“The Passion of the Christ”

Presented by Rabbi Philip Pohl

As promised, this morning I will speak about the Mel Gibson produced movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”

Let me tell you that if you’re undecided about whether to see this film, don’t see it.

If you’ve already made up your mind not to see the film, I think you’ve made a good choice.

It is not a pretty sight, and other than the passion, the suffering, experienced by Jesus, there really is no other plot to the film.

Let me tell you right away that our ancestors, the Jews who were contemporaries of Jesus, are not portrayed or depicted in a positive light whatsoever.

If you tend not to like the Jewish people, this film will not help change that feeling or that tendency.

The Jews are portrayed as bloodthirsty, cruel, and merciless. They really want nothing more than the death of Jesus.

The Cohen Gadol – High Priest, who is dressed in a costume that makes him look and sound like Darth Vader, leads a group obviously threatened by what they believe Jesus represents.

This struggle is an example of the classic struggle in ancient Judaism between the Saducees, represented often, and mostly by groups like the Cohaneem-priests, the higher class and elite in society, and the Pharisees, represented by rabbis, with Jesus being an extreme and unacceptable proponent of the Pharisaic teachings of the time.

I’m not sure how to respond to most Christians when asked about this movie, but I do know how to respond to Catholics. The response is clear. Officially, this film is against accepted doctrine in your religion.

Mel Gibson’s film promotes a position that has now been delegitimized as authentic Catholic teaching.

The movie contradicts and ignores the exoneration that has been granted by the Catholic Church to the Jewish people. We, the Jewish people are not to be held responsible then, or now, for the death of Jesus.

Do I believe it is possible that Jews were involved in creating the climate and helped promote the death of Jesus? Yes, I believe it.

I know that potentially we can be as guilty of committing violent crimes as anybody else. There are many right-wing fundamentalist Israelis who prove that, not to mention American Jews as well.

But, for the most part, that is not our image. For the most part, that is not our legacy. For the most part, that is certainly not what we teach.

But is it possible? Yes, if it is possible for other human beings, then it is possible for us. We’re not above those tendencies. Violence is not outside the purview of a Jew. But mostly we abhor it, and we work hard to prevent it.

Many Jewish people fear – and this fear is sometimes justified - that fundamentalist Catholicism - if not Christianity as a whole - fosters a hatred of the Jewish people. And so what troubles us most about this film is that it serves to reinforce this hatred in the minds of those who already dislike or tend to dislike Jews. They, like Mel Gibson, blame the Jewish people for the most famous murder in all of history.

Just exactly how is that supposed to make us feel? Yes, the hatred can be overcome, and we have moved beyond it quite frequently in many areas such as social justice. There are important issues upon which both parts of the so-called Judeo-Christian heritage can agree.

But what scares us most about this movie is that in a country, even as benevolent as the United States, a mass-produced, mass-media message as powerful as this film can potentially promote disdain for the Jewish people, if not outright anti-Semitism.

It is very scary. It basically makes us feel as if, “They just don’t want to live with us.”

I’m not sure how accurate the film is historically. I’m sure it does promote some accurate religious truth and teaching, even while historical events may have been changed and exaggerated, including the extent of the violence inflicted upon Jesus.

I’m not an historian, or a scholar of the history of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. I do know that even those who are scholars disagree on much of the story. Even the different books of the New Testament don’t tell the same story.

Ultimately, that does not matter, for it is religious truth, not historical truth that this film wishes to portray. It is a religious truth that Jews cannot and do not live with. And that’s the problem for Mel Gibson and many others.

When I walked out of the film I was afraid that the few other people who were watching the film with me might make some derogatory anti-Jewish remark that I would be prompted to defend. Or, it might cause me to run. Of course that didn’t happen. But I bet it did happen in theatres in certain areas of the United States.

The basic difference between what we derive from this movie and what Christians derive from this move is this:

Christianity is based upon a rejection of Judaism, no matter how you slice or dice it. It may not be a full outright rejection. It may be termed a completion, a fulfillment, a natural consequence, or it may be termed as the need to supercede Judaism, which is the most common theological term.

In other words, Christianity, from its perspective, obviates the need for Judaism. Therefore, it makes sense for a real frum-observant Christian fundamentalist, like Mel Gibson, to depict Jews in a negative light because, if Judaism is so wonderful, who needs Christianity?

Now, I’m going to say something that sounds a little crazy, but I think it’s true. I intend no disrespect toward any Christians or anyone else here today. If any will be felt, I apologize in advance. It is not my intention.
Here’s what I want to say - in a sense, as a Jew, as a teacher of Judaism, as a rabbi, I’m grateful that belief in Jesus is at the center of Christianity. The reason I say that is because, for me, and I think for many, many other Jews, belief in Jesus just doesn’t make sense.

I guess it’s not to supposed to make rational sense, any more than the splitting of the Red Sea or the revelation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai make rational sense as events we believe actually happened.

But that’s the truth we live with and accept.

Christianity lives with and accepts its truth that Jesus died for the sins of all humanity, including the sins of the Jews. Then Jesus was resurrected, and through his resurrection, there will ultimately be the possibility of resurrection, redemption and renewal, for all human beings.

Well, I don’t believe that, and it’s easy for me not to believe it because to me, it doesn’t make sense. As Jews, we don’t see the sensibility of that belief.

Otherwise, I think, many Jews could find much of Christianity to be quite attractive and appealing.

The lessons in the New Testament are indeed very powerful. They attempt to promote peace and love. Of course those lessons are based upon ideas found in Judaism, but to many, it is the Christian presentation of these ideas that is quite attractive. Let’s face it; Christianity does have quite a few adherents in the world.

