"The Passion": no dialog?

[scottcsmith]

I was taken aback by the response to my review of "The Passion." Yes, I was blunt in the review, but my concerns of anti-Semitism were met with an icy indifference, alternately dismissed as "much ado about nothing" to the good-ole' "The Jews have an agenda." Yet no one seems very interested in learning why Jews are concerned about this film and its potential impact. Surprisingly this is one subject that DUers and Freepers have in common. Both groups don't care about Jewish concerns and both groups have no interest in trying to understand us.

If there is going to be no discussion on the subject, perhaps Christians can take a moment and read something written by Martin Luther in 1542. It's called "On Jews and Their Lies." This is the hatred we have had to live with ever since the writers of the Gospels decided to blame us for the death of Jesus.

But first, a few bible verses:
1 Thessalonians Chapter 2, verses 14-16

"For you, brothers, became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews, who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last."


http://www.awitness.org/books/luther/luther_jews/1.html

Here's an excerpt:

"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that those miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews and who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen.

Grace and peace in the Lord. Dear sir and good friend, I have received a treatise in which a Jew engages in dialog with a Christian. He dares to pervert the scriptural passages which we cite in testimony to our faith,concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and to interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith.

This is my reply to you and to him. It is not my purpose to quarrel with the Jews, nor to learn from them how they interpret or understand Scripture; I know all of that very well already. Much less do I propose to convert the Jews, for that is impossible. Those two excellent men, Lyra and Burgensis, together with others, truthfully described the Jews' vile interpretation for us two hundred and one hundred years ago respectively. Indeed they refuted it thoroughly. However, this was no help at all to the Jews, and they have grown steadily worse.

They have failed to learn any lesson from the terrible distress that has been theirs for over fourteen hundred years in exile. Nor can they obtain any end or definite terminus of this, as they suppose, by means of the vehement cries and laments to God. If these blows do not help, it is resonable to assume that our talking and explaining will help even less.

Therefore a Christian should be content and not argue with the Jews. But if you have to or want to talk with them, do not say any more than this: 'Listen, Jew, are you aware that Jerusalem and your sovereignty, together with your temple and priesthood, have been destroyed for over 1,460 years?' For this year, which we Christians write as the year 1542 since the birth of Christ, is exactly 1,468 years, going on fifteen hundred years, since Vespasian and Titus destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jews from the city. Let the Jews bite on this nut and dispute this question as long as they wish."

[union_maid]

1. Well, haven't seen it, don't intend to

Mel Gibson's interview with Diane Sawyer was enough to give me nightmares. Don't need to see the movie, too. I have little doubt that it's anti-semitic in intent. Mel's a nutcase.

[Must_B_Free]

3. It's his crazy eyes

same crazy glare as John Ashcroft and Asa Huchinson.

[Must_B_Free]

2. Error:

"Both groups don't care about Jewish concerns"

that is flat out wrong - DU bends over backward to instantly zap anything that might be end up being detremental to DU. Belive me there is plenty of vigilance in that regard.

[Must_B_Free]

4. I don't believe the Movie exists...

and if it does, it's highly embellished.

[Mick Knox]

5. Needing more info

I don't understand your point.

Are you suggesting Jewish leaders should have a right to censor artists, christian movies, or in fact frame the Christian religion itself?

Are you suggesting some link you found on the internet holds significance with the majority of christians? You surely could have found worse...

What are you trying to say.. because my first response is.. based on your post.. if you dont like it .. dont watch it... why the hell did you?

I think the US is extremely tolerant of other faiths overall. I see no Jewish persecution.. but thats my view... even though.. in a country of 300 million; while there are instances, there is certainly no wide spread issue here.

[BigDaddyLove]

6. You said.........

"Yet no one seems very interested in learning why Jews are concerned about this film and its potential impact".

Actually, it is nauseatingly clear why Jews have the concerns you mention and that may be part of the problem.

Do you not find it sort of boring to point out over and over again why and how Jews have been persecuted over and over again? Do you think others might find that it gets tedious to listen to after a while; that when anything portrays Jews in a less than angelic light people might grow weary of the onslaught of anti-Semitism accusations that come crashing in from every direction?

I say this as a part Jewish (Maternal Grandmother), but not practicing person who is embarrassed by the constant harping on anti-Semitism.

Enough already.

[Lars39]

8. You are aware that Passion plays have historically been used

to incite violence against Jewish people, right?

[Lars39]

7. I think a lot of the "what's the big deal" attitude can be attributed

to ignorance of history. I found this link that helps explain the history of Passion plays. It also describes how the Jewish community is dealing with this latest Passion "play".

Here' the link:

http://www.freeman.org/m_online/sep03/bridges.htm

[cprise]

9. <yawn>

If you haven't noticed, most DUers are quite concerned about the President's threat to ammend the U.S. Constitution to excludes gays from partaking in certain aspects of life that most people consider essential. Forever.

With that said, I kind of agree with Ebert when he said that Gibson did not use every last plot device available to drive home a point that Jews were not evil. But I'm going by the few reviews I've read, and I haven't seen the movie. I don't like Mel Gibson and I like religious hysteria even less.

I do know if I ever do become involved in an organized religion again, it won't be messianic.

Yes lets take the mass media bait and post umpteen threads on Ralp Nader and The Passion, while Europe goes alternately subarctic and sub-saharan.

