Are you saying that as a generalized comment? Or because you read my blog? Or because you read comments posted to my blog?

Or did you actually mean to indicate that you’re tired of people complaining about anti-semitism, because in your mind any complaints about anti-semitism are ipso facto actually illegitimate attacks on christianity?

And, btw, which christianity are you talking about? The Christianity that grew out of the teachings of Jesus? Or the christianity of modern Americans? (They aren’t the same, you know. And all you have to do to get proof of that is read the Christian Bible, then compare what you see in Jesus’ teachings to what’s really happening in America.)

Main Entry: an·ti-sem·ite   

Function: noun
Usage: usually capitalized S
Etymology: 1anti- + Semite
: one who is hostile to Jews or who practices anti-Semitism

Citation format for this entry:
“anti-semite.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (8 Nov. 2004).

I would like to ask you to stop mis-using English punctuation, by the way. But, then, you are Australian, right?

Anti-Semitism is alive and well. Most people will acknowledge that it is widespread throughout the world, but I would even go so far as to argue that it is still quite present within our own country, the United States of America.
Take the occurance at Washington Lake, a little hotel resort in the middle of the New York Catskill Mountains. It was there that, in 1997, a twelve-year-old boy was nearly murdered by a mob of his elementary school peers because he was Jewish. The incident took place while the boy was attending a 6th Grade picnic, along with the other sixtysomething students in his class. Supposedly the incident began when a group of kids poured a bucket of pondwater over his head, prompting him to go to the nearby lake to fetch some water of his own. When he did this, a mass of at least two dozen students converged around him, throwing pebbles and coins and shouting “Christ-killer!” and “Devil-worshipper”. The young man was used to these insults, he later claimed; he had lived in the small Catskill mountain town of Eldred, NY, for over three years, and had undergone more than his fair share of anti-Semitism within the small and closely-knit community during that period. But what happened next nobody could have expected, as a group of approximately half a dozen kids waded into the lake, forced his head so far under the water that it sank into the sand, and held it there for approximately five minutes while the prepubescent mob chanted “Drown the Jew!”.
The little boy was eventually saved by one of his friends, and after vomiting up sand and water was immediately left to his family to cope. The parents were advised to wait at least 24 hours before contacting the police, and afterwards were asked not to inform any media sources of the event so that the town – which already had a struggling economy – would not receive any negative publicity. Each of the kids involved in the violent event were let off with a stern warning, and although local congressman Benjamin Gilman did put in a good word on the boy?s behalf, the incident was eventually forgotten in the ocean of other local events taking place that year, including a similarly-charged affair relating to the boy?s father, who was the local Superintendent of Schools.
The only reason I know that any of this happened is because that little boy was me.
Since then I have done a massive amount of research on the subjects of Jewish history and anti-Semitism. Among the many readings I have pored over, some of the most prominent include the Jewish Publication Society?s version of the Tanakh, from which I read many (but regrettably not even close to a majority) of the books; “An Illustrated History of the Jewish People”, written by a variety of authors including Jane S. Gerber; Paul Johnson?s dual volumes, “A History of the Jewish People” and “A History of Christianity”; Bernard Lazare?s late-19th Century book wirtten in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair and entitled “Anti-Semitism”; many archaeological books by Roland da Vaux about the social structure of the ancient Israeli people; and I took a four-part seminar under Lehigh University Professor Benjamin Wright regarding anti-Semitism from antiquity to modern times, with an emphasis on the era of Christ and with many references to the Book of John. I mention this only to give a very rough sampling of the eclectic and extensive research I did on the subject of Judaism, Jewish history, and the history of anti-Semitism, the bi-product of an interest largely sparked by the aforementioned incident.
You can only imagine, then, the interest that Mel Gibson?s movie “The Passion of the Christ” sparked in me when I first heard about it. As you well know, much controversy has been swirling around the film, focusing largely on its allegedly anti-Semitic content. Both for personal and for intellectual reasons, I went to this film curious to see what I would find.
What I found was the greatest medieval passion play ever created. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a passion play was a theatrical reenactment of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ that was once widely performed throughout the European continent, primarily during the Middle Ages. The purpose of these exercises was to force the audiences to experience the most extreme forms of spiritual catharsis by process of having their instinctive human sympathy immediately relate to the torments Jesus had to undergo. Presumably, after this was all over, they would then transform that catharsis into an overwhelming gratitude for the sacrifices Christ made to pay for their sins. It was an enormously effective means the Church used to rally the passions of the people, and it only died out when the influences of the Industrial Revolution jaded the human senses and imagination. Gibson makes full use of the many advantages modern technology has to offer to the art of the passion play, and what I saw on that screen was undoubtedly what much of the clergy of the Middle Ages would have manufactured had they been armed with cameras, film, CGI effects, and the other accoutrements of a modern Industrial society – not to mention Mel Gibson?s undeniable directorial talent and Caleb Deschanel?s hauntingly poetic cinematography.