For Christians, a belief in Jesus is supposed to lead to promoting love, peace, mercy and grace, but most Jewish people can’t get beyond the requisite belief in Jesus.

We have other ways to promote love, peace, mercy and grace. But for the believing Christian, Jesus is the way.

I wish to share one more specific point about the film, and then something more pertinent for today with which to conclude.

The very first image you see in the film is simply a quotation from the Bible. What quotation?

You might think something from the New Testament – uh, uh – no, Mel Gibson provides either one or both of the two following verses on the screen. Mel Gibson only listed the chapter not the verse numbers, so I’m not sure if one or both of these two verses were presented as the very first thing you saw in the movie –

“Surely our diseases he did bear, and our pains he carried;
Whereas we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded because of our transgressions, he was crushed because of our iniquities: the chastisement of our welfare was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed.”

The source of those verses is Isaiah, Chapter 53. That’s the quotation Mel Gibson used. They are well-known verses that have often been used by people who wish to apply the predictions in the Old Testament to the future prophecy of Jesus.

We have contended with that argument for a long time. The basic Jewish understanding is that while it certainly sounds like what happened to Jesus, the intention was not for an individual to be represented here. Rather a metaphorical “suffering servant” is created by Isaiah to represent all of Israel in his imagery and poetry.

Today is not the day to go into the biblical exegesis that tries to defend this position from within Judaism. Just know that it was fairly easy for the proponents of Jesus during his time and thereafter, to read backward into the Book of Isaiah events and legends that are reputed to have happened to Jesus, in order to make them fit into what Isaiah predicted might happen to the “suffering servant,” centuries before Jesus lived.

Well, that’s what Mel Gibson is trying to do, too. That’s why he picks this verse from Isaiah 53 to open the film. His point is clearly to demonstrate, from the very beginning of the film, that Jesus’ life is a fulfillment, and a superceding, of everything written in the “Old Testament.”

Otherwise, it would have been just as easy, certainly perhaps even more appropriate to choose a verse from the New Testament with which to begin this film.

Finally, the movie does not present very much at all, just really a few seconds, depicting the resurrection of Jesus.

This is important because the resurrection of Jesus from a Christian point of view is the opposite of the predominant Jewish view of resurrection at that time and thereafter.

In Judaism resurrection means that after a person dies, that person will be reborn and resurrected into a new life, into a new world, not this world.

Christianity turned that around with Jesus and brought Jesus back to this world.

I ask you, Ladies and Gentlemen, so many of whom are here to observe yizkor today, what would you give, how much would you give, what part of your life would you give up, in order to have your loved ones return to this world and to be with you once again here, now, in olam ha-zeh – this world.

For us, “tihiyat ha-mateem – the revival of the dead” means something different – it means that the dead live on with us in this world, as we continue to live our lives in this world.

They live on with us by being connected, by being attached, by being part of who we are, always and forever.

The beauty of Judaism is to understand that our loved ones indeed may be resurrected, and we will be resurrected perhaps with them, in some future world of which we do not really know.

We have faith, and we want to believe that this is possible. It is the story of Passover and the rebirth of the world through spring, that gives us the hope and faith we need.

But what we know, without any doubt, is that the people with whom we shared life, who brought us into life, with whom we grew up, the children we brought into the world, are an indelible part of who we are.

It’s true for the most inane, minute details, and obviously it’s true for issues that are much larger and more important.

For example, my mother learned from her mother, and I learned from my mother, who, praise God, is still alive, that it was the custom in our family to abstain from eating matzah not only the day before Passover, but for a whole month before Passover, from Purim to Passover.

Every year, between Purim and Passover, I think of that custom and I connect to my buba-grandmother. Its teaching and its teacher are continually part of my life.

Maybe it’s an inane, minute detail. So how much more of an important influence are your parents upon you, are your husbands and wives upon you, are your brothers and sisters upon you, are your children upon you, yes, even your children, when it comes to the crucial issues of life.

If you know any Hebrew, you’ll begin to recognize some of the language in this Mel Gibson movie. The Aramaic is really an Aramaic that is closely connected to the Hebrew language, and after awhile, especially with the assistance of the subtitles, a knowledge of Hebrew will help you connect to the film in an even more literal manner.

Every once in awhile, biblical verses are quoted or paraphrased. In one instance a verse is quoted which is from the Book of Psalms and is taken from that context and placed into our weeknight, Ma-ariv service.

It is Psalm 33, Verse 22

In Your hand I shall entrust my spirit, You redeem me, Hashem, God of truth.

Ultimately, one of the messages in this movie, the deepest and simplest message of the movie, is the same deep and simple religious message of Judaism as well.

That is, ultimately, we must entrust our spirits and our bodies to God, in life, and then in death as well.

That is what we declare by our attendance here today, and that is what we declare at the end of every single worship service, at least the services we end on Shabbat and Yom Tov morning, and the one we will end today with the singing of Adon Olam.

The last verse of Adon Olam is based on Psalm 33, 22. It has been reworked into one of the most well known verses of any Jewish or Hebrew song – it is the ultimate religious truth with which we leave here, and which we need to reinforce in our lives regularly –

In God’s hand I place my soul

At a time when I go to sleep (and that doesn’t only mean for the evening)

And at a time when I’m awake (and that doesn’t only mean for the morning)

And with my body and soul (I proclaim)

The Lord is for me, with me, and I will not fear.

Or, as we will recite in just a few moments in Psalm 23,

“ I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”

May the Lord be with you and allow you to be with your loved ones, in soul today, and perhaps some day in body.

May that hope ease your fears and worries, bring you peace and comfort, now and forevermore.

And I say Amen.