While the controversy is sure to garner excellent revenues for Mel Gibson and the other investors and distributors of the project, there remain underlying concerns of religious tension, theology, and bigotry that will fester for years to come.
Religious bigotry in general, as well as that directed against the Jewish population, is not new. Jews living in the United States during the colonial and founding era were concerned for their freedom and welfare. Though not living in a time that could foresee the scope of 1930s and 40s Nazi barbarism in Europe, they were still all too aware of the dangers and travails of religious persecution and turmoil.
In 1790, with the new President of the United States making a national public relations tour, Jewish congregations in several parts of the Republic took the opportunity to write letters to President Washington, and, in so doing, feel him out on the matter of religious freedom. After all, Washington was an Anglican, the same denomination that constituted the Church of England. The Jewish congregations were all too aware that, in England, there was an established church (Anglicanism), and that in many of the states, there were also established churches. The Bill of Rights (with the First Amendment's national prohibition of any such "establishment") had not yet been ratified.
The Jewish leaders were thus relieved when President Washington responded graciously to their concerns. In one such letter, Washington echoed the words of a Rhode Island Jewish leader by saying: "To Bigotry, No Sanction" and "To Persecution, No Assistance."
Washington's letters to Jewish congregations in 1790 served collectively to assure Jewish Americans that their freedom and religion would both be respected. According to Tina Levitan, author of First Facts in American Jewish History from 1492 to the Present, Washington's letters are an "eloquent expression and hope for religious harmony and endure as indelible statements of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy."
Perhaps more than any other religious group in America, Jews are today quite sensitive to bigotry. We are, after all, still recovering from the revolting and still-astonishing brutality of the mid-20th century death camps in Nazi-occupied Europe. Moreover, there remain deep animosities and religious tensions in the Middle East, a region known for its terrorism and violence.
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