I want to tell you how thrilled I am that all of you have chosen to share this morning with us.  I pray that it will be a morning of loving sharing.  And when our time together concludes next Tuesday, after our discussion following our viewing of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”, I pray we shall carry away with us at least some new and enlightening perspectives on the issues surrounding this film.

Obviously, I am here to share a Jewish perspective.  In that quest, let me begin with a story, a true story.

It was the Fall of 1976.  I was a young rabbi - a very young rabbi - serving as Assistant Rabbi in a large suburban New York congregation.  One of my congregants was active in the Boy Scouts.  As such, he invited me to participate in Scout program of interfaith understanding.

This program took place on a beautiful Fall day in a lovely wooded scout camp.  Its purpose was to pro­vide the scouts with a basic orientation to other faiths.  The scouts were divided into three groups - Pro­testants, Catholics, and Jews.  There were three clergy presenters - myself, a Catholic priest, and a Protest­ant minister.  Our charge was to rotate through each of these groups, saving our own group for last, and giving to the others a thumbnail orientation to our faith.

The first group I met with were the Protestants.  It was a nice size group, maybe a hundred boys.  I told them a little about Jewish history, Jewish theology.  I described some of our holidays, and then I opened it up for questions.  They asked many of the typical questions.  “Why do Jews wear those beanies?  Why won’t Jews eat bacon?”  You get the idea.  When all was said and done, it went pretty well and I was feeling pretty good about it.

Then I met with the Catholic boys.  They were by far the largest contingent, meeting in an open field and it seemed as though they filled it.  Well, I spoke, waxing eloquent as only newly ordained clergy persons thinks they wax.  And then, once again, I opened the floor for questions.  A veritable forest of hands went up, and I fielded their questions as best I could, feeling better and better with each successful answer.  Then one of the leaders announced, “Time for one more question.”  Who to choose?  There were so many hands.  Then I saw him.  The cutest little boy scout, standing there in his khaki shorts and gartered knee socks.  He was short and slight, with blue eyes and straight blond hair, combed off to the side across his brow.  He looked positively angelic, like he just stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.  I had to call upon him.  He looked straight at me, innocent as could be, and asked, “Why did you Jews kill Christ?”  I was devastated.  Out of the mouths of babes.  There was silence, as if the world had come to a halt.  The leaders looked at me.  I looked at them.  I looked at the child.  There was no particular malice on his face.  No smirk.  No anger.  Just an inquisitive look.  Somewhere along the line, he had heard this.  I was a rabbi.  Now he wanted to find out why.  I answered with history and modern biblical criticism, explaining how it was the Romans and not the Jews.  I hoped that something had registered, but in truth, I don’t know if it did.

I share this story with you because it cuts right to the heart of today’s topic.  While antisemitism might be something theoretical for you - something you may read about, but not a particularly burning issue in your lives - for us Jews it is very real.  It is something dark and lurking, which time and again throughout history has popped out of its hiding place, very often when we least expect it, and where we least expect it.

When it comes to the antisemitism we have experienced through our interactions with Christianity, cen­tral to that hatred has been the teaching that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus; guilty of the crime of deicide; Christ killers.  For 2,000 years, my people have suffered all forms of degradation and persecution, from social shunning to anti-Jewish laws to pogroms and massacres, all because there were those who believed we carried a blood guilt for Jesus’ death.  In Europe, particularly in the Middle Ages, Easter Sunday - the most sacred day on the Christian calendar - was a day of terror for Jews.  In the churches, fiery Passion sermons were delivered, and then the people would pour out onto the streets.  And God help any Jew they encountered, for they would make that Jew pay dearly for the suffering of Jesus.  Passion plays stoked the same anger.  It is no coincidence that Hitler required as part of their train­ing that soldiers of the SS were to attend the famous Passion Play in Oberammergau, Bavaria.

But that was then and this is now.  Things are so much better today when it comes to Jewish-Christian relations.  So why should the Jews be so concerned?

