All of the fuss whirling and swirling around the Mel Gibson-written, directed and produced “The Passion of the Christ” reminds me of something a Chicago rabbi and Holocaust survivor once told me.
He grew up before World War II in a little central European village. Every year after Easter mass he could reliably depend on some of the Christian children to roam the street, looking for Jewish children to beat up, taunting “You killed Christ.”
“I did not know I was white until I came to America,” he said with an ironic glint in his eye.
As a black Christian American, Easter was a very different day in my childhood. I looked forward to it as a time of joy, new “Sunday clothes,” lilies, bunny rabbits and hunts for candy and decorated egg hunts. The rabbi helped me to understand why some people may wince at the very mention of the holiday.
The moral of that little story is that you don’t really get to know people until you have at least peeked at the world through the prism of their experiences. Misunderstanding across lines of race, religion and ethnicity become worse partly because everyone’s experiences are so different.
For those whose experience is awash with knowledge of the bloody persecution of Jews in Europe and elsewhere through the ages, it is easy to see why Gibson’s powerful depiction of Jews urging the Romans to crucify Christ would upset those who, like me, thought the Vatican II reforms put that issue mercifully to rest. In 1965 the Vatican firmly rejected the notion that the Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. Now, as Gibson’s “Passion” opened to record crowds, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger urged Pope John Paul II to speak out against it for fear that the film would set back four decades of reconciliation.
Nonsense, say some of the film’s defenders. Americans are too smart for that. Maybe. A new Anti-Defamation League poll finds one in four Americans believe Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. However, a recent poll by ABC News/Primetime found fewer than 10 percent bought the dangerous notion that Jews “today” were responsible. That’s far from a majority, but still cold comfort to anyone who worries about anything that might further fan the flames of bigotry.
Gibson comes from a Catholic tradition so conservative that it rejects the 1965 Vatican reforms. But he denies the film is anti-Semitic. I am sure he did not intend it to be. Personally, I find it hard to believe that the actor who struck up such a delightful on-screen rapport with Danny Glover in the “Lethal Weapon” series could be a hater, even if Gibson’s father has revealed himself to be a misguided Holocaust denier.
But it is not enough for people of good conscience to dismiss this controversy with a flip “I don’t think it’s anti-Semitic,” as if how they think is all that matters. What the other guy thinks matters too.
For example, many blacks continue to be annoyed that the Eurocentric notion of a Nordic-looking, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus persists. When I visited the Vatican last summer with my wife and son, we were delighted to find in the gift shops a wide array of offerings of the Holy Family depicted in a variety of the world’s races. It may not mean a lot to you to have a Jesus who looks like you, unless you have seldom seen one before.
Coincidentally “Passion” opened as news broke that the actor and singer Carl Anderson died Feb. 23. Anderson gained fame as Judas in the stage and movie versions of the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” in the early 1970s. That casting upset some folks at the time. All of these years of waiting for a black Jesus in the movies, we thought, and the closest we can get is a black man playing the great betrayer of Jesus.
Ah, well, we often measured our progress little-by-little in those days.
So having experienced first-hand the way blacks and whites often occupy two different worlds in America, I am not surprised that many Christians and Jews who watched Gibson’s “Passion” came out sounding as if they have seen two entirely different movies.
I have not seen the movie yet and probably will not until it comes out in a home video version, where the gallons of blood splatterings will be easier to take.
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In the meantime, I hope the divisions that it has reopened ultimately will be healed by the cross-cultural conversations it has sparked in the media and elsewhere. Some people dismiss the feelings of those who are offended in any way by the film. But as a pluralistic society it is our ability to share experiences that has kept this country from sinking into the relentless interethnic bloodbaths that Europe and some other continents have known.
So I hope Gibson’s “Passion” can help us heal the wounds it has reopened. Such dialogue is good. I passionately believe that.
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