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

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

It is very clear in the Bible that Jesus was a Jew. He reads the Torah in the temple. He is called "King of the Jews" by many. At his crucifixion, the Romans even put a sign on his cross saying "King of the Jews." (I would assume that by saying "King of the Jews" one would imply that he is a Jew.)

It is mind-boggling to me that anyone would suggest otherwise. Silly me always assumed that everyone already knew that Jesus was a Jew.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Because we're a world-wide minority everywhere but the tiny space of Israel, in a Jewish-centered space like a Holocaust symposium, it makes sense to say no to the exhibit: "Yes, we've heard a million times Jesus was a Jew; we just don't fucking care! Leave us alone with the prosyletizing and Christian-this, Christian-that already!" Context matters.

But for a Lutheran Hospital, nah, seems pretty anti-semitic to me.

[jane-ire.livejournal.com]

When I told my members of my Catholic family I was converting to Judaism they invariably said, "Oh, it's okay! After all, Jesus was a Jew!"

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Actually, the hospital's action makes me sick and shocked, for reasons I am too tired this evening to fully unravel. But it seems to me to manifest madness rooted in not very well-veiled hate.

It makes no theological sense; and it makes all too much sense in terms of anti-semitism.

As far as the Holocaust symposium is concerned: the Nazis murdered Jewish converts to Christianity impartially with all the rest.

[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.

[guyindkny.livejournal.com]

Debates about the depictions of Jesus never fail to amuse me. The images we've grown up with and which some evangelicans take to be canonical are actually fabrications. Early Christian depictions of Jesus were actually based on the template of Apollo, like some sweet shepherd boy. When they found that the images weren't commanding the respect of the population, they decided instead to switch to a more imposing Zeus-like template, hence the beard and robes. Even in the ancient world, it was all about branding and marketing, and for people to get bent out of shape over an image which actually has little historical accuracy to begin with amuses me more than upsets me.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about my reaction to this, in the light of some other comments made. I agree with you that arguments over depictions of religious figures in general, and a good many other religious debates of a similar nature, are ludicrous.

What put the upset into this for me, I think, was the underlying anti-semitism. No one is coming out and saying it (and the bit about the paintings being rejected by the Holocaust symposium was surely put in there to persuade readers that there couldn't be any anti-semitism here becasue see, the Jews didn't like the painings either.

But I can think of legitimate reasons for a Holocaust symposium to decline the showing of these paintings, starting with a very simple "off-topic." I can't really think of any reason for Christians to get upset about these paintings that doesn't have at least some, and likely a lot of, anti-semitism behind it.

The thing is, I couldn't at first put my finger on the reason why this felt so much more wrong than so many other examples of stupidity one sees everywhere - blindness of privilege - but I knew it really bothered me.

[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.