← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Jean West
Thread ID: 9684 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-09-10
2003-09-10 11:22 | User Profile
[url=http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El677&enZone=Opinions&enVersion=0&]http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=...ns&enVersion=0&[/url]
[img]http://www.jewsweek.com/Static/Binaries/Article/jesus0903_main_1.jpg[/img]
When Jesus dies, passions rise, and anti-Semitism thrives
Now the Christian world can make a final rebuke of the anti-Semitism embodied in the Passion plays.
by Rabbi A. James Rudin September 4, 2003
In writing about the controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's yet-to-be-released film The Passion, Eric J. Greenberg, who covers interreligious relations for the New York Jewish Week, raised a critical question: Why has the story of Jesus' death been a major source of anti-Jewish stereotypes and bigotry for nearly 2,000 years, especially in Passion Plays, a form of drama that began in the Middle Ages?
Greenberg correctly notes that traditional portrayals of the event have transmitted toxic images about Jews and Judaism. As a staged drama, the retelling of Jesus' death 1,973 years ago in Jerusalem is frequently a flash point between Jews and Christians, communities Pope John Paul II has called "elder and younger brothers in faith."
During my 35 years of interreligious work, much of it involving Passion Plays including the once-a-decade Oberammergau production in Germany, I have urged Christian colleagues to address two key questions: "Does your religious faith require the belief that the Jewish people are eternally condemned by God because they are culpable, collectively guilty for the death of Jesus? What is it about the Passion narrative that has made it a taproot for religious anti-Semitism?"
The answers to these questions will directly influence the future of Christian-Jewish relations.
Many sincere Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Christians from all parts of the world repeatedly call for "reconciliation" between their communities and the Jewish people. By "reconciliation," they do not mean that one religion melds into the other. Nor do they mean reducing Judaism and Christianity to their lowest common denominators.
Just the opposite .
Their view of reconciliation is the continued existence of both Christians and Jews as faithful peoples of God, free of prejudice, persecution and pejorative teachings.
Yet even such Christians of goodwill readily admit their goal may be impossible to achieve unless and until there is a thorough re-examination of the Passion story and a full exploration of why the telling of that story, so central to Christianity, has wreaked horrific physical and psychological harm upon Jews.
The world's Catholic bishops, meeting 40 years ago in Rome at the Second Vatican Council, began that necessary process of reinterpreting the death of Jesus without anti-Semitism in their historic "Nostra Aetate" declaration: "What happened in his Passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today -- the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from Holy Scriptures. Furthermore, the church decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone."
Since then, many other Christian leaders have also affirmed that the traditional anti-Jewish animus stemming from the Passion story, often encapsulated in the chilling words, "The Jews killed my Lord," should be eradicated from all Christian teaching and preaching. They assert that in spiritual terms, all Christians, then and now, caused Jesus to suffer under Pontius Pilate, the cruel Roman governor of ancient Judea, and to be crucified, the Roman Empire's form of capital punishment.
But despite the new positive Christian teachings about presenting the Passion without portraying Jews as a "rejected" people and the remarkable insights of contemporary scholarship, anti-Jewish venom still emerges from some Christians who seemingly cannot abandon the theologically discredited doctrine that "the Jews" are still "accursed by God" for their alleged role in killing Jesus.
For more than three decades, I have received "snail" mail and, in recent years, e-mail filled with virulent anti-Jewish epithets from Christians who revel in the assertion, as one woman put it: "You Jews were responsible for killing my Savior back then and you are still being punished by God for your crime."
Many Christian leaders have repeatedly assured me it is possible to create a Passion Play that is an authentic expression of profound Christian faith without including theologically unacceptable and historically inaccurate caricatures and images that vilify Jews.
Such an effort will demand the very best creative efforts from playwrights, scholars, directors, producers, musicians, costume designers, and most importantly from Chr istian leaders. Once that type of Passion Play becomes the norm, a major source of religious anti-Semitism will have at last been eliminated.
But if, despite all the interreligious advances and Christian teachings since the Second Vatican Council, the traditional anti-Jewish elements remain in Passion Plays, the lachrymose history of religious anti-Semitism will likely continue.
[]
Rabbi A. James Rudin is the American Jewish Committee's senior interreligious adviser. He is also the Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.