There were several ways to create a medieval passion play. One approach was that of the heavily philosophical production, which centered on the most fundamental themes of the Christian faith and used the crucifixion and resurrection merely as a vehcile to convey those ideas to the audience. Another was the technical approach, which went to extreme lengths to methodically provide an event-by-event, line-for-line, and step-by-step re-creation of the crucifixion and resurrection as it is found in the Christian Bible. Mel Gibson abandons both of these methods and instead engages in the third, and depending on your priorities the most effective, form of passion play – the intensely visceral experience. We see Jesus Christ go through all of the most excruciating forms of torture that the classical world ever devised; he is beaten, whipped, scourged, has a crown of thorns pounded onto his head, is forced to carry his own cross to his crucifixion sight, and then of course is nailed to that cross in a scene made all the more gruesome by the casual manner in which a Roman soldier explains to his counterparts the by-the-book manner in which you are supposed to drive a nail into a man?s hands. All of this serves the purpose of that form of passion play, which is to conjure up intense physical sympathy for Christ. It is not the most cerebral form of passion play out there, but it is equal-to-none in its ability to conjure up the most intense feelings of compassion from every member of the audience – which this movie does, successfully, in a manner that can be adequately described in words. As I glanced at the faces of the audience around me, I was hard-pressed to find a mouth that wasn?t agape in horror or a set of eyes that was not gorged with horror and compassion. Every member of the audience who left that theater did so silently.
In order for this method of passion play to be most effective, however, it is vital that the character of Jesus Christ be placed in an environment where the dichotomy between good and evil is unmistakably clear. Hence, the film has little room for subtlety or nuance. It is vital that almost every character in the movie be depicted as vicious and filled with a hatred for Christ that seems to know no bounds. There are a handful of redeeming characters on both sides, of course, who for humanitarian reasons show compassion for a man undergoing unspeakable agonies. But for the most part the world must been seen as being against Jesus Christ, and since the world to Christ consisted almost entirely of Jews and Romans, it is these two groups who are shown in the worst light, with the Jews inflicting the brunt of the verbal abuse, and the Romans inflicting most of the physical tortures.
Is this movie anti-Semitic? The answer to this most pressing question is an unequivocal no. This isn?t to say that I think Mel Gibson as a person isn?t an anti-Semite, nor am I implying, for that matter, that I think he is one. Mel Gibson?s personal views are of little concern to me except in how they might influence the bent of a movie that will undeniably have a tremendous impact on its audience. While I do see much in this movie that could be interpreted anti-Semitically by individuals who are inclined to feel that way no matter what, in and of itself the movie is not so much anti-Jew or anti-Roman as it is anti-human, for as I have already mentioned, it is integral to the success of a passion play that it portray the vast majority of the human race as being unworthy of the compassion that Christ has shown them. There is only one part of the film that did bother me, and those were the scenes involving Pontius Pilate, played with enormous grace by Hristo Shopov. In real life, Pilate was depicted as a ruthless politiican who was removed from his post by Augustus Caesar for his bloodthirst. This is not only an opinion expounded upon by the apostles; even the Roman historian Tacitus, whose sympathies in the rest of his literature is pretty contemptuous towards Jews and Christians (which he viewed as being the same group), refers to Pontius Pilate as a morally corrupt man whose removal from power was probably a fortunate occurrance. So why is it that Gibson and Shopov depict Pilate as a philosophical and conflicted man who only orders Christ?s death at the behest of an eager Sanhendrin and the Jewish mob they have riled up? Not only is this depiction historically inaccurate by every available account, but it also does seem to place the blame for Christ?s death – or at least the motive for having him executed – squarely and solely on the heads of the Jewish priesthood. This is an inexplicable dramatic decision, and the only aspect of the movie that I would describe as being potentially anti-Semitic. But as for the rest of the claims made about the movie?s portrayal of Jews – that they are singled out as being bloodthirsty, that their faces are painted to have a quasi-Satanic evil gaze, that they are depicted as being greedy, and so on – all of these claims I found to be untrue, at least based on what I observed on the screen. A grand irony of all of this is that because of the massive amount of hype created about the movie?s alleged anti-Semitism, it is quite possible that the movie will net just as high a percentage of Jewish attendance as it does Christian attendance, whereas under normal circumstances it is highly unlikely that most of the former would ever be inclined to see this film.
I must confess that I did find it regrettable that the movie did not take more time to go into the core philosophy behind Christ?s teachings. While I cannot criticize the movie in and of itself for failing to do this, as it was created for the sole purpose of being a passion play and in this regard is as close to being flawless as it could be, by failing to do this the movie has failed to present any clear and coherent philosophical construction, so that although we can tell that Jesus Christ is suffering, we are not clear as to what message it is he is suffering to tell. Had the movie done this, it could have excelled above the realm of merely being a passion play and could have established itself as one of the greatest tragedies ever put on celluloid in the history of filmmaking. Instead, the movie comes off as sort of an insider?s project, and anyone not already acquainted with the lessons of Christianity will simply view this as an incredibly tragic tale of a man who died for an obscure cause.
And so it is that I left the movie theater, having been exposed to the Gibsonian version of the Gopels, feeling unthreatened, unoffended, and pretty much unconcerned as a Jew that the film I just seen would have any additional negative repercussions against my people. We live in a world of intense anti-Semitism, which often masquerades in “respectable” forms ranging from political secularization to anti-Zionism. I believe it is the moral and ethical obligation of every human being to single out and eliminate both this and any other form of hatred whenever they see it, so that we can live in a world where all people love and respect each other. This is an opinion that, by the way, is strictly within the teachings of Jesus Christ.

