Often people come to us and urge us to write about one
subject or another.
The subject is an important one. The facts are accessible,
verifiable, and perhaps not so well known.
The subject may also be interesting. In fact it may be
fascinating and really draw reader interest. It may be
something that people really want to read about, for one
reason or another -- though it is not necessarily the case
that all of them are good reasons.
Yet we may nonetheless turn down many offers to write about
such a subject, because despite all these important
qualities, we will only include the story if we can determine
that writing about it will actually be useful, that it will
have some to'eles.
Sometimes writing about neglected subjects can have great
benefits. Sometimes it can do great harm. Sometimes it can
have no practical effect whatsoever.
A case in point -- which may be easy to understand because it
is about a Jewish issue but not an issue that is internal to
the chareidi community -- is the recent release of a major
motion picture from Hollywood, so to speak, that is about the
last day in the life of the founder of Christianity as
reported in the Christian books, known as The Passion of
C.
Although the production was just released to the general
public about two weeks ago, it had been shown in private
screenings for about a year. It is purported to be
historically accurate, to the extent that all characters
speak only in Aramaic, the language that was spoken at the
time. Translation is given only in subtitles printed at the
bottom of the screen. According to all the reports, it shows
extremely brutal treatment of the founder of Christianity,
and the Jews are presented as very unsympathetic and very
unsavory characters who are clearly responsible for the
brutality.
There is no doubt that such a film, made by a professional,
master manipulator of people's feelings, will cause
antisemitism -- and perhaps worse, Rachmono litzlan.
If not in America then in Europe where passion plays have a
destructive tradition of hundreds of years -- or in the
Middle East where large numbers of Moslems have already
embraced classical Christian antisemitic motifs and are a
ready audience for such material. If not this year then next
year, or the year after that, five, ten, fifty years down the
line.
As soon as the first reports came out, Jewish pundits began
writing about the film and the way it would arouse
antisemitism. The producer denied that it was antisemitic in
intent since, according to him, it just conveys what the
Christian books contain. We cannot reproduce the full debate,
and there is no need to.
This whole topic is certainly something that is important and
interesting to all Jews. (Nonetheless, it goes without saying
that Yated would not take part in the basic debate
about such matters.) Yet the question is what was the point
of spending six to eight months discussing the antisemitism
of the film? Did anyone think that if Jewish journalists
warned that a film would arouse antisemitism the movie would
be withdrawn?
In fact, the tons of newsprint expended on the topic had
virtually no effect in any way that was intended or hoped for
by those who wrote about the antisemitism problems. If it had
any effect at all, it was to raise the general interest in
the film, and to entice Jews to see it who might have
otherwise not have done so. There is little doubt that these
were interesting and important discussions -- that would have
better been left unpublished.
It is all the more evident because the most problematic
aspect of the film was virtually ignored. It can be argued
that the most damaging aspect of the show is its detailed
depiction of brutal, bloody torture, without regard to the
Christian context. The film is not an assault on Jews, but on
one of our important values: that shefichas domim is
inexcusable. Exposing millions to such a gripping experience
of horrible violence, in a world in which mercy killing is
already legal in "civilized" places and much of the world is
not repulsed by suicide bombings of noncombatant children,
will certainly be a profoundly destructive force on the
social fabric of Western society.
