Jews (!!!), but Pilate is a reluctant administrator of a country full of Jewish rabble led by corrupt, Fagin-esque high priests. These are depicted as hook-nosed guys dressed in golden robes screaming, like Terry Jones in MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN, "He's not the Messiah!", a subtitle that took every fiber of my being to not shout out, "He's a very naughty boy!" in response. Pilate is ultimately portrayed here as simply weak, rather than venal or corrupt himself. Here he is not the bloodthirsty leader of an occupying force, but a victim of the corrupt Jewish high priests, powerless to resist them. Barabbas, the thief freed at the behest of the crowd, has similarly been transformed into a psychotic murderer, freed by the evil Jewish rabble intent on shedding the blood of the true Christ.

It's interesting to note that in some early copies of the Gospel of Matthew, the full name of the man whose release the Hebrew people called for is explicitly stated to have been "Jesus Barabbas." "Bar Abbas" is actually an Aramaic term meaning "Son of the Father." Thus, it may well have been a sort of nickname for Jesus, who often referred to God as "father." But in the version of Matthew we know today, the name “Barabbas” is left untranslated, making it unintelligible to foreigners, and potentially creating the impression that Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Barabbas were two different people. If Pilate condemned Jesus, this would have implied Christians were enemies of Rome -- an untenable view given the political realities of the time. But if the name could be explained by claiming that Pilate had indeed arrested a rebel named Jesus, but this "rebel" was, coincidentally, another man named Jesus -- Jesus Barabbas, it could now be explained that the Hebrew people, not Pilate, explicitly choose to free Barabbas and execute Jesus. So there, Mel. (source: "Behold The Man: The Real Life of the Historical Jesus")

The real tragedy of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is that there is a lovely little film about the life of Jesus in there, screaming to get out. Jim Caviezel, whose acting range up to this point has consisted of suffering, suffering, and suffering, would seem to be the inevitable casting for this role (though I have to wonder yet again why, as a director, if you're going to try to exonerate yourself from charges of anti-Semitism by noting that Jesus was a Jew, you couldn't at least find a real Jew to play him, instead of the chiseled, WASPish Caviezel, yet another fair-skinned, pale-eyed Jesus). In most of the film, Caviezel has little to do other than wince, groan, and occasionally get in touch with his inner Mel Gibson by peering out of his one good eye as if to say, "Is that all you got, sucka?" Yet the few flashbacks into the life of Jesus -- a scene in which he builds a table, his mother admonishing him to eat; another in which he talks about loving your enemies; and a beautifully-shot enactment of the Last Supper -- succeed brilliantly in demonstrating to the uninitiated such as Your Humble Critic both the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of this historical figure. It's clear that Caviezel both deeply respects and understands the Huge Responsibility he bears in portraying this role, and it's unfortunate that he wasn't allowed to turn it into something truly special. THIS was the film I wanted to see, and THIS would have been the more difficult film for Gibson to make, for how do you portray a man who is also a deity? It's easy to make "William Wallace Christ" -- just another Hollywood chop-em-up -- and that's what Gibson has done here, although it's a very handsome chop-em-up, with beautiful cinematography by Caleb Deschanel.

Further proof that for Gibson it's All About the Beatings, is that the Resurrection, this most important aspect of Christianity is handled literally as an afterthought; the tomb of Christ is opened, we see an empty shroud, and then there is Jesus, healed and naked, as if he'd just emerged from a schvitz at the Turkish baths rather than returned from the dead. He looks as if he's relieved that it was all just a bad dream, until fleeting shot of the healed stigmata in his hands reveals the truth. If we didn't know the story, this would play like a bad imitation of a Twilight Zone episode, but as it is, it's merely an afterthought. Maybe it really IS all about the beatings after all.

Christianity in general, and Roman Catholicism in particular, has always been selective about what it regards as truths, with inconvenient voices such as the author of the Gospel of Mary of Magdalen and the Gospel of Philip being conveniently disposed of because they did not adhere to the new power structure's agenda, much the way the Democratic Party this year had to get Howard Dean out of the way because he was a threat to the party's power structure. That this film was released just two days before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops report on sexual abuse of children by over 4,000 priests is no small irony. We already know via the long history of torture and killings of heretics committed by Christian power structures over the centuries, that the Pharisees had no patent on religious and political corruption and hackery. Power really does corrupt, and THAT is the message that all of us, whether we believe in Jesus' divinity or not, should keep in mind.

It was clear to me while watching this film that this is subject matter that is going to resonate with Christians far more than it ever will or can with me, though the one viewer quoted in my local paper who called it "the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" strikes me as being in serious need of some psychological help. Still, the irony of the same evangelical Christians who decry the increasingly graphic depiction of violence in popular culture flocking to this near pornographically-bloody film with their children in tow, pouring money into the pockets of a man who believes that they are going to hell because they do not subscribe to his version of Catholicism strikes me as just as odd as the American Jews who think that these same Evangelicals are their friends because they support Israel, when in fact the theology of these so-called "friends" requires that they all be killed or converted during the Final Battle.

The story of Jesus is about a man who at the very least was visionary, intelligent, quite possibly psychically gifted, and lived an exemplary life. His message was one of tolerance, love, respect, charity, and humility. No less a personage than the Dalai Lama has recognized him as "either a fully enlightened being or a bodhisattva of a very high spiritual realization." Yet almost none of that appears in this film. Gibson's relentless focus on the power-drunk Pharisees, the hulking cave troll-like Romans who flogged and tortured this man, and the graphic minutiae of their methods of torture, completely obscures that message. The God of the New Testament may be, as the fictional Dr. Larrabie said, the God of Love, but Mel Gibson's God is one of vengeance and fear and loathing.

I'll defend to the death Mel Gibson's right to make whatever film he wants to, and even its distribution. If you think it might offend or upset you to the point that you can't cope, don't see it. I'll defend equally the validity of those who find it a spiritually moving experience, even if I don't understand it. But at a time when the United States is being led by an unelected President who seems to believe it is his mission to hasten Armageddon, and yet another culture war in the U.S. is being fought for a group of Americans struggling to obtain equal treatment in the eyes of the law, it seems clear that some very seriously incendiary shit is cooking up under our so-called civilized veneer, and Mr. Gibson may have just lit the match.

-- Jill Cozzi

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