TLDR: Good Friday is a hard day for Jewish people. The jarring words of the Passion Passages have contributed to animosity over the centuries. This Holy Week, let us pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world.

Every year during Holy Week, and especially during Good Friday, Jewish people around the world are exposed to antisemitic insults, graffiti, and even physical attacks. They are called “Jesus Killers,” they are threatened with the fires of hell for not accepting Jesus, their businesses are often vandalized, and they are often ridiculed for waiting for a Messiah Christians believe has already come. These antisemitic sentiments and behaviors are given fuel by the passion narratives in our New Testament. These passages don’t mince with words. The say “the Jews” handed Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion.  They portray the crowds as screaming in unison, “Crucify him, crucify him!” They even claim that the Jews said, “Let his blood be upon our hands, and our children’s hands.” So, what do we do about these jarring words? How do we advance our desire for the protection of our Jewish brothers and sisters?

In an excellent article entitled, “Holy Week and the Hatred of the Jews: How to avoid anti-Judaism this Easter,” theologian Amy-Jill Levine (ABC Religion &Ethics) gives us a path forward. In this blog, I will briefly summarize the six most common answers to the problem, in order of least useful to more useful, using the author’s own scale.

Sixth Solution: To Excise, meaning the cutting off, exclusion, avoidance of these difficult passages. Some attempt to do this by claiming that “Paul or Jesus never made the problematic comments and therefore, we can ignore them.” (Levine.) This argument does not hold water and we can’t take a pair of scissors to the text. Jesus and Paul were in fact critical of the Jewish people of their generation and we can’t avoid these words.

Fifth Solution: to Retranslate. In this solution, the word “Jews” is retranslated as “Judeans,” “Jewish Authorities,” “Religious Leaders,” or simply, “Leaders.” This is the solution adopted by the newly proposed Good Friday liturgy in our Diocese. (We will stay with the traditional liturgy.) The reason why this politically-correct solution is problematic is that it “obscures part of the reason why Jews have been persecuted over 2,000 years, divorces Jews not only from Jesus and his earliest followers, and even serves to de-legitimate the relationship of Jews today from the land of Israel.” (Levine.) My main problem with this approach is what I believe to be dangerous revisionism: how can we retranslate the very same words that have led to 2,000 years of persecution and senseless killing without somehow erasing, whitewashing, or de-contextualizing that history?

Fourth Solution: To Romanticize. In this solution, any reference to those responsible for the death of Jesus becomes theologized, and every action surrounding the passion becomes romanticized. “Who killed Jesus?” Answer, “Humanity!” The same process of romanticizing has taken place when churches incorporate Jewish symbols and traditions, like the Seder meal, and other festival customs, “Baptizing Jewish symbols in Christian terms …serves to absolve the congregation: how could they be anti-Jewish if they are doing something so Jewish as having a Passover seder?” (Levine.) Seder meals in churches also assume that the Last Supper was a Seder meal, which many experts believe it may not have been.

Third Solution: to Allegorize. This is to divorce what the text says from what the text means. “It really didn’t mean “May his blood be upon our hands…” it rather meant “May his saving blood, his salvation, be upon us!” The crowd’s cry now means, “May he save us!” This tendency makes the crowds into eager seekers, which we know is not historically-accurate. “This move turns Jews into crypto (hidden) Christians.” (Levine.)

Second Solution: To Historicize. Levine believes this solution is the “darling of the academy.” Academics often explain the difficult passages by allusion to historical claims, which somehow explain or justify the passages. “We (academia) claim that Matthew is a Jew writing for a Jewish community; therefore, cannot be anti-Jewish.” (Levine.) This solution also assumes that we know for certain who wrote the Gospels, an issue on which most theologians have disagreed for 2,000 years. Some others claim that the anti-Jewish words are a reaction to the expulsion of the Christians from the synagogues when the New Testament was being composed. Therefore, “if the crowds never said those words, we can ignore them.” (Levine.) Again, this is problematic because it assumes a motive of which can not be certain. “We cannot be secure with the history we posit, and when all the historical work is said and done, we still have to address what the New Testament actually says.” (Levine.)

First Solution: To Admit the problem. This helpful solution invites the readers and the listeners to understand the passages in context; to understand the historical, ethical, and theological implications of the language; and to educate new generations on the dangers of accepting this language literally without the benefit of context. Better yet, to blame modern-day Jewish people for the actions of a few Jewish people on a particular place, on a particular month of the year, and at a particular day and hour flies on the face of Scripture itself: See for example Jeremiah 31:29 and John 9:2-3.

I pray that you will join me in praying for the Jewish people around the world this coming Holy Week. I will preach on this difficult languages during the week and I will advocate for more tolerance and love of our common ancestors in the faith. We are Judeo-Christians. We share the Holy Scriptures, the prophets, and teachings of the sages. Jesus our Lord was a Jew and that alone should lead us to love and respect for Jesus’ people group.

May God continue to bless you,

Fr. Roman+