Tonight we will read the Book of Esther. Did you know that the Esther almost didn’t make it into the Hebrew Bible? The Talmud provides fragments of the record of the canonization—decision which books were considered worthy of becoming part of our Holy Scriptures—that reveals an important debate in Jewish life, one that resonates with today’s events.

According to a talmudic debate (B.T. Megillah 7a), two different objections, one prudential and the other theological, were raised against the inclusion of the book of Esther. First was the glaring omission of God’s presence, or even God’s name in the story. But the second is a more pragmatic concern. The Talmud describes the queen approaching the rabbis of her day with the request to establish the rescue of Persian Jewry from Haman as an annual day of commemoration for all time. But they are not convinced, saying "You arouse the enmity of the nations in whose midst we live." Their concerned response seems to say, we are merely a tolerated minority in a land of non-Jews. It is unwise to celebrate by means of a book that speaks of so much violence against non-Jews. As Rabbi Ismar Schorsch has interpreted this text, “It is in our national interest to bury this book."

Whenever Jews find themselves in the minority, and especially when we feel threatened, we wrestle with these same options. Do we seek to make peace as much as possible, and bury the evidence, stifle our critique, tie our own hands? Is it possible to make our claims without enraging our hosts, without causing further hatred? Is it possible to proudly tell our story without fear of repercussions? On this Shabbat Zachor, a day for preparing for Purim by remembering the serious side of Purim, the dark history of violence against our ancestors and persecution of Jews that continues today, we would do well to consider this debate.

Six months ago, prior to the release of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” leaders of the Jewish community, in concert with Catholic leaders, sought to consult with the producer. They had many interests: certainly minimizing the level of anti-semitism in the movie was one concern. After all, Gibson’s zoom-lens focus on the Passion aroused ingrained fears, based on the use of the medieval Passion plays to stir up anger at the Jews just prior to Easter. Good Friday became a day of fear for Jews, marked by pogroms throughout our history in Eastern Europe. Passion comes from the root “passio” for suffering, and its intent is to recall Christ’s suffering on the cross. The Passion also became a reminder of Jewish suffering at the hands of Christians, from the Crusaders who aimed to liberate the Holy Land from the hands of the Muslims and took Jewis victims on along the way, to the Inquisition, to Chmielnicki, to Kishinev.

But what got lost in the ensuing months of promotion was the interest of the Catholic scholars in debating Gibson’s claim that this movie represents a historical presentation of the last 12 hours of Jesus’s life. The Catholic scholars who read the script and were allowed to see clips in advance, wrote an extensive critique, arguing that the film is contrary to mainstream Catholic views since Vatican II, and that it is not arguably historical or even fully faithful to the Gospels themselves.

Unfortunately, due to a combination of Jewish outcry and Christian retreat in the face of threats from Gibson’s company, the debate centered on the Jewish critique, completely ignoring, or muzzling the internal debate within the Catholic Church that is the real conflict at the heart of this film.

N.B. I am unaccustomed to referring to the central figure of Christianity as the Christ. That term implies the belief that this man was God’s own anointed one. Whether here in the sanctuary or talking among friends on the street, I refer to Jesus, the man, by that Latinized form of his Hebrew, Jewish name, Yehoshua. Jesus was born a Jew, taught Jewish lessons to Jewish audiences, using Jewish parables from the Hebrew Scriptures. I would not give him the title “rabbi,” since that title was not widely used until later in the first century, and since we have no evidence that he was that kind of teacher. But it is clear that he was not intent on breaking away from Judaism, and neither were many of his disciples. It was only decades later, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE by the Romans, that Christianity began to reject Judaism and reach out to non-Jews. However, in the context of this movie, I use the term “Christ” to refer to the character in the film and his symbolic importance for Christians.

Armed with the Catholic critique of Gibson’s movie, I chose to see the film. I was aware that the biblical phrases and scenes that would be familiar to most Christians in the film were augmented by the imaginative writings of a nun named Anne Catherine Emmerich who lived between 1774 and 1824. Having read the reviews warning about the violence, I saw it under the condition that the audience was an invited group of Christian and Jewish clergy who came to preview and discuss the film. I also appreciated that the owner of the theater offered this screening as a public service, a way of using the film for good and preventing the film’s potential for creating divisions and hatred.

I want to share three responses to this film
First, the film is a reminder that, no matter how far we believe interfaith dialogue has brought us, no matter how much Jews and Christians recognize our shared roots, not matter how universal we Jews want to be in believing that there are basically no differences between our religions, the movie reminds us about very basic theological differences that will not go away.

