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Click here. Rabbi Karp's Sermons ... YOM KIPPUR MORNING 2003 It is strange how some memories seen to stick with you throughout your life and you see them as clearly in your mind’s eye as if they happened yesterday. We all have them, I suspect. I know I do. In fact, I would like to share a couple of them with you now. I was in junior high school. My friend, Marty Hurst, and I used to spend a lot of time together, having fun and going on adventures. One of our recurring adventures was to ride our bikes to the Parkchester Public Library. We both loved books, and we both loved bike riding. Now the Parkchester library was not the closest library to our homes, but we liked to go there anyway. For it was a very nice library and it was in the middle of a very nice shopping district, with plenty of stores which we also liked to frequent. The bike ride itself was an adventure, taking us quite a distance from the familiar streets of our neighborhood, across major intersections into another world, as it were, of life in New York. However, there was one trip to Parkchester which turned out to be more of an adventure than Marty and I had planned on. We were riding through one of the neighborhoods along our route when, as if out of nowhere, we heard a shout, "Get them!" I, who was riding behind Marty, immediately looked around, only to see a group of what appeared to be pretty big kids running after us. I remember shouting, "Go, Marty! Let’s get out of here!" and pedaling as fast as I could. I remember thinking, "I’m on a bike. They’ll never catch me." I remember thinking that just before I felt someone grab the back of my bike and throw it, and me, to the ground. "What are you doing here? We don’t like Jews in our neighborhood. You’re a Jew! Look at that nose!" Believe it or not, I was speechless. I was completely disoriented. My mind was buzzing with questions like, "What’s going on here?" and "How did they know I was Jewish?" And then they started beating me, shouting works like Yid and Kike. Suddenly it was over, and they were gone, and I was lying there, my bike was lying there, and Marty was back, helping me to my feet. I was far more shaken than injured. They hadn’t even broken the skin. Well, maybe a little bit. Marty and I would ride through that neighborhood again on our future journeys to Parkchester, but we always did it at our fastest possible speed. That was the first time that I ever encountered antisemitism. I had heard of it, but living in New York City at a time when New York was predominantly Jewish, I had never really experienced it. Nor did I understand it. For reasons beyond my comprehension, these kids hated me. They never saw me before nor had I ever done anything to harm them, yet they hated me enough to chase me and beat me. Many years passed, and with them other occasional encounters with antisemitism, but nothing serious. Then there was another incident. Not a violent one, but painful one. It was the Fall of 1976. I was serving as assistant rabbi of Temple Israel of New Rochelle, New York. Some of my congregants who were deeply involved in Boy Scouting had asked me to participate in a Scout program of interfaith understanding. It took place on a lovely Fall day in a beautifully wooded Boy Scout camp. The purpose of the program was to provide the participating scouts with a basic orientation to other faiths. To accomplish this, they were broken into three groups - Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. There were three clergymen - myself as a rabbi, a Protestant minister, and a Catholic priest. Our charge was to visit these groups and talk about our faiths. 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, a little about 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 some Jews wear those little 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 went to meet with the Catholics boys. They were gathered in a field, and it seemed to me as though they filled it. This was a big group. So I went through my shpiel, just as I had done for the Protestants, and opened the floor for questions. Once again, everything was going pretty well. One of the leaders announced, "Time for one more question." All sorts of hands were raised, but in the crowd I spotted the cutest little boy scout. He was short and slight, had straight blond hair, combed to the side across his brow, with an angelic face. In his khaki green uniform, he looked like a Norman Rockwell painting. So I called upon him. He stood there for a second, then asked, "Why did you Jews kill Christ?" I was shocked. 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. This is what he had been taught. I was a rabbi. Now he wanted to find out why. I answered his question with history and analysis, explaining how it wasn’t the Jews but the Romans, but I do not know how much he walked away with. I know what I walked away with. Out of the mouths of babes. Antisemitism alive and well in America. I share these stories because over the last few months they have been driven back to the surface of my consciousness; driven there by a growing debate over a movie scheduled to be released this coming March; Mel Gibson’s "The Passion." For those of you who may not have heard of this movie, let me briefly describe it. In Christianity, the term, the "Passion" refers to the account of the last days or hours of Jesus’ life. It is the story of his trial and execution. It is a