← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 12325 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2004-02-14
2004-02-14 14:26 | User Profile
Why Mel Owes One to the Jews by Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Two weeks before Mel Gibson's Passion flashes onto two thousand screens, online ticket merchants are reporting that up to half their total sales are for advance purchases for Passion. One Dallas multiplex has reserved all twenty of its screens for The Passion. 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.
One, Mel Gibson and Icon Productions will make a great deal of money. Those distributors who surrendered to pressure from Jewish organizations and passed on Passion will be kicking themselves, while Newmarket Films will laugh all the way to the bank. Theater owners are going to love this film.
Two, 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; it is currently on the cover of Newsweek and Vanity Fair.
My third prediction is that the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent as Passion uplifts and inspires them. 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 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 Passion rather than promote it. Finally, they were hoping to help Jews rather than harm them.
Here I digress slightly to exercise the Jewish value of "giving the benefit of the doubt" by discounting cynical suggestions growing in popularity, that the very public nature of their attack on Gibson exposed their real purpose ââ¬â fundraising. Apparently, frightening wealthy widows in Florida about anti-Semitic thugs prowling the streets of America causes them to open their pocketbooks and refill the coffers of groups with little other raison d'être. But let's assume they were hoping to help Jews.
However, instead of helping the Jewish community, they have inflicted lasting harm. By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity in a positive light, they 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 groups that are so quick to hurl the "anti-Semite" epithet, some Christians are reluctant to speak out. Although one can bludgeon resentful people into silence, 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 that groups, ostensibly representing them, attack 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 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. However, this is not how all Jews feel.
From audiences around America, I am encountering bitterness at Jewish organizations insisting 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." Listen to a rabbi whom I debated on the Fox television show hosted by Bill O'Reilly last September. This is what he 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."
He 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 breathtaking arrogance spurs bitterness?
Many Christians who, with good reason, have considered themselves to be Jews' best (and perhaps, only) friends also feel bitter at Jews believing that Passion is revealing startling new information about the Crucifixion. They are incredulous at Jews thinking that exposure to the Gospels in visual form will instantly transform the most philo-Semitic gentiles of 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 AJC recently warned that 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 the sense of community; it is the arrogant and intemperate response of Jewish organizations that does so.
Jewish organizations, hoping to help but failing so spectacularly, refutes all myths of Jewish intelligence. How could their plans have been so misguided and the execution so inept?
Ancient Jewish wisdom teaches that nothing confuses one's thinking more than being in the grip of the two powerful emotions, love and hate. The actions of these Jewish organizations sadly suggest that they are in the grip of a hatred for Christianity that is only harming Jews.
Today, peril threatens all Americans, both Jews and Christians. Many of the men and women in the front lines 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.
A ferocious Rottweiler dog in your suburban home will quickly estrange your family from the neighborhood. For those of us in the Jewish community who cherish friendship with our neighbors, some Jewish organizations have become our Rottweilers. God help us.
February 14, 2004
Radio talk show host, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is president of Toward Tradition, a bridge-building organization providing a voice for all Americans who defend the Judeo-Christian values vital for our nationââ¬â¢s survival. For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact: Jennifer Brunson (206) 236-3046.
People like Foxman must cause people like Lapin fits with their stupidity and arrogance. Lapin knows these idiots are overplaying their hand.
2004-02-14 14:55 | User Profile
I saw it this morning also, and thought it was great.
You know, that statement about removing all the Jews that's attached to your posts is vulgar.
2004-02-14 15:24 | User Profile
I agree with Rabbi Lapin that this thing totally blew up in Foxman's face. By attacking the Passion Foxman and his ilk did more to advance our cause than anybody in the past 50 years.
Thank you, Mel Gibson.
And thank you, Rabbi Foxman.
Walter
2004-02-14 18:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Oliver Cromwell]I saw it this morning also, and thought it was great.
You know, that statement about removing all the Jews that's attached to your posts is vulgar.[/QUOTE]
Oliver,
In the immortal words of Rhett Butler:
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
I find what they do to this nation and the West be the ultimate vulgarity. The day they quit the nonsense will be the day I remove it.
2004-02-14 19:40 | User Profile
Sidebar question: in my lifetime Hollywitz has made KING OF KINGS, THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, JESUS OF NAZARETH and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Except for the last one - which had Christians squawking - does [I]anybody [/I] remember this kind of Semitic static over any of these retellings of what is essentially the same damned story?
And does it never occur to Team Shmuel that if they'd simply offered no opinion at all here - and applied no pressure to kill this movie - that it most likely would have come and gone the way something like JESUS OF NAZARETH did; earning its grosses and garnering its fans and detractors, of course, but otherwise passing from first-run to ancillary market to reruns on the USA network like any other movie without this tumult and tempest?
Ever wonder if Yehuda, like his bovine brothers in Christian Zionism, is desperately pushing every button on the control panel - [B]trying [/B] to find the one that triggers Apocalypse?
2004-02-14 20:02 | User Profile
Oliver Cromwell is a Judeo-"Chrisitan", don't mind him.
2004-02-14 21:51 | User Profile
If Jewish groups are so unrepresentative of Jewish people, then why do Jews vote as monolithically as blacks do? When a million black men showed up for Farrikhan's black supremacist DC march, it wasn't because of Farrikhan didn't represent the racism of the black community. Things are no different on the Jewish side.
