"As we have said many times, our disagreement is not with Christian churches, nor with the Gospels. Our disagreement is with Mel Gibson whose own personal embellishments of the Gospels stereotype and denigrate the masses of Jews who were not followers of Jesus, while at the same time whitewash Pontius Pilate, who crucified a quarter of a million Jews and who was recalled to Rome by Caesar five years later for his brutality."

"We will...continue on the path of friendship and closeness. We will continue our strong support for the State of Israel. We will not let our Jewish friends down in their time of need. We condemn unequivocally the cancer of anti-Semitism. We reject as unchristian with all the power we can muster any assertion that Jews collectively bare exclusive responsibility for the death of Christ...We will speak out against hatred of Jews...and we will declare loud and clear that we will not allow bigotry to drive a wedge between us."

Since last year when senior Wiesenthal Center officials began publicly expressing their concerns and endorsed changes to the film proposed by Christian and Jewish scholars, the Wiesenthal Center received an unprecedented wave of hate mail and calls. One letter stated, "...What this tells me is that you do not want the real truth to be shown on a public setting that will remind millions of Americans that the jews [sic] were in fact totally responsible for the death of Jesus Christ ...some of these enlightened folks will go for the throat of you jews [sic] and some of your offices of hate such as the ADL main office in New York, or maybe even the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Every time I hear of a suicide bomber killing jews [sic] in Israel I think to myself YES!"

The controversy surrounding the film has escalated and given rise to misconceptions and distortions that threaten the status of Jewish-Christian relations and also takes away from the achievements of Vatican II's landmark 1965 document, Nostra Aetate, declaring "the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if that followed from Holy Scriptures."

To combat this, the Center has written and distributed An Appeal to People of Faith, a document addressing the spate of misinformation regarding Jewish sentiment to the film and to reiterate the Jewish community's gratitude for decades of work on the part of the Christian community to distance itself from the religious roots of antisemitism. It also encourages the Christian community to proclaim that the Crucifixion's message is not one of violence or blame and that there is no room in Christian teaching to support the notion that today's Jews should be seen as the killers of God. An Appeal to People of Faith has already been sent to select leadership of all branches of the Christian faith. As Rabbi Hier noted, "Though we may differ over the film, our long term objectives to fighting bigotry and speaking out against antisemitism are too important to ignore." (click here for An Appeal to People of Faith and for longer in depth background document Background To A Dilemma).

In response, Rabbi Hier added, "... As we have said many times, our disagreement is not with Christian churches, nor with the Gospels. Our disagreement is with Mel Gibson whose own personal embellishments of the Gospels stereotype and denigrate the masses of Jews who were not followers of Jesus, while at the same time whitewash Pontius Pilate, who crucified a quarter of a million Jews and who was recalled to Rome by Caesar five years later for his brutality. This and a number of other of Gibson's dramatic improvisations could potentially imperil Jewish lives. This film will also shape the way millions of Christians and other movie-goers will look upon Jews for much time to come, and therefore threaten an important and beautiful Christian-Jewish alliance that has developed over the last half-century.

We are painfully aware that the power of vivid imagery has a history of inspiring in some people violence and hatred against the Jewish people. It is these concerns, against the backdrop of resurgent antisemitism in Europe and the Middle East that forces us to raise our voices (to read full text of Rabbi Hier's remarks, click here).

Click here to read: 
Rabbi Hier's Editorial, Mel's Passion 
Rabbi Hier's letter to Mel Gibson 
An Appeal to People of Faith 
Background to A Dilemma