This peculiar word "freedom" -- with hundreds of definitions -- has been debased in the coinage of communications. It might be helpful to go back to the original derivation of the word -- a dozen language roots with a common ancestry: always it springs from words that mean "peace" and "love." Strangely enough, the word "liberty" traced back to its roots meant "growing up" or "maturing" or "taking responsibility." And therein lies the whole story -- we can have peace and brotherly love by accepting our responsibility to preserve freedom here where it has known its longest run in six thousand years of recorded history.
Ronald Reagan on the second to last page of Where's the Rest of Me?
If damage is done to the nation, it is almost impossible to rectify; the bad drives out the good.
Same author, same place.
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Was Jesus Anti-Semitic?
Last week I heard a piece on national public radio about Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion. The film is about the end of Jesus's life. Gibson produced the film himself, and one theme of the piece was the trouble Gibson will have in finding a distributor for a movie like this. Scorcese's The Last Temptation of Christ came to mind as a near comparison: that one generated a lot of mail, as well as protests outside of theaters. Not good for ticket sales.
I don't even remember why The Last Temptation of Christ drew so much opposition. It had to do with Christ's temptation: a vision of connubial normalcy with Mary Magdalene while Jesus suffered on the cross. In fact, a lot of the film's opponents hadn't seen the movie, but they had heard it was controversial. The grounds for expecting that The Passion will similarly draw criticism seem to be that Jesus was a controversial figure. Well, there's more than that. Apparently the film shows without flinching the cruelty inflicted on Jesus during his last hours. Scourging and crucifixion are not easy images to handle. The other reason for expecting controversy stems from the charge of anti-semitism. The story of Jesus's passion can't be told without encountering this bugbear.
So here are a couple of arguments: First, if Catholics called Jews Christ-killers centuries after the fact, should that affect the way we tell the story of Jesus's trial and execution as it occurred? Later generations of Jews bear no more responsibility for Jesus's death than do Germans who were born after 1945 bear responibility for the Holocaust. Here's what we know about Jesus's trial and execution from the gospel accounts: The authorities who brought Jesus to trial were Jewish. These authorities acted in their capacity as Jewish elders when they brought charges against Jesus. The charge they brought against Jesus was blasphemy, because he claimed to be the son of God. They condemned him when they found him guilty of this accusation.
So, how can you tell this story without sounding anti-semitic? If Catholics later used the Jewishness of Jesus' accusers to persecute Jews, does that make any reference to the Jewishness of Jesus' accusers an anti-semitic act? How can a wacky Christ-killer argument cooked up to justify horrible acts be used to repress an accurate re-telling of Jesus' story now?
The interesting thing is that the gospels themselves don't refer to the Jewishness of Jesus' accuser, because Jesus and the elders who wanted to be rid of him were all Jews. Religion and religious authority were certainly relevant to the confrontation between Jesus and the elders, but Jewishness per se had nothing to do with it. This was a tempest entirely within the Jewish community. That's why Pilate wanted to wash his hands of it.
I suppose it's possible to re-tell the story now without reference to Judaism, but we're looking back on the events from 2,000 years now, and we're altogether too aware of who these people are, and of the consequences of what happened then. The only way to sidestep the anti-semitic baggage is to imagine what the confrontation between Jesus and the elders was like back then.
That brings me to the question at the beginning of this article. Was Jesus anti-semitic? You say, "How could he be?," and you would be right. How could Jesus be anti-semitic? Yet he could not have worded his public attacks on the elders more strongly. They rightly saw him as a threat to their authority. He called them a brood of vipers. He never said anything in their favor. He made a point of attacking them whenever he could. To put it briefly, Jesus couldn't stand them, and they feared him.
I asked that question at the beginning to make this point: to say that Jesus was anti-semitic because he attacked the elders is about as logical as saying that Mel Gibson's movie is anti-semitic because it accurately portrays the actions of the elders in response to Jesus' attacks. What should a storyteller like Gibson do: act as if Jesus' accusers weren't Jewish. Should the storyteller act as if religion weren't relevant, and that Jesus' claim to be the messiah wasn't a central issue in this confrontation? How could you tell this story without raising these issues, which were so important to Jews at the time?
I need to make some extra observations here, some remarks not directly related to the radio piece on The Passion, and not directly related to this issue of anti-semitism when we re-tell the story of Jesus' trial and execution so long after it happened. I've wondered why Jesus reacted so vehemently to the elders. Why did he attack them so relentlessly. Well, thinking about so-called strongmen gave me some insight here. Hussein is the strongman we've been most preoccupied with of late. But think of this phenomenon of strongmen through history and through time: Machiavelli's princes, Don Corleone, the neighborhood strongment in City of Joy or Bronx Tale. Kingship in the middle ages shows the phenomenon on a broad scale. We can see this pattern of political organization in small neighborhoods, and, really, over whole empires. The Roman emperors had charisma, money, bravery, ruthlessness. To quite an extent, their power rested on intimidation: people's fear of what would happen if they crossed the ruler. The ruler has to have control of the means of force and a willingness to use these means.