I think my own view is pretty much summed up in my comment immediately above your comment (which would make it two comments above this one here).

Oh, and I’m not into bashing Catholics, either!

For the others who might be interested, you may wish to go ahead and post the link here to the websites you mentioned that are discussing it. I’ve nothing against that. (I *do* delete spammers who post their links, but I wouldn’t delete a link that was posted as part of a relevant discussion.)

Thanks for showing up again! I’ve missed you over the months!

If anyone is interested, there has been an altogether healthy discussion going on among the Catholic bloggers about the Passion. Again, you might want to check out Bill Cork who has posted about some generally subtle anti-semitic tropes in the movie. Other bloggers think that Cork is being too sensitive. Make up your own mind.

Also, you might want to think about the value of keeping an open mind. The fact is that one construction of the Gospels is that the Temple shopped Jesus to the Romans “for the sake of the nation,” lest civil unrest lead to Roman reprisals. Therefore, were “the Jews” responsible?The modern and traditional Catholic view is that we are all responsible – the sins of each one of us drove those nails into His flesh. In John, Jesus specifically says that it’s His choice and no one else’s. Accept it or not, but from what I’ve read, that’s precisely what Mel is saying and precisely what my co-religionists will understand. I don’t think that theology is going to cause a revival of anti-semitism. If you want anti-semitism, look elsewhere. These days the real threat is from the Left. But until you make an attempt to understand Mel’s theology on its own terms before projecting your views, I don’t think you can have a fair or balanced opinion. I do think the discussion has been fruitful over at “St. Blogs” and my sense is that there is far less anti-semitism among Catholic bloggers than among any other group.

Some of these comments, though, are weirdly misguided. Make a movie about the Inquisition? Heaven’s above, we live in an Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. Don’t you think the English have done enough to spread the “Black Legend” as it is? If you think that our culture gives Catholics a free pass on their history, take this quick survey – (a)who was “Bloody Mary?” (b)what percentage of the population did Henry VIII murder because they wouldn’t accept Protestantism? As a Catholic who has had the Inquisition thrown in my face far more times than I care to remember, and recently has had to listen to slurs about “Hitler’s Pope” by people who don’t know the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, I can assure you that the failings of the Catholic Church have been more publicized than any other institution in the history of the world. (For that matter, you can go down to Blockbuster right now and rent a movie based on The Deputy. I can also recommend a lengthy list of Catholic-bashing movies and books if you prefer.) I have no idea what the comment about the Church of Rome sending out to Home Depot for a post hole digger meant, but I suspect it wasn’t complimentary.

So who is going to see the movie this Lenten season? Who is going to see it with an open mind? Treat it like a sociology project. Then condemn it.