“Reflections on Mel Gibson’s Depiction of The Passion of Jesus of Nazareth”

February 28, 2004

Last Wednesday, as I was driving in my car down Central Avenue, a car was waiting to enter the stream of traffic. As always in such a situation, out of the corner of my eye, I made eye contact with the driver, just to be absolutely sure that he or she was going to wait until my car went by to enter traffic. As I did so, as my car glided past, I was suddenly and briefly confused. Something about the person was different, yet familiar. Then I realized what it was: the person had had a smudge of ashes on his forehead. And then I remembered: It was Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday is a Christian holy day. It is the first day of the penitential season known as Lent, a season originally marked by forty days of fasting, but today generally observed by adherents through acts of deprivation, such as refraining from eating certain foods or enjoying certain forms of entertainment. The act of putting ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday is one of those powerfully symbolic steps that adherents take to identify with the life and the suffering of the central figure in their sacred scriptural drama, Jesus of Nazareth.

It was not a coincidence that I too was already thinking about Jesus of Nazareth and his life and suffering that day, even before I saw that ash-smudged forehead. For I had plans later that day to attend a special screening of “The Passion of the Christ,” the new provocative film by Mel Gibson. I didn’t want to see the film. I am not a fan of violent films and I’d read several reviews that suggested that this one was full of violence. And I had plenty of other concerns on my agenda that day. But I think we can all appreciate the importance of the appearance of a film like this. It seemed to me then, as it does today, that, as troubled as I was that, by seeing the film I could be seen to be playing into the hands of its creator, still, it was necessary for me to see it to be able fairly and accurately to react to it.

And so I went. I attended a special screening in Randolph for inter-faith leaders in the Boston community. As I sat in the darkened theater waiting for the film to begin, alongside Rabbis Chiel and J. J. Schacter and Gewirtz and Gervis, and alongside Father Bullock and Father Michael, and many Protestant clergy, I wondered how accurate all of those reviews would turn out to be. Would I be horrified, or merely disturbed? Would I find the film anti-Semitic? Would I feel threatened and insecure as a Jew watching the film? Would I find anything redemptive in the film?

Well, as someone was quoted as saying, “It is what it is.” I experienced the film pretty much the way it’s been described in many of the reviews that have been published. The film is a dark, disturbing, graphic depiction of the capture, the flogging and the crucifixion of Jesus.

We don’t get to learn much about Jesus himself in the film. Is he fully human, or partially divine? Is he a miracle worker? He does, after all, manage to re-attach one Roman soldier’s ear. Or is he a prophet? What does he stand for? Other than hearing him mouth pithy aphorisms and obscure, mysterious, allusive remarks, other than hearing him pray for forgiveness for those afflicting him because, as he puts it, “they know not what they do,” we simply don’t get to hear much from him. Instead, for the most part, we get to see what is done to him. And what is done to him is, indeed, horrible and horrifying.

He is betrayed, presumably by a disciple whom he’d thought loyal. In fact, he is abandoned by almost everyone in the film. All of his disciples fall asleep on him early in the film, while he’s anxiously awaiting his impending capture. And once he’s been captured, one of his disciples (as Jesus himself had predicted) repeatedly disassociates himself from Jesus and denies that he is a follower. He is handed over to Roman soldiers to be brought before the Jewish authorities for judgment. In a curious and to me implausible set of scenes, the Jewish authorities and the Jewish mob condemn him. The Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, who seems to have no personal interest in harming Jesus—though Roman soldiers certainly seem to enjoy doing so—and who, in fact, seeks to release him, is depicted as unable to do so, given the huge undertow of support within the Jewish mob for torturing and killing Jesus. And so, that’s what happens. We get to see—rather, we are forced to see—Jesus flogged repeatedly and then forced to carry his own cross across town toward the hill where he is to be crucified, being beaten, cursed, jeered and spit at, all the way, and then forced to see him nailed to that cross and hoisted up into the air to die a slow, painful death.

In case it wasn’t clear up until now, this is a bloodthirsty, gory film. Don’t see it if you have a queasy stomach.

And so we see Jesus’ suffering before us. It is natural to empathize with him, because he is suffering, and yet it isn’t entirely easy to do so. For we don’t really understand why he’s being tortured and killed. The story, for those who are aware of all of the historical inaccuracies, just isn’t very plausible. It is much easier to empathize with Jesus’ mother, who is depicted sensitively by Maia Morgenstern, who, coincidentally (or not?) is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Her suffering, that of the mother of a suffering son, that we can relate to. But why Jesus chooses or is made to suffer, why this film glorifies and exults in that suffering, remain a mystery.

It’s been asked, “Is the film anti-Semitic?” My answer is, it depends on what you mean by anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a modern word, invented in the 19th century by Wilhelm Marr to take the place of the more brutal German term, Judenhass, meaning “Jew hatred.” It describes the hatred and revulsion toward “the Jew,” often typified as the devil in medieval tales and manuscripts. There is certainly some of that in this film, but there is more. There's also a lack of respect for the faith, the religious principles, the morality that we associate with Judaism. The film struck me, then, as more anti-Judaic than anti-Semitic.

Unfortunately, the movie faithfully maintains the caricatures of Jews and Judaism that are contained in the Gospel narratives as seen through the lens of medieval passion plays. Let me put it this way: no one seeing this film would ever be tempted to convert to Judaism. No one would ever have a clue that to be a faithful Jew is to be sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, to reach out to them and to offer them help and aid. No one would ever imagine that Judaism is at all an inspiring or elevating faith, tradition or way of life. No one would ever imagine that the Jews developed a refined, humane, fair, legal system based on the Biblical injunction, “Justice, Justice, thou shalt pursue!” Rather, one would imagine that the more one identifies as a Jew, the less humane, the less human, one must be. Jews—particularly the most publicly identified and presumably pious ones—are depicted as deceitful, nasty, cruel, vindictive people who are only too happy to kill one of their own, Jesus.

