Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Joseph Schick wrote back to me (more promptly than I respond to email from hot chicks), and added my email to his comments section. I don’t want to make a whole big thing of this, and I should probably get on that email I’ve been meaning to send to Andrew Sullivan, but I should at least respond to this on my blog:
Thanks for the note - I [was observing] shabbat (the Jewish sabbath) and just read it.
I'm not a big fan of Foxman, but he has a right to express his opinion, and he never called either Gibson or Passion anti-Semitic. As for Nicosia, I obviously disagree that she's correct. Believe me, the secular Jews she refers to are not interested or afraid either of converting to Christianity or becoming more observant of their own religion.
-Joe
I put in the brackets part, but not the parenthetical. Here are three of the top results I got from a google search for “foxman gibson” immediately after reading this: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=8445, http://www.geocities.com/munichseptember1972/gibson_spewing_anti-semitism.htm, and http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/11/Gibson071103.html.
“Spewing” is an odd term. It’s what people who think that I (who would look like Thor if I had a collarbone) am Jewish say I do with Zionist propaganda. That whole last sentence was just peculiar, let’s move on.
Apparently, at some point Foxman did say that “The Passion of the Christ” was not necessarily inherently anti-Semetic. Now, it’s easy for me to talk about being super-accurate in emails, since I usually take about a month to write one, but my primary point was that Nicosia (the original stupid mailer) meant to express extreme disapproval of the inexcusable actions of certain individuals who happen to be Jewish, not to justify her own supposed hatred for Jews. My secondary point was that while her idea that criticism of the movie (much of which comes from the sort who consider acceptance of Christ as the Messiah to be the ONLY belief that renders a Jew non-Jewish) is motivated by fears of conversion may be incorrect, it is not at all hateful, and not as stupid as it was made out to be. I didn’t have a tertiary point, but I do love the word “tertiary”.
Thanks for the note - I [was observing] shabbat (the Jewish sabbath) and just read it.
I'm not a big fan of Foxman, but he has a right to express his opinion, and he never called either Gibson or Passion anti-Semitic. As for Nicosia, I obviously disagree that she's correct. Believe me, the secular Jews she refers to are not interested or afraid either of converting to Christianity or becoming more observant of their own religion.
-Joe
I put in the brackets part, but not the parenthetical. Here are three of the top results I got from a google search for “foxman gibson” immediately after reading this: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=8445, http://www.geocities.com/munichseptember1972/gibson_spewing_anti-semitism.htm, and http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/03/11/Gibson071103.html.
“Spewing” is an odd term. It’s what people who think that I (who would look like Thor if I had a collarbone) am Jewish say I do with Zionist propaganda. That whole last sentence was just peculiar, let’s move on.
Apparently, at some point Foxman did say that “The Passion of the Christ” was not necessarily inherently anti-Semetic. Now, it’s easy for me to talk about being super-accurate in emails, since I usually take about a month to write one, but my primary point was that Nicosia (the original stupid mailer) meant to express extreme disapproval of the inexcusable actions of certain individuals who happen to be Jewish, not to justify her own supposed hatred for Jews. My secondary point was that while her idea that criticism of the movie (much of which comes from the sort who consider acceptance of Christ as the Messiah to be the ONLY belief that renders a Jew non-Jewish) is motivated by fears of conversion may be incorrect, it is not at all hateful, and not as stupid as it was made out to be. I didn’t have a tertiary point, but I do love the word “tertiary”.
