A Number of Passion-ate Reviews [Updated 3/17/04]

Interesting Times: The Difference By Saul Singer

I am happy for the millions who, like Novak, will have their faith strengthened by this film. Christianity provides a powerful religious model that has attracted two billion adherents. It engenders a fear of God that is much preferable to common alternatives such as atheism, nihilism, and paganism. Recently, moreover, the more relevant threats to Jews have come not from the medieval Christianity Gibson seems to favor, but from Nazism, communism, and radical Islam, against which believing Christians are staunch Jewish allies.

But the Christian model is not for everyone. Jews believe that everyone is born with both a good and an evil inclination, that we must struggle to reinforce our good side, and that we can atone for sins through prayer and correcting what we've done. Though faith and actions are important to both religions, Christianity is more faith-centered and Judaism more action-centered. We believe that God judges us more on what we do to bring a better world than on what we believe.

Christianity and Judaism are close in many respects, but if there is any event that accentuates the differences, it is the release of The Passion. This could be awkward, if only because it may be strange to many Christians that Jews have trouble identifying with what for them is a powerful, affirming experience. But it is also an opportunity to explain what may be for some a more reasonable and accessible approach to God and our role in the world.

Islam means "submission" (to God). Christianity is built on being "saved" through faith. Judaism, by contrast, stubbornly tries to preserve free will and personal responsibility in the face of God's omnipotence.

Gibson's Blood Libel by Charles Krauthammer

In Gibson's movie, Satan appears four times. Not one of these appearances occurs in the four Gospels. They are pure invention. Twice, this sinister, hooded, androgynous embodiment of evil is found . . . where? Moving among the crowd of Jews. Gibson's camera follows close up, documentary style, as Satan glides among them, his face popping up among theirs -- merging with, indeed, defining the murderous Jewish crowd. After all, a perfect match: Satan's own people.

Essay: Jews and Christians after 'The Passion' By Yossi Klein Halevi

I had assumed - hoped - that the Jewish critics of The Passion were exaggerating. The critics, after all, have a habit of assuming the worst of Christianity, and of underestimating the positive changes in Christian attitudes toward Jews. They turned the Pope's beatification of Edith Stein into a nefarious Catholic plot to "Christianize" the Holocaust, and transformed a debate among historians over the role of Pius XII into a campaign against the church headed by John Paul II, who has devoted himself to Christian atonement for anti-Semitism.

But this time the critics weren't exaggerating. Mel Gibson has produced a medieval passion play, reviving the whiff of deicide at the most vulnerable Jewish moment since the 1940s.

The Passion: Jews and Christians are Watching Different Films by Dennis Prager

When watching "The Passion," Jews and Christians are watching two entirely different films.

For two hours, Christians watch their Savior tortured and killed. For the same two hours, Jews watch Jews arrange the killing and torture of the Christians' Savior.

In order to avoid further tension between two wonderful communities that had been well on their way to historic amity, it is crucial for each to try to understand what film the other is watching and reacting to.

Think Again: 'The Passion' & the Tar Baby By Jonathan Rosenblum

The Catholic Church cannot be terribly enthusiastic about a cinematic presentation of a theology that rejects current papal teaching on the Jews. Indeed, a group of mostly Catholic New Testament scholars, affiliated with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, submitted a study pointing out the departures of Gibson's original script from the Gospels and from papal teaching, as well as the "lurid details" imported from the ecstatic visions of an 18th-century German nun.

While evangelical Protestants will have little truck with such historical analysis of New Testament texts, they tend to overwhelmingly be philo-Semites and, unlike the Catholic Church, continue to view Jews as the Chosen People. With them, the proper approach is that adopted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center: an open appeal to Christians of goodwill to do for Jews what we cannot do for ourselves - i.e., work to ensure that The Passion does not become a vehicle for arousing anti-Semitic furies.

The Wiesenthal Center's "Appeal to People of Faith" expressly eschews any request that Christians renounce or censor their most holy texts. It places the focus on actions, not beliefs. And that is as it should be.

Is `The Passion` Anti-Semitic? By Jeff Jacoby

"THE PASSION of The Christ" is violent, bloody, and sadistic. Mel Gibson's movie about Jesus' last day has to be the most graphic and brutal death ever portrayed on film. It is being described as a masterpiece -- soul-stirring and beautiful. I found it stomach-turning and deeply troubling.I am not a Christian, but I tried to view "The Passion" the way a Christian might view it. I tried to experience it as a message of God's love and mercy, as a depiction of self-sacrifice so complete and all-embracing as to transform human history. I tried to imagine believing that all that blood -- and "The Passion" is drenched with blood -- was shed to wash away my sins. I tried to understand this grim nightmare as an enactment of mankind's redeemer being tortured and killed, to accept that this was the purpose for which he was born, to feel that I, no less than the howling mob on the screen, was responsible for -- and the beneficiary of -- his death. I tried -- but I failed.

Marc Howard Wilson discusses the interesting paradox of the movie being very Catholic yet receiving the backing of (according to him, generally anti-Catholic) Fundamentalist Protestants.

Centuries have passed, and the bulk of Catholics and Protestants have made peace with each other, occasionally uneasy, but peace nonetheless. As one would expect, however, animosity and hostility still drive the attitude of Fundamentalist Protestants toward Catholicism. Go to the Web sites and see how salacious their hatred of Catholics still is: They are damned. Their doctrines are false. Their worship is idolatry. Their interpretation of the Bible is heretical. The Pope is the antichrist. The Vatican conspires for world domination. Catholic political aspirants will be puppets of Rome. The Jesuits plotted with the Nazis to mastermind the Holocaust. How often have I heard a Fundamentalist preacher refer to "Christians, Catholics and Jews," inferring that Catholics are not even genuine Christians?

Some time ago, a Fundamentalist institution honored one of the most vituperatively militant anti-Catholics, Rev. Ian Paisley, with a Doctorate of Humanities. The same institution would allow on campus neither Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robertson, whom most of us consider staunch Fundamentalists, because they engaged in dialogue with Catholics. That very institution is now one of the most vociferous cheerleaders for Gibson's film.

This is precisely the oxymoron: A significant segment, perhaps a majority, of Fundamentalist Protestants think that Catholics are a bunch of hell-bound heretics who subscribe to false doctrine. Likewise, radical Catholics like Gibson have little regard for the integrity and salvation of the Protestants. Yet, somehow in this lunatic world, the most fundamentalist Fundamentalists are actually turning to a fanatical Catholic to teach the world "the Truth" about Jesus and his sanctifying death.