I remember when I first studied the New Testament passion narratives in college thirty years ago. It was by then already clear to Bible scholars, Christian as well as Jewish, that the passion narratives reflect a period several decades after Jesus’ death, when his followers sought to gain acceptance in the broader pagan world. It was expedient and some might even say necessary, given the dangers of preaching Christian doctrine in the Roman Empire, to shift responsibility for the death of Jesus from the Romans to the Jews. This shift would not only not improve the young church’s ability to gain pagan converts, it would add to its acceptability throughout the Roman Empire.

That historical perspective, the perspective of New Testament scholars who’ve come to understand the polemical nature of the Gospels, is nowhere to be seen in this film. Instead, the narratives are seen as the basis for what could be understood to be a documentary, embellished not by any historical insights gained through research, but only by the overlay of works such as the writings of Anna Catherine Emmerich, a nineteenth century author of undeniably anti-Semitic passion plays.

The group of clergy with whom I saw the film discussed it immediately after its screening. The Christian clergy seemed more troubled than the Jews. One concern voiced was the following: If viewed as an historical document, as some may see it, this film may indeed by dangerous. It may indeed inspire self-righteous anger toward “the Jews.” Some Christian clergy worried that seeing images of many, many Jews screaming for the death of Jesus could shape Christian views of Jews for many years to come.

Most of the clergy—no, make that ALL of the clergy—were disappointed in the film. Some found themselves traumatized; others found themselves emotionally shutting down, closing out the suffering. I found myself reflecting on what is perhaps, ironically, the most important line in the film. At one point, an implausibly contemplative Pontius Pilate muses with his wife about what is about to happen. “What is truth?” he asks her. “Do you hear, do you recognize it when you hear it?”

To judge from his interviews, Mel Gibson apparently intended this film to present “the truth” about the passion of Jesus before his audiences, and indeed, his defense to any accusation that the film unfairly depicts Jews or Judaism is that his film has sought to be faithful to “the truth.” But in fact this film is not faithful to the truth, if by “the truth,” we mean historical truth. This film is faithful to a polemical account that sought, for its own purposes, to shift the blame for the death of the man revered by generations of believers as the Son of God, onto the Jewish People, then and forever after.

Is there anything redemptive about this film?

There is one particularly affecting scene in the film. Following his excruciating flogging, Jesus is taken away, to be brought back before Pontius Pilate. We see the scene of the flogging: a stone courtyard, and there is blood on the stones. The two Mary’s—Jesus’ mother and Mary Magdalen—take cloths that have been given to them by Pontius Pilate’s wife, and begin, carefully, methodically and lovingly, to wipe it up. That was, to me, one of the most moving scenes in the film.

Following the screening, one of the Protestant ministers brought up that scene. He, too, found it very touching: the care, the compassion of those women who realized that, to leave that blood on the stones would be a desecration. It reminded him, he said, of what happens in Israel following a suicide bombing, such as the one that took place in Jerusalem last week. First, the emergency workers arrive. They do triage, first tending to the wounded, then removing the dead. And then, the members of ZAKA—the organization of religious men who’ve accepted this as their duty—go around wiping up the blood and scraping the stones and the other surrounding surfaces of all remnants of human tissue, recognizing that to leave any of that there at the scene would be a desecration.

Think of the powerful empathy that that scene evoked in that minister! Think of the boundary crossing that came so naturally to him! Think what it felt like for me to hear this minister tell us that the wiping up of Jesus’ blood called to mind Israeli suffering.

Is there anything redemptive about this film? As I was leaving the theater, as Ash Wednesday was drawing to a close, I reflected on the inter-faith dialogue in which I had participated—a dialogue which, incidentally, would not have happened were it not for the initiative of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the wonderful hospitality of Shari Redstone, of National Amusements, who set up this private screening. We who had sat around that room were remarkably uniform in our reactions to that film.

There was much that united us. The warmth, the mutual respect, the desire to learn from and with one another were palpable. The film itself was hardly uplifting. It was hardly inspiring. But our discussion was.

For Christians, this now is the Lenten season, leading to Holy Week and Easter Sunday. We Jews have a different holiday to look forward to. First comes Purim, a holiday on which we reflect on our vulnerability as a dispersed people living in the Diaspora. And then, four weeks later, comes Passover. We might be tempted to use this time to focus only on how others have treated us, how others still treat us. But that, I think, would be unfortunate. That would be allowing the film to manipulate us.

Instead, let’s use this time also to learn more about our own faith and our own values and also the faith and the values that animate our Christian brothers and sisters. Let’s learn more about the Gospels and early Christianity. Let’s learn more about how and why the split between our faiths arose and how and why it grew to be so profound. Yes, let’s try to understand our differences, but let’s also try to understand what faithful and devout Christians like the ones I got to know on Ash Wednesday find redemptive in their holy scriptures and in their faith, so that we can build bridges of understanding with them.

Unfortunately, seeing Mel Gibson’s film won’t provide that kind of information, but there are other sources to which we can turn: there are people to talk to, works to consult, places to visit. If we pursue those avenues, that would truly be redemptive.

Shabbat Shalom.

Note: To also read a letter written by Rabbi Perkins to parents of children in our Religious School concerning the movie “The Passion,” please click here.