“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Michaelson doesn’t note the obvious theologically informed timing of the film’s release: the convergence of Holy Week and Passover. Through much of European history, this period saw the greatest number of pogroms, charges of blood libel, host desecration charged and other efforts to punish the Jews for their persecution or rejection of Jesus. It’s enough to make a cynic believe that anti-Semitism is so deeply ingrained that it will never disappear. As Sartre maintained, the marginalization, exclusion and extermination of Jews is meant to support the authenticity of the anti-Semite. And so ironically this hatred even appears in places, like Ukraine and Poland, where there are hardly any Jews any more. A la Von Clausewitz, who famously wrote that diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means, so we may say that the myriad of videos like this one on YouTube and other websites, can be seen as the continuation of the progrom by other, digital means.—Rabbi Baker
- YouTube
The most tasteless YouTube video ever has just been released – by our friends at Jews for Jesus. Entitled “That Jew Died for You,” it is – I am not making any of this up – a three-minute video showing Jesus Christ among a group of Jews arriving at Auschwitz. And you thought the Easter Passion Plays were offensive.
According to Jews for Jesus, the video was made because “Jesus has often been wrongly associated with the perpetrators of the Holocaust.” The film, which includes Jesus helping a Jewish woman when she stumbles during a forced march and, later, being selected for the gas chambers by a Mengele-like Nazi, is meant to clear that up. Actually, Jesus was “just another Jew,” and suffered with the Jews in the Holocaust.
A “making-of” video available on thatjewdiedforyou.com elaborates: “The Holocaust, perhaps more than any other event or topic, has kept Jewish people from being open to considering Jesus as the Jewish messiah.” If only we didn’t blame Christians for the genocide of our people, the reasoning goes, we’d be more open to converting to Christianity.
See video at: http://m.forward.com/blogs/forward-thinking/196708