People bring widely different ways of thinking about God and religion to this film and as a result, experience it in wildly different ways. As commentator Yossi Klein Halevi has written, “Where a Jew sees blood, kitsch, and menace, a Christian sees sacrifice, suffering, and love.” Everyone with me in the screening walked out of the film silently. Many felt brutalized. Some Christian clergy apologized for what was shown; others argued that it did not represent Christianity as they understood it.

On the one hand, witnessing the violence in this film felt like torture. For those Jews who might consider viewing it out of curiosity or a sense that this is an important film that we should know first-hand, I would strongly urge you to consider how much violence you can stomach in the theater.

But for a Christian, the violence of this movie strengthens a religious conviction that Christ’s suffering atones for their sin. This is the central difference between Judaism and Christianity—not that they believe that the messiah has come and we have not, but that Jesus died on behalf of all human beings, to atone for our inherent sinfulness. Jews take different view of both sinfulness and acts of atonement. These are issues that we rarely discuss, either among ourselves or with our Christian friends. We have come to believe that we see the world in similar ways. But this movie reminds us how far apart our religious traditions have diverged in two thousand years.

A Jew could easily walk out of this film shocked by the centrality of suffering at the heart of Christianity. A Christian could leave the film appalled at the cruelty of the Jews. But my second point is that the movie has the potential to create divisions, and we must work even harder to maintain good relations between the faiths.

One person attending the screening with us said, “This is a case of Hollywood playing with fire.” The speaker was a Muslim. Honest differences can be respected and appreciated. This has been the purpose of interfaith dialogue for the past fifty years—to enable us to accept our differences. As the Reconstructionist prayerbook seeks to validate multiple paths to one God, so too did the Catholic Church in Vatican II aim to accept the possibility of two separate and valid covenants.

Mel Gibson, unfortunately, does not subscribe to the edicts of Vatican II. He created this film as much out of an argument within the Catholic Church as to indict the Jews. Fortunately, anti-semitism has not been a feature of American Christian teaching, and the film is unlikely to incite violence or hatred against the Jews for the charge of deicide. The potential of this movie is more insidious—as the movie ids distributed on the screen and on dvds throughout the world, to incite people in other countries, where Jew-hatred is sadly alive and well. Not only that, but the vivid and traumatic images on the screen will last well beyond the weekly news, and possibly beyond our own generation. Just consider the images we still carry of Charlton Heston in Cecil B. DeMille’s “Ten Commandments” and you will realize you enduring movie images can be.

Our response, I would urge, is not to criticize Christianity or even to publicly denounce the film as anti-semitic. But we need to be prepared to respond to those Christians who would, out of curiosity or missionizing, ask us questions that we have not been accustomed to answer for most of our lifetimes.

Finally, Jews must be prepared to address the confusion created by the film’s promoters between sacred text and history. This is a confusion that I have pointed out in dealing with our own sacred texts as well. The Gospels were not written to portray history, and leave out significant details that are documented in other works of the period. Portraying the gospels faithfully is not equal to portraying history.

In addition, the four gospels offer different accounts of Jesus’ Passion. The Catholic Church has officially acknowledged that certain passages in the Gospels condemn the Jews, particularly passages from the Gospel of John, the latest of the four gospels. John’s gospel is the basis for much of Gibson’s film, yet the Catholic Church has warned against choosing the most hateful passages when presenting this sensitive story.

As the U.S. Conference of Bishops, wrote in 1998, (Criteria for the Evaluation of
Dramatizations of the Passion), “It is not sufficient for the producers of passion dramatizations to respond to responsible criticism simply by appealing to the notion that ‘it's in the Bible.’ One must account for one's selections.”

In Gibson’s film, Pilate is portrayed as the most morally complex character. Yet historical sources note that Pilate was a brutal leader who crucified thousands of Jews. The High Priest Caiaphas in the film seems to be giving orders to Pilate, when in truth, it was the other way around. Caiaphas was appointed by the Roman governor and did his bidding.

As I said earlier, much of Gibson’s film is not taken from the Gospels at all. Viewers may be so traumatized by the images that, while they recognize certain passages and images from the Bible, they will not notice those elements that are not true to the New Testament. For example, the Jews in the film wear prayer shawls—which were not recognizable from that era. Other elements create a black and white, good and evil view of Jesus’ supporters and vilifiers, and the Jews stand clearly among those who sided with evil. My point is not to claim that the movie is anti-semitic, though that can certainly be argued. Rather, I take issue with the assertion that the movie shows “what really happened.”

I love movies as escape. I also love movies that open me to new experiences, understandings, new emotional territory. Though I was prepared for Passion, it did indeed open me to new emotional territory. I can only hope that others will use this an opportunity to try to understand one another and to learn about our differences with civility and respect.

For further information about the inaccuracies of the film from the standpoint of a Catholic biblical scholar, I urge you to go to the website of The Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College at
http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/reviews/gibson_cunningham.htm