Two weeks before Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ flashed onto movie screens, online ticket merchants reported that up to half their total sales were for advance purchases for The Passion of the Christ. One Dallas multiplex reserved all 20 of its screens for The Passion.
That said, I am neither a prophet nor a movie critic. I am merely an Orthodox rabbi using ancient Jewish wisdom to make three predictions about The Passion.
First: Mel Gibson and Icon Productions will make a great deal of money. Those distributors who surrendered to pressure from Jewish organizations and passed on The Passion will be kicking themselves, while Newmarket Films will laugh all the way to the bank. Theater owners are going to love this film.
Second: The Passion will become famous as the most serious and substantive Biblical movie ever made. It will be one of the most talked-about entertainment events in history.
My third prediction is that the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent as The Passion uplifts and inspires them. The Passion will propel vast numbers of unreligious Americans to embrace Christianity. The movie will one day be seen as a harbinger of America’s third great religious reawakening.
Those Jewish organizations that have squandered both time and money futilely protesting The Passion, ostensibly in order to prevent pogroms in Pittsburgh, can hardly be proud of their performance. They failed at everything they attempted. They were hoping to ruin Gibson rather than enrich him. They were hoping to suppress The Passion rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.
In this, they have failed miserably. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, these critics have triggered anger, hurt, and resentment. Hosting the Toward Tradition radio show and speaking before many audiences nationwide, I enjoy extensive communication with Christian America, and what I hear is troubling. Fearful of attracting the ire of Jewish organizations quick to hurl the “anti-Semite” epithet, some Christians are reluctant to speak out. One can bludgeon resentful people into silence, but behind closed doors, emotions continue to simmer.
I consider it crucially important for Christians to know that not all Jews are in agreement with their self-appointed spokesmen. Most American Jews, experiencing warm and gracious interactions each day with their Christian fellow citizens, would feel awkward trying to explain why so many Jewish organizations seem focused on an agenda hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Many individual Jews have shared with me their embarrassment over the fact that groups ostensibly representing them attack The Passion but are silent about depraved entertainment that encourages killing cops and brutalizing women. Citing artistic freedom, Jewish groups helped protect sacrilegious exhibits such as the anti-Christian feces extravaganza presented by the Brooklyn Museum of Art four years ago. One can hardly blame Christians for assuming that Jews feel artistic freedom is important only when exercised by those hostile toward Christianity.
But this is not how all Jews feel. In audiences around America, I am encountering bitterness toward Jewish organizations that insist that belief in the New Testament is de facto evidence of anti-Semitism. Christians heard Jewish leaders denouncing Gibson for making a movie that follows Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion long before any of them had even seen the movie. Furthermore, Christians are hurt that Jewish groups are presuming to teach them what Christian Scripture “really means.” They hear figures like the rabbi I debated on The O’Reilly Factor last September, who said: “We have a responsibility as Jews, as thinking Jews, as people of theology, to respond to our Christian brothers and to engage them, be it Protestants, be it Catholics, and say, look, this is not your history, this is not your theology, this does not represent what you believe in.”
This man happens to be a respected rabbi, and a good one, but he too has bought into the preposterous proposition that Jews will reeducate Christians about Christian theology and history. Is it any wonder that this astonishing arrogance spurs bitterness?
Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews’ best (and perhaps only) friends also feel resentment toward Jews who believe that The Passion reveals startling new information about the Crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews who think that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles in history into snarling, Jew-hating predators.
Christians are baffled by Jews who don’t understand that President George Washington, who knew and revered every word of the Gospels, was still able to write that oft-quoted, beautiful letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, offering friendship and full participation in America to the Jewish community.
One of the directors of the American Jewish Committee recently warned that The Passion “could undermine the sense of community between Christians and Jews that’s going on in this country. We’re not allowing the film to do that.” No sir, it isn’t the film that threatens that sense of community: The arrogant and intemperate responses of some Jewish organizations are responsible for that.
Today, a hateful danger threatens all Americans, both Jews and Christians. Many of the men and women fighting that peril on the frontlines find great support in their Christian faith. It is strange that Jewish organizations, purporting to protect Jews, think that insulting allies is the preferred way to carry out that mandate.
–Radio talk show host Rabbi Daniel Lapin is president of Toward Tradition.