2004-02-15 06:50 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Sidebar question: in my lifetime Hollywitz has made KING OF KINGS, THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, JESUS OF NAZARETH and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Except for the last one - which had Christians squawking - does [I]anybody [/I] remember this kind of Semitic static over any of these retellings of what is essentially the same damned story?
And does it never occur to Team Shmuel that if they'd simply offered no opinion at all here - and applied no pressure to kill this movie - that it most likely would have come and gone the way something like JESUS OF NAZARETH did; earning its grosses and garnering its fans and detractors, of course, but otherwise passing from first-run to ancillary market to reruns on the USA network like any other movie without this tumult and tempest?
Ever wonder if Yehuda, like his bovine brothers in Christian Zionism, is desperately pushing every button on the control panel - [B]trying [/B] to find the one that triggers Apocalypse?[/QUOTE]
I think Jews are overreacting here not because of the subject matter (which as you note, they've dealt with respectfully before in King of Kings and Greatest Story Ever Told. Heck, I even thought that Last Temptation had some good things to say, although I can see why some were scandalized by it), but rather because simply THEY DIDN'T MAKE IT. Mel Gibson cut them out completely. He just dreamt it up and did it WITH HIS OWN MONEY, ACTORS, WRITERS AND RESOURCES.
And that's what freaks them out.
In general, I think that our Elder Brothers in Faith feel their all-important media monopoly slipping away. I mean, what sort of monopoly over what people read, watch, hear and ultimately think do you have when even a little enterprise like OD exists that potentially reaches many thousands of people, much less a major motion picture that will be viewed with breathless anticipation by a BILLION people around the world?
They need to get Mel to compromise on SOMETHING, not because they see the message as dangerous (that just gets the old Jewish people in Palm Beach to write checks to the ADL) but rather because they have to show the entire world that nobody can hope to do what Mel did without paying the Kosher tax.
It's a rent-seeking exercise, really. "You gentiles can do what you want," they're saying, "but if you choose do your project outside our system, then we retain the right to exercise ultimate artistic control over your project."
They need to do this, else a very bad precedent will have been set. It makes even more sense when you think about Mel's other films. The Passion strongly tends to show that Braveheart was exactly what Ygg suspected it was at the time: a finger in the eye to the Jewish media mafia. The ADL and their ilk - pace Rabbi Lapin truly the representatives of the Jewish people- understand that they can't let Mel make any more of these without allowing a monster to develop that they can't control.
I hope, no I earnestly PRAY, that Mel won't give these Pharisees - these enemies of our Lord, these killers of Christ, these murders of God Himself - so much as a nod. If he does - if he gives a billion Christians the simple, pure message of the Gospel - we will have won a strategic victory of the Gospel's ancient enemies.
I'm praying for you, Mel.
Walter
2004-02-15 10:58 | User Profile
Walter,
This is a fine analogy.
They need to get Mel to compromise on SOMETHING, not because they see the message as dangerous (that just gets the old Jewish people in Palm Beach to write checks to the ADL) but rather because they have to show the entire world that nobody can hope to do what Mel did without paying the Kosher tax.
Speaking of kosher food, Walter, why are Sun Maid Golden California Raisins kosher? The only ingredients that I see are dried raisins and sulfur dioxide as a preservative.
2004-02-16 02:54 | User Profile
Walter:
Some solid insights...Mel's end-run around both the Tribal production and distribution systems in Hollywood marks a first for an American picture with billion dollar worldwide potential.
Wonder if Abe and Hier would have given Gibson the silent treatment if not for his father's status as a Judeo-skeptical conspiracy researcher--and Mel's pre-Vatican II Traditionalism?
Regarding "Braveheart" I part company with Ygg. King Longshanks is the villain of that piece--he's also the English king who kicked the Tribe out. Mel could have included a scene which showed the Jews being "persecuted" as well as the Celts, but chose not to...
2004-02-16 07:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]Walter:
Some solid insights...Mel's end-run around both the Tribal production and distribution systems in Hollywood marks a first for an American picture with billion dollar worldwide potential.
Wonder if Abe and Hier would have given Gibson the silent treatment if not for his father's status as a Judeo-skeptical conspiracy researcher--and Mel's pre-Vatican II Traditionalism?
Regarding "Braveheart" I part company with Ygg. King Longshanks is the villain of that piece--he's also the English king who kicked the Tribe out. Mel could have included a scene which showed the Jews being "persecuted" as well as the Celts, but chose not to...[/QUOTE]
Thanks, Howard.
I think that Mel left out the bit about Longshanks and the Jews because he's in his heart a Celtic nationalist and that episode in favour of Longshanks would distract from his story of dastardly Saxons against the heroic Scots and Irish.
Hey, nobody ever accused Braveheart of historical accuracy!
Walter
2004-02-16 07:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Thanks, Howard.
I think that Mel left out the bit about Longshanks and the Jews because he's in his heart a Celtic nationalist and that episode in favour of Longshanks would distract from his story of dastardly Saxons against the heroic Scots and Irish.
Hey, nobody ever accused Braveheart of historical accuracy!
Walter[/QUOTE]
Indeed, I agree. I thought it odd when "Braveheart" was released that none of the kommissars noted that historical omission--even though Mel takes Longshanks through his deathbed.
Perhaps the Tribe didn't want to publicize its expulsion from England--which was in effect for some 350 years (until the usurper Cromwell let them back in).