story that has been told and retold countless times. Traditionally, it is the centerpiece of the observance of Easter. For much of Christian history, this story has also been the centerpiece of Christian antisemitism, for in its "traditional" telling, it places responsibility for the death of Jesus upon the Jewish people. Now in this day and age, most mainline Christian denominations have abandoned that image of the Jews as being responsible for Jesus’ death. But still, there are some fundamentalist groups who hold firm to the New Testament accounts and therefore hold firm to a belief in Jewish guilt for the crime of what has come to be known of as "deicide" - the killing of God. While the Roman Catholic church is not one such group, there are splinter Catholic groups who have broken with Rome on many issues, and this is one of them. They are often called "Traditionalists." Mel Gibson is such a Catholic. In producing this movie, it is his intention to tell the story of the Passion the way he feels it should be told; the "traditional" way. Well, as you can imagine, the possibility of the release of a movie which vilifies the Jews as "Christ Killers" has stirred up a great deal of concern within the Jewish world. And not just the Jewish world. There is a great deal of concern within the Christian world as well. For such a presentation undermines fifty years of constructively building Jewish-Christian relations. In response to the news of this movie, the Anti Defamation League joined hands with the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in putting together an ad hoc team of nine Jewish and Catholic scholars with the intention of working with Mel Gibson and his film company, ICON Productions, to examine the script and make recommendations on how to adjust it so as to avoid promoting antisemitism. At first, Gibson agreed and supplied this team with a copy of an early version of the screenplay. After each scholar individually critiqued the text, and then joined with the rest of the team to compile their findings, this group "unanimously agreed that the screenplay was replete with objectionable elements that would promote antisemitism."1 They then made specific recommendations on how to revise the script. Unfortunately, while in the beginning, Mr. Gibson expressed an interest in working with them, after he read their report, he not only rejected their recommendations, but also threatened to sue both sponsoring organizations; a threat which led the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to dissociate themselves from the project. However, it should be noted that while the Church withdrew, each of their scholars on the team stood firm. What were some of the concerns of this team? Let me quote from a statement by one of its members, Philip A. Cunningham, the Executive Director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College. "I want to state categorically that the script repeatedly violated Catholic standards for portraying Jesus’ passion... These include flagrant historical inaccuracies and an approach to the New Testament not according to current Catholic biblical principles, but from the perspective on a late eighteenth century German mystic, Anne Katherine Emmerich. Norms of the U.S. Bishops...make it clear that dramatic presentations of the death of Jesus must ‘conform to the highest possible standards of biblical interpretation and theological sensitivity... and [have] a guiding artistic vision sensitive to historical fact and to the best biblical scholarship’ [Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion]. To give a few examples, video clips show Jesus shackled in chains by Jewish arrestors (not merely ‘bound’ as in the Gospels), dragged to the Temple (rather than to the high priest’s courtyard as in the New Testament), into a fanciful, non-existent ‘Great Hall of the Temple’... where he is brutalized by a rabble of over a hundred Jews (which does not appear in the Bible, but does in Emmerich). Moreover, Pilate is portrayed as intimidated and dominated by Caiaphas, although it is an undisputed historic fact that Caiaphas remained high priest only at Pilate’s pleasure. In addition, the bishops’ Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion states that divergent scenes from different gospels cannot be simply strung together for dramatic effect if the consequence is to intensify ‘Jewish’ culpability."2 Now some of you may have read an article by movie critic Sean Leary, in the Argus-Dispatch, and some of you may have read an editorial in the Quad City Times, both of which basically say, "Hey! It’s only a movie! Why is everyone getting so upset?" You may have even thought that yourself. "What’s the big deal? It’s only a movie?" Some of you may have even been upset with groups like the Anti Defamation League for making such a fuss. "What are they doing? They are only going to get the Christians angry at us? They’re only going stir up antisemitism?" Why are these people being so passionate about "The Passion"? It should come as no surprise to you that I am one of those passionate people. I want to take this opportunity to explain to you why I am so passionate, and why you should be as well. First off, let me make a statement that some of you might find disturbing, and which some of you might feel is an overstatement - but it isn’t. My statement is this: There is a direct line between Calvary and Auschwitz. We should never fool ourselves into believing