It's pretty galling what American's aren't interested in, eh?

[Nikia]

10. I don't know if it is really should be that offensive

We have talked on DU about whether it is important who killed Christ and whether that was God's plan anyway.
Roger ebert said in his review that the film would have been Jew friendly if it portrayed the high priest as conflicted instead of so set on having Jesus executed.
Of course, there is still anti Semitism in the U.S. I know this personally, part Jewish, assumed to be Jewish in a couple instances, most of the time not though so in both contexts.
Although I have heard that many anti Semetic Christians do not hate Jews because they are the Christ killers but the Christ bearers. That is, they are jealous.

[ex_jew]

11. Perhaps progressives are tempted to believe that mankind CAN improve !

For example, we think that having broken the back of racial segregation by law in the South, we can go on to deal with other issues. Same thing with women working, voting, holding public office etc. Same thing with a lot of sad old baggage from mankind's past. Faced with new challenges, such as the disappearance of species, our jobs and our civil liberties, we can't afford to obsess about what Martin Luther spewed 500 years ago. Some of us go for days without fearing that a new Holocaust is right around the corner. Call me naive, but I think that learning from history is different from being trapped in it.

Let's just be brutally direct. Where in hell ARE the mobs waiting to lynch Jews after watching this movie ? You say look out for 'em, but I say - show me. Can you just do that please ?

[Lars39]

12. Might not be only Jewish people that will be targeted.

Unbelievers, gays...:shrug: Maybe some people are more sensitive to the nuances. Time will tell.

[regnaD kciN]

13. It's ironic, Mr. Smith...

...that you decry any suggestion that you might have an "agenda" as (of course) "anti-Semitic," while at the same time you're so clearly demonstrating that you do indeed have an agenda, and it has nothing to do with Mel Gibson's film.

Quite a simple trick, really: throw out one specific anti-Jewish passage of the Christian scriptures (one which, by the way, most scholars think was an addition by a later editor), combine with a rant by a paranoid (and, yes, we all know Luther was anti-Jewish in the later part of his life -- and the paranoia had more than a little to do with it), and, ta-daa!, it's no longer about The Passion...it's about the evil that is the Christian faith. That was your point all along, wasn't it?

(An interesting thought: if you're going to quote Luther on the Jews, why don't you also quote some appropriate passages of the Babylonian Talmud dealing with Christians? Irrational hate didn't go only one way, you know.)

And this "since the writers of the Gospels decided to blame us for the death of Jesus" line is a crock, and you know it. Unless you choose to believe the fantasy, absent even a fragment of evidence, that not a single Jewish person in Jerusalem had anything to do with the arrest, trial, and conviction of Jesus, there was definitely some Jewish involvement in the Crucifixion. Does that mean that a large number of Jews, let alone "all the Jews," were involved and/or guilty? Of course not! But the issue of "who's to blame?" is really looking at matters with a case of tunnel vision; chapter after chapter, verse after verse of the Christian Scriptures affirm that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. No particular ethnic or religious group should be singled out for blame, because it was for everyone's sins that Jesus went to the Cross -- Christians no less than anyone else. And, to make a point that should not be brushed over, Jesus went to his death willingly, knowing that God would bring good out of it. That understanding is present in every page of the Christian Scriptures; the notion of Jews as "Christ-killers" only in one passage that almost certainly was added by an unknown editor at a later time.

But, once again, I point out the guilt-tripping use of the "anti-Semitism card" (which I'm sure you'll be quick to apply to me, since I'm unwilling to bow to your notion that the essence of Christianity is Jew-hatred). In case you haven't noticed, most of the posters on DU have been very much opposed to Gibson's film -- and that includes most Christians (an endangered minority, to be sure) here. There have been endless threads with concerns about whether Gibson was intending an anti-Judaic message and, even if not, whether there was a danger of the audience taking away such a message anyway. If you look at the index, you'll find thread after thread on the same subject. What seems to have set you off is that they haven't reacted with sufficient indignation to your own review. Therefore, the attitude of DUers is nothing but "icy indifference," and anyone questioning your take in any way is practically waving around a copy of "Mein Kampf." "No one is interested"...perhaps everyone has already discussed it to death over the past week? And, of course, it means that we're "just like Freepers" and only want to ignore Jewish concerns. Seems to me more like a case of us having discussed the matter to death already, and not wanting to go over it one more time. But, of course, I assume it's "anti-Semitic" for any of us to not respond in the way you want.

:eyes:

[ochazuke]

14. Saw it on Wednesday, hate it more every day

My first impression was that it was clearly anti-semitic. The Jewish high priests were sterotypical Jews right out of Nazi propaganda. That was my own obervation at the time, and I posted that here at DU a couple of times. Since seeing the movie, I've listened to discussion on TV and radio (and followed links posted here at DU to some damning criticism.) Result: I am shocked that anyone would make such a shameful movie -- what with the broken promise to remove a particularly offensive line (about His blood being upon the Jews and their children), and all the historical lies, heresy (stuff not in the Bible), and the devil appearing in every other scene was ruinous. You really have to have a 13th century mind to buy that.

Gibson is a loon, and his dad is a typical Jew-hater.

Fair disclosure: I am a non-Jew, non-Christian, movie-going type person.

[Mick Knox]

15. Is it Irony to post a drive by posting..

captioned that no one is engaging in dialoge..