Mel Gibson's Passion: The Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications (review)

Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 379 Reviews about literature in spatial metaphors, referring for instance to the work of Lefevre, Foucault, De Certeau, and Boyer. As she states from the outset, Mann reads space as discursive in the first place: “space, in this view, is a discourse; it is neither given nor transcendent, but ‘produced’” (p. 1). This exciting exchange between space and language concludes with the modernist Gordian knot between the urban space and poetry. Mann shows that the usual connection between poetry and the city gains further intensity in the case of Hebrew poetry and Tel Aviv. The modernist poetic project is consonant with the national Zionist project of Tel Aviv. Each aims “to suggest a transcendent, imaginative space built from the ordinary, even profane details of the city down below” (p. 252). But unlike the more traditional critics, Mann does not subscribe to this enthusiastic nexus between the modernistpoetic project and the urban-nationalist one. She prefers, instead, to take a critical stance and see this, in fact, as the source of a blind spot in the discourse about Tel Aviv in which “concrete history” takes to the background in favor of transcendence. A very important contribution, this book adds a crucial layer to the discussion of the city of Tel Aviv in its local, national, and historical context. I would even venture to claim that it offers the most complex and multilayered view to date, a Renaissance text in which the author/flâneuse strolls, researches, interprets, writes, and even makes photographs, all at the same time. Hanna Soker-Schwager Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer Sheva, Israel soker@bgu.ac.il MEL GIBSON’S PASSION: THE FILM, THE CONTROVERSY, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS. Edited by Zev Garber. Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies. Pp. 184. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2006. Paper, $14.95. In this book, Zev Garber presents twenty essays by different authors focusing upon The Passion of the Christ (USA, 2004; director: Mel Gibson), a movie attempting to portray the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Some of the essays in the book are based upon a 2004 symposium held at Purdue University, which analyzed the movie based upon biblical, historical, and sociological perspectives. The various authors in this book present their material from the position of Jewish, Christian, and interfaith viewpoints. The authors comprise a wide range of respondents from the United States and Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 380 Reviews abroad and demonstrate a serious approach to this difficult and controversial topic. The essays are presented in three separate sections. The first section is entitled “Reflections on the Film.” Irving Greenberg, “Review of The Passion of the Christ,” states that Gibson created the “most successful Passion play of all time” (p. 7). This statement by Greenberg should be understood in the context of the media’s obsession with horrific, gory, and exaggerated details concerning the death of Jesus. Furthermore, similar to the Passion plays of the Middle Ages, the movie is a highly subjective interpretation by Mel Gibson of some aspects of the end of the life of Jesus. Greenberg asks disturbing theological questions, for example, whether or not this movie is premised upon “the teaching that God demands the tortured death of God’s son as the price of forgiveness of human sin” (p. 11). Based upon Greenberg, we may ask why the God of Love of the New Testament is absent from the movie? Incidentally, a fact often unknown to some Bible teachers, as well as lay people from diverse backgrounds, this God of Love is also found in the Hebrew Bible Penny Wheeler, “Gibson at the Crossroads,” clearly states that this “celluloid passion” (p. 13) is as much about Gibson’s differences with his own Roman Catholic Church as it is about the sufferings of Jesus. Gibson incorporates sources that are not part of the canonized Gospels. She closely examines some of the sources utilized by Gibson, especially the visions of the obscure Anna Katharina, a German nineteenth century mystic, whose visions were recorded by the German romantic poet and translator, Clemens Brentano. Bypassing the Gospel versions, Gibson introduces the voice of Satan into contrived scenes of the Passion in...