In anticipation of Easter, a slightly modified version of \”The Passion of the Christ,\” the film by actor and director Mel Gibson, and screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald, has been re-released. The second coming if you will. This re-cut version is widely available in a DVD gift format.
Make no mistake: We are facing an emerging Christian Right leadership that intends to \”Christianize\” all aspects of American life, from the halls of government to the libraries, to the movies, to recording studios, to the playing fields and locker rooms of professional, collegiate and amateur sports, from the military to \”SpongeBob SquarePants.\”
Often pictured in Christian iconography as solitary figures, lost in a unique and incommunicable holiness, Rice\’s \”holy family\” of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, by contrast, is part of a large, boisterous, affectionate Jewish clan, living a full, observant Jewish life together, full of rituals and prayers and the rhythm of the holy day feasts.
Only a few minutes have passed in the Israeli film, \”Ushpizin,\” named after the holy guests invited into the sukkah, and there\’s something wrong with this feature about an ultra-Orthodox Israeli couple.
Last week the Washington Post reported that the embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is funneling money to religious groups, including churches and other houses of worship, that are providing a variety of services to displaced Gulf Coast residents.
Perhaps there was a time when the secular/religious divide — it is of the Jews I write — made sense. In Eastern and Central Europe from 1850 to 1930, it may have been the case that seculars Jews were genuinely secular, as some few remain today.
Between the time that college ended and life began, I lived in San Francisco. My confusion must have shown on my face plain as day, because wherever I went, missionaries approached me and asked whether I had a personal relationship with Jesus.
As it turns out, Jewish observers of the Vatican say, world Jewry can breathe easy knowing that German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was chosen as the 265th pope.
Despite the church\’s healing legacy to the Jewish people, and the strong moral progressive stands of John Paul II in recent years, the church\’s record is mixed and troubling in other ways.
The intersection of religion and politics became a talk show hit after Nov. 2, when the religious right played a huge, and perhaps pivotal, role in the re-election of President Bush.
Jews are not of one mind about the new focus on faith in politics, but many in the large non-Orthodox majority remain uncomfortable with that trend and are downright scared of new threats to the church-state wall posed by the religious conservatives.
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