Never has a film aroused such hostile passion so long prior to its release as has Mel Gibson's "The Passion." Many American Jews are alarmed by reports of what they view as potentially anti-Semitic content in this movie about the death of Jesus, which is due to be released during 2004. Clearly the crucifixion of Jesus is a sensitive topic, but prominent Christians who previewed it, including friends like James Dobson and Michael Novak who have always demonstrated acute sensitivity to Jewish concerns, see it as a religiously inspiring movie and refute charges that it is anti-Semitic. While most Jews are wisely waiting to see the film before responding, others are either prematurely condemning a movie they have yet to see or violating the confidentiality agreements they signed with Icon Productions.

As an Orthodox rabbi with a wary eye on Jewish history which has an ominous habit of repeating itself, I fear that these protests, well intentioned though some may be, are a mistake. I believe those who publicly protest Mel Gibson's film lack moral legitimacy. What is more, I believe their actions are not only wrong but even recklessly ill-advised and shockingly imprudent.

For an explanation of why I believe that those Jews protesting "The Passion" lack moral legitimacy, we must take ourselves back in time to the fall of 1999. That was when Arnold Lehman, the Jewish director of the Brooklyn Museum presented a show called "Sensation." It featured, from the collection of British Jew Charles Saatchi, several works which debased Catholicism, including Chris Ofili's dung-bedecked Madonna.

You may wonder why I highlight the Jewish ethnicity of the players in the Brooklyn Museum saga. My reason for doing so is that everyone else recognized that they were Jewish, and there is merit in us knowing how we ourselves appear in the eyes of those among whom we live. This is especially true on those sad occasions when we violate what ancient Jewish wisdom commends as the practice of Kiddush HaShem, which is to say, conducting our public affairs in a way best calculated to bring credit upon us as a group. Maintaining warm relations with our non-Jewish friends is a traditional Jewish imperative and the raison d'?tre of the organization I serve, Toward Tradition.

Let us return to the Brooklyn Museum. It was noted at the time that this is not the first time Lehman had chosen to offend Catholics. While he was director of the Baltimore Museum, in a display of gross insensitivity to the city's Catholics, he screened "Hell's Angel," a film denouncing Mother Teresa as a religious extremist and depicting her in obscenely uncomplimentary and ghoulish terms. No Jewish organizations protested this gratuitous insult of a universally respected Catholic icon.

In Brooklyn, almost every Christian organization erupted with indignation against the museum. Especially prominent was William Donohue, president of The Catholic League, a friend who has always stood firmly with us Jews in the fight against genuine anti-Semitism, yet now, in his fight against anti-Catholicism, he appealed to Jewish organizations in vain. Almost every Christian denomination helped vigorously protest the assault that the Brooklyn Museum carried out against the Catholic faith in such graphically abhorrent ways. Even Mayor Rudolph Giuliani expressed his outrage by trying to withhold money from the museum. Where was the Jewish expression of solidarity against such ugliness? Only an almost invisibly small group of Orthodox Jews joined their fellow Americans in protest at this literal defilement of Christianity with elephant feces. And were other Jews silent? No, not really. In actuality, a small but disproportionately vocal number of them were defending the Brooklyn Museum and its director in the name of artistic freedom.

Here are a few of the names that were prominently defending the Brooklyn Museum's flagrant anti-Christianism during fall 1999. Norman Siegel and Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Steven R. Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union and lawyer Floyd Abrams, cousin of Elliot Abrams who holds the position of top adviser on Israel-related matters in President George W. Bush's National Security Council. Although at synagogues and around dinner tables revulsion at the "Sensation" exhibit was widespread, not very many Jews publicly supported our Catholic friends in the time of their pain.

You may also remember Martin Scorsese's 1988 film "The Last Temptation of Christ." Then, too, almost every Christian denomination protested Universal's release of a movie so slanderous that had it been made about Moses, or say, Martin Luther King Jr., it would have provoked howls of anger from the entire country. As it was, Christians were left to defend their faith quite alone other than for one solitary courageous Jew, Dennis Prager. Most Americans knew that Universal was run by Lew Wasserman. Most Americans also knew Lew's ethnicity. Perhaps many now wonder why Mel Gibson is not entitled to the same artistic freedom we accorded Lew Wasserman?

