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Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ Film
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October - December 2003
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Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ Film
Accusers Against the Film
- The Anti-Defamation League has “grave concerns”, according to Rabbi Eugene Korn, the director of the organization’s Office of Interfaith Affairs.
- Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University said, the film, “Fidelity, accuracy and sensitivity were all lacking in the script.”
- Paula Fredriksen, wrote an article in the New Republic magazine (July 28, 2003), “I shudder to think how The Passion film will play once its subtitles shift from English to Polish, or Spanish, or French, or Russian. When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much higher authority than professors and bishops to answer to.” (Ms. Fredriksen is a Scripture professor at Boston University).
- Rabbi Marvin Hier (founder and Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center) and Harold Brackman (historian and consultant to the Wiesenthal Center) said they are worried about this film because it can stir up Anti-Semitism. They said, “Gibson is a great actor and director, but he has a responsibility to make a movie that does not contribute further to a legacy of pain and suffering of Jews. Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth” avoided flaming Anti-Semitism. And if Gibson uses a wise head and a brave heart, his movie can do it too.”
- Abraham Foxman, Executive Director of the Anti-Defamation League, said, “we were troubled… that it portrayed the Jews, the Jewish community, in a manner that we have experienced historically. Seeing passion plays used to incite not only a passion of love in terms of Christianity, but at the same time, to instill and incite a hatred of the Jews because of deicide.”
- Sister Mary Boys in the Jewish Week, March 28, 2003 said, “ As a member of the Catholic Church, I regard (Gibson’s) thinking as bizarre and dangerous, and suggest that Jews judge them similarly.”
Sister Boys is a Catholic scholar who teaches at Union Theological Seminary.
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