Constantine's Sword Page #2

---

time that this was all fruitless.

I had eventually more and more cadets

coming to me...

and telling me these stories

about how the academy was now...

full fledge putting their stamp

on conservative Christian ideology.

If you are a cadet and you

walk in to Mitchel Hall...

and on every table are

flyers for a movie...

then as a cadet

you're going to assume...

that your academy

is encouraging you to go see it.

If you want to see

whether or not it is

anti-Semitic, you need

to see it for yourself

- For yourself

- Right.

- And we both went to go see it.

- We did.

And I felt terrible

watching that movie.

Just absolutely terrible

I look at how they portray Jews.

These are my people.

We are being portrayed

as the people who killed Christ.

How can believers see that and not

get pissed and angry at the Jews?

It's scary.

I kept telling myself

"This is July of 2004...

it's not 1096 in the Crusades.

It's not 1492.

It's not 1939 and 1940.

It's not all the spaces in between."

It's the United States Air Force academy.

The spaces in between.

That is the journey I have to take.

Why is it a Jewish cadet

who is singled out?

I understood somehow...

that I had to take on this question

of Jewish Christian history,

which is so complicated

and so dark.

Somebody said you live your life forward

but you understand it backward.

My first memory

of hearing the word Jew...

had to be at church

when I was 7 years old.

I knew who the Jews were,

they had killed our lord.

Then they had refuse

to believe in him.

When I was a kid,

the death of Jesus was what...

first grabbed me.

It was a figure like this that I would

kneel before next to my mother.

The power of the passion story

even for someone like myself...

who cannot accept the

divinity of Jesus...

the story of his mortality

is supremely moving.

- But this is a man I loved.

- Yeah.

Also a man to whom I pray.

My problem has been that,

when I stand before a figure like this,

I can appreciate them and be moved

by them only on condition...

that I shut down a piece of my heart...

that I obliterate something

of what I know about...

the actual consequences

in the real world...

of these images

and of these figures.

- For you?

- Well, not for me.

I am an American Jew

born in the 1950's...

that makes me one of the spoiled

brats of Jewish history.

I am one of the luckiest Jews

who had ever lived.

But certainly for my parents and

the people who preceded them, yeah.

The supremacy of the cross

in European culture...

was responsible for the death...

of many of my people...

for centuries before I was born...

and eventually for the death

of my own family...

in south-eastern Poland.

I am the descendant of the victims.

So, you have a much more difficult

problem than I do.

In other words if you want

to understand Anti-Semitism...

don't study Jews, study non-Jews.

Why do we blame the Jews?

Generation after generation,

where do this contempt come from?

I'm trying to figure out where it all

went wrong between Christians and Jews.

And we go back to Jesus,

we have to go back to Jesus.

Before there were Christians...

when there were only Jews...

because Jesus certainly

saw himself as a devout Jew,

a prophet...

and was called Rabbi.

How did the story then get told...

with the Jews being cast

as the villains here?

Well, it's an extraordinary twist.

The way the stories are told

in the New Testament Gospels.

It says basically that it was the

Jewish leaders who arrested Jesus...

who tried him, who

sentenced him to death...

and who basically duped the Romans

into crucifying him.

Is that true to history?

It looks completely at odds

with what we know about history.

We know that this was a Roman charge, a

Roman punishment and a Roman execution.

But it's startling that

if you read the gospels,

you'd think that it was the Jews

that engineered it.

At every Good Friday service

with the reading of that passion narrative.

The Jews, the Jews, the Jews...

It really hits the ear

and Jesus is against the Jews.

And I don't know how else Christians

can hear this story.

And the Jews answer,

"Crucify him, crucify him."

I am Jewish.

Now, a Jew, dictionary-style,

is one who has descended from one

of the ancient tribes of Judea...

or one who is regarded

to have descended from that bride.

But you and I know what a Jew really is:

"One who killed our Lord!"

I don't know if it got much press coverage

out here on the West Coast...

cause that all happened

a couple thousand years ago...

although there should be a statute

of limitations to the crime...

we are still paying the dues.

"Why do you keep busting our balls

for this crime?"

"Why? Jew! Because you skirt the issue.

You blame it on Roman soldiers."

I'm gonna clear the air once

and for all, and confess.

We did it. My family, I did it.

We found a note in the basement:

"We killed him," signed Morty.

When I was 17, I came to Rome.

Soon after the new pope,

John the 23rd, was elected...

This was the great moment

of my family life.

My mom and dad, my four brothers,

me, my grandmother.

Coming here for a private audience

with Pope John the 23rd.

You got to understand,

my Dad was at the peak of his power...

my mother is a general's wife...

I'm a senior in high school.

But we are 1 or 2 generations

removed from the poorest of Irish poor.

This was the most important affirmation

you could imagine for people like us.

We make our way up the long Michelangelo

staircase into the...

Pope's palace.

For us it is like the Wizard of Oz.

Here we are...

Being brought as dignitaries

into the Pope's presence.

When he took a look at us

he threw his arms up...

and saluted my mother and father

for having this large catholic family.

But to my amazement

when he came in front of me...

he reached up

and grabbed my shoulders.

I was close enough to feel the whiskers

of his face against my cheek.

He was whispering something to me.

He made me feel chosen.

He made me feel conscripted.

I didn't know what he said.

It could be Latin, it could be Italian.

It didn't matter.

I just felt addressed.

I felt addressed by God in some odd way.

When I was a kid one of my favourite story

was about a hero...

who had been addressed by God.

My Dad told the story

about a miracle that happened...

to the Roman general Constantine...

right on this bridge in Rome.

I'm a little kid in St. Mary's Church

in Alexandria...

over the altar the letters IHS.

I say to my Dad, "What's that?"

He says "In hoc signo vinces", Jimmy.

"In this sign, you will conquer."

And then he tells me this story.

Constantine afield right over here

has a vision in the sky.

I guess that sky,

we are supposed to believe.

At a time when the roman empire

was still pagan...

Constantine was the general in charge

of the Northern legions based in Germany.

In the year 310, he set out

with thousands of men...

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes