Newsflash: Artist Suggests Jesus Was a Jew

[morgan_dhu]

I am totally boggle-minded. The paintings of an American artist, Clara Maria Goldstein, have been labeled controversial because they depict Jesus as a Jew.

Goldstein has created a series of paintings showing such "controversial" images as: Jesus as a baby, being lovingly prepared for circumcision by Mary; Jesus as a boy, reading from the Torah; Jesus dressed as and in poses associated with being a rabbi; Jesus wearing a yarmulke pictured next to a menorah. Now I know that the contemporary evidence (outside of Biblical texts themselves) on Jesus is rather slim, but all the sources I know of seem to agree that Jesus was a Jew. Apparently it's even in the Bible, what with the whole being descended from the House of David, and debating with the wise men in synagogue as a child, and calling the Temple "my Father's house" when he was doing that bit of housecleaning, and other such events.

However, these paintings are being denied display because "Gundersen Lutheran [the hospital] is trying to be more patient-friendly and it doesn't want anything controversial to potentially upset patients."

Let me get this right - portraying Jesus as what he actually was, a Jew, is controversial and might upset people?


The stupid. It burns.

Comments

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I do understand the response from the Holocaust symposium - although as wolfinthewood mentions below, persons of Jewish heritage who were converts to Christianity were also Holocaust victims. However, I can see the paintings being considered off-topic; I'd want to know more about the artist's submission proposal.

It's primarily the response of the hospital that offends me.

It's obviously rooted in anti-semitism, but in this instance, the manifestation of that anti-semitism requires them to consider images that are in some cases literally taken from the pages of a Christian Bible as controversial - you'd think that someone would experience some cognitive dissonance there.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

I do understand the response from the Holocaust symposium - although as wolfinthewood mentions below, persons of Jewish heritage who were converts to Christianity were also Holocaust victims.

They were not killed because they were Christian, but because they were Jews, so that's really moot.

you'd think that someone would experience some cognitive dissonance there.

Well, historically, there was never any cognitive dissonance about Jesus being a Jew when pogroms were enacted against Jews who Christians viewed as Christ killers, so the anti-semitism is a traditional attitude just rearing it's head again.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Thank you, my friend, for the gentle call-out on privilege in this exchange.

As I wrote below in response to someone else, I reacted to this story without analysing it. I knew there was something very wrong about it. It made me angry, whereas many other examples of idiotic thinking just make me either sad or amused. I just didn't think very hard about why.

What I didn't see immediately was just how many different levels of anti-semitism there were in the article, starting with the reasons behind the refusal by the hospital in the first place and going on to the construction of the story - the inclusion of the information about the Holocaust symposium, I have realised, is there to deliberately defuse any idea that the reactions to the paintings might be based inanti-semitism: "how can not wanting to show these paintings be anti-semetic when Jews don't want to show them either." It's a deliberate diversion, and I walked right into it.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. (-: Thanks for listening.

That's a really clear analysis.