Read Online Those Who Forget the Past by Ron Rosenbaum - Free Book Online Page B

pronouncements of the retiring Malaysian prime minister that Jews rule the world is more than “merely anti-Semitic” but somehow a voice for reform in the Islamic world.
    And a new cinematic version of the Passion Play, the depiction of the Gospel story of the death of Jesus, is upon us. By an auteur who claims he is not making a movie so much as presenting “history.” Perhaps it is history, perhaps not; there seems a certain amount of disagreement even among Christians, even among the Gospels, as to what is or what isn’t “history.” But Mel Gibson thinks he knows.
    But still, I was surprised by the savagery of his attack on Frank Rich for raising questions about the project. “I want to kill him,” taken alone, might be angry hyperbole, but the primitive specificity of “I want his intestines on a stake,” particularly in this context, could not help but recall the New Testament image of the death of Judas, who, in one Gospel at least, is depicted, after betraying Jesus, as taking a violent fall and literally spilling his intestines in what is later called a “field of blood.” The wish to see Rich’s “intestines on a stake” sounds to me like more than an accidental coincidence of imagery.
    Rich’s response was both deft and dignified, but why the lack of outrage from others? A death threat, however rhetorical, because a Jew raised questions about a movie about the death of Jesus? Has the rhetorical bar been lowered that far?
    History. One thing that is history—undeniable, documented, bloodstained history—is the effect if not the intent of the Passion Play in the past. For those unfamiliar with these effects, I recommend the scholar James Shapiro’s book
Oberammergau:
The Troubling Story of the World’s Most Famous Passion Play.
The deicide—or “Christ-killer—accusation lives to incite anew, in effect if not intent.
    Once, I actually attended a Passion Play, the surprisingly elaborately mounted “Passion Play of the Ozarks” presented by the Christ of the Ozarks theme park in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. In addition to boasting it had the tallest statue of Jesus in the Northern Hemisphere, the theme park featured many miniature Shetland ponies that were the favorite of Gerald L. K. Smith, the anti-Semitic demagogue who founded the Christ of the Ozarks project and peddled his anti-Jewish propaganda through its gift store.
    Smith had enjoyed some success as a “populist” acolyte of Huey Long after Long died. Populism turned to anti-Semitism, and watching the Passion Play, one could understand his enthusiasm for it.
    For those wondering what I was doing there, it was the early 1980s and I had an idea for a novel (which I never wrote) in which the Passion Play of the Ozarks would be a setting. So it was “material” in a sense, and perhaps it’s changed since then, but I found it discomfiting to watch the Passion Play, with its black-bearded Jewish caricatures in villainous makeup and sinister black robes scheming with Judas to get Christ killed through betrayal. It wasn’t presented as “history” so much as the Gospel Truth.
    I’m sorry for the digression. The question I was addressing —or avoiding—was optimism. As in: any hope for it? I’ll admit I’m not constitutionally predisposed to optimism. The study of modern history is not a source of optimism. 20 At the very least, though, I’m the sort of pessimist who seeks out sources of hope. This is something I did when I was preparing to give a talk on contemporary anti-Semitism—that fill-in talk for Jonathan Rosen in fact (to bring things full circle). I e-mailed Ruth Wisse at Harvard, where she is a professor of literature, and asked her if she saw any basis for hope for the situation in Israel. She replied that a distinction must be made between false hope and real hope. That false hope means trusting