Now, I think that the elders in Jerusalem when Jesus lived were strongmen of this sort. They ruled by intimidation. They did what they had to do to protect and widen their power. They were dishonest, ruthless (as their execution of Jesus showed), wealthy, and respected. They were respected the way Don Corleone wanted to be respected. Because their power was recognized and sanctioned, they didn't have to use violence much to keep the people under them from breaking the rules. People respected and feared them too much to think of that. Then Jesus comes along, telling people they can reinterpret the old laws, and telling people without mistake that they should overthrow the authority of the elders. Jesus fearlessly made this case: take your church and all political authority back from the strongmen. The elders who rule the church are no more than hypocrites: people who think too well of themselves and who think a lot about preserving their privileges. If they were everyday hypocrites, though, I'm not sure Jesus would have attacked them so strongly. He attacked them the way he did because they oppressed people: they built their positions of privilege at other people's exense.
That's enough for tonight. I'm getting tired. Some day you should put these and other writings into your book, I Tell You.
Last week I heard a piece on national public radio about Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion. The film is about the end of Jesus's life. Gibson produced the film himself, and one theme of the piece was the trouble Gibson will have in finding a distributor for a movie like this. Scorcese's The Last Temptation of Christ came to mind as a near comparison: that one generated a lot of mail, as well as protests outside of theaters. Not good for ticket sales.
I don't even remember why The Last Temptation of Christ drew so much opposition. It had to do with Christ's temptation: a vision of connubial normalcy with Mary Magdalene while Jesus suffered on the cross. In fact, a lot of the film's opponents hadn't seen the movie, but they had heard it was controversial. The grounds for expecting that The Passion will similarly draw criticism seem to be that Jesus was a controversial figure. Well, there's more than that. Apparently the film shows without flinching the cruelty inflicted on Jesus during his last hours. Scourging and crucifixion are not easy images to handle. The other reason for expecting controversy stems from the charge of anti-semitism. The story of Jesus's passion can't be told without encountering this bugbear.
So here are a couple of arguments: First, if Catholics called Jews Christ-killers centuries after the fact, should that affect the way we tell the story of Jesus's trial and execution as it occurred? Later generations of Jews bear no more responsibility for Jesus's death than do Germans who were born after 1945 bear responibility for the Holocaust. Here's what we know about Jesus's trial and execution from the gospel accounts: The authorities who brought Jesus to trial were Jewish. These authorities acted in their capacity as Jewish elders when they brought charges against Jesus. The charge they brought against Jesus was blasphemy, because he claimed to be the son of God. They condemned him when they found him guilty of this accusation.
So, how can you tell this story without sounding anti-semitic? If Catholics later used the Jewishness of Jesus' accusers to persecute Jews, does that make any reference to the Jewishness of Jesus' accusers an anti-semitic act? How can a wacky Christ-killer argument cooked up to justify horrible acts be used to repress an accurate re-telling of Jesus' story now?
The interesting thing is that the gospels themselves don't refer to the Jewishness of Jesus' accuser, because Jesus and the elders who wanted to be rid of him were all Jews. Religion and religious authority were certainly relevant to the confrontation between Jesus and the elders, but Jewishness per se had nothing to do with it. This was a tempest entirely within the Jewish community. That's why Pilate wanted to wash his hands of it.
I suppose it's possible to re-tell the story now without reference to Judaism, but we're looking back on the events from 2,000 years now, and we're altogether too aware of who these people are, and of the consequences of what happened then. The only way to sidestep the anti-semitic baggage is to imagine what the confrontation between Jesus and the elders was like back then.
That brings me to the question at the beginning of this article. Was Jesus anti-semitic? You say, "How could he be?," and you would be right. How could Jesus be anti-semitic? Yet he could not have worded his public attacks on the elders more strongly. They rightly saw him as a threat to their authority. He called them a brood of vipers. He never said anything in their favor. He made a point of attacking them whenever he could. To put it briefly, Jesus couldn't stand them, and they feared him.
I asked that question at the beginning to make this point: to say that Jesus was anti-semitic because he attacked the elders is about as logical as saying that Mel Gibson's movie is anti-semitic because it accurately portrays the actions of the elders in response to Jesus' attacks. What should a storyteller like Gibson do: act as if Jesus' accusers weren't Jewish. Should the storyteller act as if religion weren't relevant, and that Jesus' claim to be the messiah wasn't a central issue in this confrontation? How could you tell this story without raising these issues, which were so important to Jews at the time?
I need to make some extra observations here, some remarks not directly related to the radio piece on The Passion, and not directly related to this issue of anti-semitism when we re-tell the story of Jesus' trial and execution so long after it happened. I've wondered why Jesus reacted so vehemently to the elders. Why did he attack them so relentlessly. Well, thinking about so-called strongmen gave me some insight here. Hussein is the strongman we've been most preoccupied with of late. But think of this phenomenon of strongmen through history and through time: Machiavelli's princes, Don Corleone, the neighborhood strongment in City of Joy or Bronx Tale. Kingship in the middle ages shows the phenomenon on a broad scale. We can see this pattern of political organization in small neighborhoods, and, really, over whole empires. The Roman emperors had charisma, money, bravery, ruthlessness. To quite an extent, their power rested on intimidation: people's fear of what would happen if they crossed the ruler. The ruler has to have control of the means of force and a willingness to use these means.
Now, I think that the elders in Jerusalem when Jesus lived were strongmen of this sort. They ruled by intimidation. They did what they had to do to protect and widen their power. They were dishonest, ruthless (as their execution of Jesus showed), wealthy, and respected. They were respected the way Don Corleone wanted to be respected. Because their power was recognized and sanctioned, they didn't have to use violence much to keep the people under them from breaking the rules. People respected and feared them too much to think of that. Then Jesus comes along, telling people they can reinterpret the old laws, and telling people without mistake that they should overthrow the authority of the elders. Jesus fearlessly made this case: take your church and all political authority back from the strongmen. The elders who rule the church are no more than hypocrites: people who think too well of themselves and who think a lot about preserving their privileges. If they were everyday hypocrites, though, I'm not sure Jesus would have attacked them so strongly. He attacked them the way he did because they oppressed people: they built their positions of privilege at other people's exense.
That's enough for tonight. I'm getting tired. Some day you should put these and other writings into your book, I Tell You.
Thursday, July 24, 2003
When I was a teacher, race was on my list of topics to stay away from in class. Too touchy, too easy to be misunderstood, too risky for a junior faculty member who wanted to get tenure! I figured only black men and women could talk honestly about race and not get into trouble. Now that I'm out of academics, I can actually think freely. So in a book I wrote after I didn't have to worry about tenure any more, I wrote a chapter on race and states' rights. It turned out to be a good piece, and no one has attacked me for it yet.
Yesterday I picked up a black gentleman I've been working with at the railway station. He has family in both the United States and St. Thomas. He just graduated this spring with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He had just taken his seat in the passenger side of the station wagon when I saw a big, kind of mean looking guy with a frown on his face striding toward the car. He came from the station house, where my friend had just been. I could tell he didn't intend to be polite. I thought he was going to tell me to get out of the parking space I was in. Instead, he looked hard at my friend and said:
"Next time I'll be happy if you flush the toilet."
"I did flush the toilet," my friend replied.
"No you didn't. I can tell because when the toilet flushes the water in the sink goes down."
With that he turned around and walked back to the station house.
Now, my first reaction to this exchange was to think about who might be right in this quick dispute. The fellow from the station certainly seemed sure of himself. Later on that day I reflected that who was right didn't matter. I asked, "Would someone have followed me all the way out to the parking lot and said something like that to me?" I've had people be rude to me before, but about flushing the toilet?
Nope, I had to see that this enforcement effort was part of the treatment blacks get when they travel to the white suburbs. I've heard so many stories about the small indignities black people experience when they deal with whites who regard them as intruders. Bad experiences with the police get publicized, but this instance reminds me that these uncomfortable encounters unfold in many settings. "If I have to let you use my facilities," the fellow thinks, "I'm going to find some way to let you know that I don't like it." Nope, I don't think I would have received a warning about flushing the toilet from someone who didn't see the water in the sink go down. Who even watches for something like that unless he wants to find a reason to get the guy? He might as well have added, "I didn't even check the toilet itself, because what I really wanted to do was let you know you're not welcome here."
Next time, Breaker Morant.
Yesterday I picked up a black gentleman I've been working with at the railway station. He has family in both the United States and St. Thomas. He just graduated this spring with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. He had just taken his seat in the passenger side of the station wagon when I saw a big, kind of mean looking guy with a frown on his face striding toward the car. He came from the station house, where my friend had just been. I could tell he didn't intend to be polite. I thought he was going to tell me to get out of the parking space I was in. Instead, he looked hard at my friend and said:
"Next time I'll be happy if you flush the toilet."
"I did flush the toilet," my friend replied.
"No you didn't. I can tell because when the toilet flushes the water in the sink goes down."
With that he turned around and walked back to the station house.
Now, my first reaction to this exchange was to think about who might be right in this quick dispute. The fellow from the station certainly seemed sure of himself. Later on that day I reflected that who was right didn't matter. I asked, "Would someone have followed me all the way out to the parking lot and said something like that to me?" I've had people be rude to me before, but about flushing the toilet?
Nope, I had to see that this enforcement effort was part of the treatment blacks get when they travel to the white suburbs. I've heard so many stories about the small indignities black people experience when they deal with whites who regard them as intruders. Bad experiences with the police get publicized, but this instance reminds me that these uncomfortable encounters unfold in many settings. "If I have to let you use my facilities," the fellow thinks, "I'm going to find some way to let you know that I don't like it." Nope, I don't think I would have received a warning about flushing the toilet from someone who didn't see the water in the sink go down. Who even watches for something like that unless he wants to find a reason to get the guy? He might as well have added, "I didn't even check the toilet itself, because what I really wanted to do was let you know you're not welcome here."
Next time, Breaker Morant.