That is true.  Jewish-Christian relations today are better than they have ever been.  We share so much more and have learned to treat each other respectfully and reverently.  In an odd way, I think we can thank the Holocaust for that.  For the Holocaust showed all humanity what nightmares are possible - hu­manly created nightmares - if we permit our hatreds to go unchecked; what can happen if we continue to refuse to learn how to live with each other in a healthy fashion.

So, for the past 59 years we have been working diligently on working together.  Indeed, one of the high points of that journey was Vatican II, from 1962 to 1965.  The Jews of the world celebrated when the Vatican Council released its statement that “what happened in his (meaning Jesus’) passion cannot be blamed on all Jews then living without distinction nor upon the Jews of today.”  A great, horrible, and unjust burden had been lifted off of us.

But still the ghosts of prejudice haunt us.  That little boy scout asked his painful question 11 years after the Second Vatican Council.  Some hatreds die hard, or refuse to die.  And for us Jews, antisemitism re­mains a raw and open wound.  It may be dormant, but we have yet to reach the stage where we can hon­estly believe that it has been eradicated.  And while we live a good life with our Christian neighbors and friends here in America, over the past few years our sense of security has been profoundly shaken by the resurgence of antisemitism throughout Europe.  You must understand.  For us Jews, antisemitism is not a boogie man.  We see it as a real and imminent threat to our very existence.

This brings us to the movie that we are here to discuss today and view on Tuesday.  The Jewish world perceives in this movie a significant potential for generating new waves of antisemitism.

But before I talk about why that is so, I wish to make the following statement.  We Jews realize that we will be looking at this movie through different eyes than will you Christians.  You as Christians, and I as a Jew will find that we can be viewing the exact same scene, but seeing two different stories.  For example, you can be seeing Jesus’ agony as he carries his cross through the streets to Calvary, while I can be see­ing how the Jews that lined those streets are being portrayed as brutal, inhuman tormentors.  Why will we be seeing such scenes differently?  Because while you will be viewing them through the eyes of your Chris­tian faith, I will be viewing them through the eyes of a people who for 2,000 years have profoundly suffered because of the way that this story has been told.

I fully understand that this is your sacred story, and I respect that.  I do not wish to detract from its sanc­tity.  Indeed, I pray that in your experiencing this retelling of your sacred story, you will be spiritually energized to live better lives as Christians and as human being.

Yet still, I and most of my fellow Jews, are troubled by this movie.  We are troubled not because it tells your sacred story, but rather because of the way in which it tells it.  For as we have come to understand, there is telling the passion story, and there is telling the passion story.  How it is told can dramatically alter what is being told.

In 1988 the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an important document, a copy of which can be found in your folders.  This doc­ument was entitled “Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion.”  This document speci­fies what are appropriate and inappropriate ways in which to portray the Jews in passion plays.  It speaks about avoiding caricatures, incorporating historical knowledge and biblical scholarship, and also about the dangers of selectivity.  Recognizing that the four gospels present four related but differing versions of the passion story, it sternly warns against giving into the temptation to glean the worst statements about the Jews from the various gospels and to weave them together into one play.  To do so may make for good drama, but it also has the effect of promoting antisemitism.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what Mel Gibson has done in this movie.  At least that is what a team of Catholic and Jewish scholars who have studied an earlier version of this screenplay say he has done.  As I suspect you are aware, last April the Anti Defamation League joined with the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in assembling this commit­tee, consisting of five Catholic and four Jewish scholars.  They thought they were working cooperatively with Mel Gibson and ICON Productions in making recommendations on how to amend that script in an effort to avoid precisely the controversy that has since arisen.  Unfortunately, after they submitted their report to ICON, ICON disavowed their partnership and accused them of having stolen the script; an ab­surd accusation considering that previously ICON had required that each scholar sign a confidentiality document.  In your packets, you will find articles by each of these scholars, and especially one by Paula Fredriksen who does an excellent job in documenting what took place between the committee and ICON.  Please read them.