When the Weinstein brothers, through their Miramax films (named after their parents, Mira and Max Weinstein,) distributed "Priest" in 1994, Catholics were again left to protest this unflattering depiction of their faith alone, while many Jewish organizations proclaimed the primacy of artistic freedom. Surely Jewish organizations would carry just a little more moral authority if they routinely protested attacks on all faiths, not only those troubling to Judaism.

Now, I do have one possible explanation for why it might be more important to protest "The Passion." It is this: In Europe, anti-Semitic slander frequently resulted in Catholic mobs killing Jews. Our hypersensitivity has a long and painful background of real tragedy. In any event, Jewish moral prestige would stand taller if we were conspicuous in protesting movies that defame any religion. Furthermore, opponents of "The Passion" argue that this movie might cause a backlash against the Jewish community. Yet when so-called art really does encourage violence, artistic freedom seems to trump all other concerns. Here is what I mean.

During the '90s, record companies run by well-known executives, including Michael Fuchs, Gerald Levin and David Geffen, produced obscene records by artists like Geto Boys and Ice-T that advocated killing policemen and raping and murdering women. In spite of congressional testimony showing that these songs really did influence teen-age behavior, only William Bennett and C. DeLores Tucker, head of the National Political Congress of Black Women, protested Time Warner. During that decade of shockingly hateful music that incited violence, our Jewish organizations only protested Michael Jackson's song "They Don't Care About Us" and the rap group Public Enemy's single "Swindler's Lust," claiming that these songs were anti-Semitic. It is ignoble to ignore the wrongs done to others while loudly deploring those done to us.

In truth, however, even though Catholics did kill Jews in Europe, I do not believe that the often-sad history of Jews in Europe is relevant now. Why not? Because in Europe, Catholic Church officials wielded a rapacious combination of ecclesiastical and political power with which they frequently incited illiterate mobs to acts of anti-Jewish violence. In America, no clergyman secures political power along with his ordination certificate, and in America, if there are illiterate and dangerous thugs, Christianity is a cure not the cause. In America, few Jews have ever been murdered, mugged, robbed or raped by Christians returning home from church on Sunday morning. America is history's most philo-Semitic country, providing the most hospitable home for Jews in the past 2,000 years. Suggesting equivalency between American Christians today and those of European history is to be offensive and ungrateful. Quite frankly, if it is appropriate to blame today's American Christians for the sins of past Europeans, why isn't it OK to blame today's Jews for things that our ancestors may have done? Clearly both are wrong, and doing so harms our relationships with one of our few remaining friends in the world today.

I think it possible that these protests against "The Passion" are not only wrong, but also stupid, for two reasons. The first reason is that they are unlikely to change the outcome of the film. Mr. Gibson is an artist and a Catholic of deep faith of which this movie is an expression. By all accounts, his motive in making this movie was not commercial. In addition, anyone who saw his "Braveheart" would suspect that Mel Gibson profoundly identified with the hero of that epic, who allowed himself to be violently disemboweled rather than betray his principles. Does anyone really believe that Mel is likely to yield to threats from Jewish organizations?

However there is a second and more important reason I consider these protests to be ill-advised. While Jews are telling Gibson that his movie contradicts historical records about who really killed Jesus, Vatican Cardinal Dar?o Castrill?n Hoyos has this to say:

Mr. Gibson has had to make many artistic choices in the way he portrays the characters and the events involved in "The Passion," and he has complemented the Gospel narrative with the insights and reflections made by saints and mystics through the centuries. Mel Gibson not only closely follows the narrative of the Gospels, giving the viewer a new appreciation for those biblical passages, but his artistic choices also make the film faithful to the meaning of the Gospels, as understood by the Church.

Do we really want to open up the Pandora's box of suggesting that any faith may demand the removal of material that it finds offensive from the doctrines of any other faith? Do we really want to return to those dark times when Catholic authorities attempted to strip from the Talmud those passages that they found offensive? Some of my Jewish readers may feel squeamish about my alluding to the existence of Talmudic passages uncomplimentary toward Jesus as well as descriptive of Jewish involvement in his crucifixion. However, the truth is that anyone with Internet access can easily locate those passages in about 10 seconds. I think it far better that in the name of genuine Jewish-Christian friendship in America, we allow all faiths their own beliefs, even if we find those beliefs troubling or at odds with our own beliefs. This way we can all prosper safely under the constitutional protection of the United States of America.

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Radio talk-show host Rabbi Daniel Lapin is president of Toward Tradition, America's leading bridge-builder, spanning the divide between Christians and Jews by sculpting ancient solutions to modern problems in areas of family, faith and fortune.