{"id":7756,"date":"2004-03-10T09:02:02","date_gmt":"2004-03-10T09:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/good_stuff_in_commonweal.html"},"modified":"2004-03-10T09:02:02","modified_gmt":"2004-03-10T09:02:02","slug":"good_stuff_in_commonweal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/good_stuff_in_commonweal.html","title":{"rendered":"Good stuff in Commonweal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A consideration of Chagall’s use of the image of the crucified Jesus. Excellent.<\/a><\/p>\n

Last August in Los Angeles, I saw an early, rough edit of Mel Gibson\u2019s controversial new film, The Passion of the Christ. Reviled as anti-Semitic by some who have not even seen it, I judged the version I saw free from explicit anti-Semitism, for three reasons. First, it placed a large onus for the crucifixion on the Romans. Second, it depicted disagreements among the Jewish authorities about Jesus\u2019 punishment, and repeatedly showed Jews who were sympathetic to Jesus. Finally, it omitted the oft-cited phrase from Matthew\u2019s Gospel (\u201chis blood be on us and on our people\u201d), a phrase that has notoriously been used to justify violence against Jews. And it portrayed Jesus\u2019 words from the cross, \u201cFather, forgive them for they know not what they do,\u201d as referring to even those Jewish authorities who had urged his condemnation. Still, my hunch is that some Jews will intensely dislike the film. Historically, the story of Christ\u2019s death and the symbol of the cross are so closely associated with anti-Semitism that many Jews will be understandably repulsed by Gibson\u2019s movie.
\nStrangely, The Passion has drawn me to a reconsideration and greater appreciation of Marc Chagall\u2019s multiple renditions of the crucifixion. Last October, San Francisco\u2019s Museum of Modern Art presented a stunning retrospective of Chagall\u2019s paintings. In the period between 1938 (the year of Kristallnacht) and the end of World War II, Chagall (1887\u20131985), the Russian-born surrealist, obsessed about Jesus as a sacrificed Jew and as a symbol of humanity\u2019s suffering. What might we learn from this quintessential Jewish artist about the iconic significance of the cross? For Chagall, the cross became a way to express his deep, inexpressible grief for the mass murder of his fellow Jews. His work serves as a kind of test case of one possible modern Jewish appropriation of the cross, one from which Christians might profitably learn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A librarian looks at Catholic bloggers.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A consideration of Chagall’s use of the image of the crucified Jesus. Excellent. Last August in Los Angeles, I saw an early, rough edit of Mel Gibson\u2019s controversial new film, The Passion of the Christ. Reviled as anti-Semitic by some who have not even seen it, I judged the version I saw free from explicit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGood stuff in Commonweal - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/good_stuff_in_commonweal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Good stuff in Commonweal - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A consideration of Chagall’s use of the image of the crucified Jesus. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}