that the Holocaust occurred in a vacuum, for it did not. It was the direct result of 2,000 years of Christian antisemitism; an antisemitism which had its roots sunk deep into the very strongly held belief that it was the Jews who were responsible for the death of Jesus. An antisemitism which nurtured its virulent hatred on the formula that if one truly loves Jesus, then one must truly hate those who murdered him. When I teach my course on the Holocaust at St. Ambrose, I start it off with a brief overview of the history of antisemitism, focusing on the particular history of German antisemitism. In doing that, one has to look no further than to the teachings of none other than Martin Luther himself. I share with my students all sorts of quotes from his writings - hateful, horrible quotes - and all that hatred flows from this one primary belief; that the Jews killed Jesus. And so much of what he said, later found its way into Nazi racial doctrine. I share with them a catalogue of anti-Jewish laws promulgated by the medieval church; laws which reappeared in Nazi Germany. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind, nor in the mind of any Holocaust scholar. The nightmare of the Holocaust is the direct result of 2,000 years of evolving Christian antisemitism; of antisemitism build upon the foundations of the perception of Jew as Christ Killer. But that was then. This is now. You may be wondering, "Rabbi, do you honestly believe that this movie will influence people - will influence our friends and neighbors - to hate Jews?" My answer to that is "No" and "Yes." No, it won’t influence everyone. There will be many, at least I hope there will be many, who will view it with a critical eye and not take its message of hate to heart. But yes, there still will be others - and I fear many others - who will walk out of the theater seething with anger; anger directed at us. We dare not underestimate the power of film. Movies do help mold public opinion, both for good and for ill. Look at the movie "JFK." In spite of the fact that countless people who participated in the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy testified again and again that this movie was pure fiction - that it was far removed from the facts of the case - still, that movie has almost singlehandedly kept alive the widely held belief in the existence of a conspiracy to murder Kennedy. During the Viet Nam War, countless anti-war films fueled the anti-war movement, and several years later, other films fueled American guilt for its mistreatment of the men who served in that war. Films like "Free Willy" energized the "Save the Whales" movement, and "Schindler’s List" sparked widespread interest in the Holocaust. My own son, Josh, and countless others like him, greatly benefitted by the increased public awareness of autism kindled by the movie "Rainman." Movies like "Bonnie and Clyde" made heroes out of brutal villains, and for so many years Westerns convinced their audiences that Native Americans were bloodthirsty savages rather than the victims of American expansionism. And then, of course, there was Orson Welles’ famous radio broadcast, "War of the Worlds," which threw an entire nation into panic. The media, and especially the film media, possesses an enormous power to shape the attitudes of the public. And they are not afraid to exercise that power. In fact, it is the successful exercise of that power which earns them fortune and fame. When it comes to controversial topics and public opinion, there is no such thing as "only a movie." When I was young, I remember the Italian American community publicly protesting televisions shows like "The Untouchables" because they stereotyped Italian Americans as criminals. When I was young, I remember watching "Amos and Andy" on TV, and then it was gone. I remember watching the Disney film, "Song of the South." Now Disney says that they will never release that movie on video tape or dvd. Why no "Amos & Andy"? Why no "Song of the South"? Because they denigrate the African American community. Just this past year, the Fox Movie Channel was planning to run a Charlie Chan film festival. They advertised it and everything. But they canceled it. Why? Because the Asian American community protested those films as being insulting. For us, these protests may seem overblown. After all, what’s wrong with a good Charlie Chan movie, and Amos and Andy were pretty funny. But these portrayals strike at the very heart of those communities - the Asian American community, the African American community, the Italian American community. They are wounded by those insulting stereotypes. They feel degraded, and they are. But just as we may fail to feel their pain, so others like Sean Leary and the editorial writer at the Times fail to feel our pain; Jewish pain. They fail to understand that the last thing we Jews need is a new public voice proclaiming us Christ Killers. They fail to understand that for us, this can never be just a movie. It will always be an antisemitic tract. As Jews, the last thing we need is for there to arise yet another generation of little blond hair Boy Scouts like the one I met so many years ago, who ask the same question he asked; who hold the same beliefs he held about us. "Why did you Jews kill Christ? I know you did. I saw it in the movies." So I am passionate about "The Passion," and I firmly believe you should be as well. AMEN
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