What a world.

Passion, p.2? The son of the Trinity Broadcast Network's founders is making a movie about the Book of Esther. Well, sort of about the Book of Esther. Don't get me wrong, creative lisense is a wonderful thing (remind me to tell you sometime about my idea for a comic book based on the Book of Judges), but am I the only one who hears something like this and gets a little, I don't know, alarmed?

Crouch concluded his talk by plugging his audience’s power to shape the destiny of his newest movie. “I can’t get New Yorkers to see this film,” he said, “but you can.”... Crouch, 44, is the CEO of Gener8Xion Entertainment Inc., a Los Angeles-based production company that creates what he calls “value-based” — code for Christian content — films. His latest project, “One Night With The King,” features Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia who saved her people from annihilation, as its heroine and is set for nationwide release October 13.

... “It’s Christian money paying for a Jewish film,” he added.

Taking the opposite tack as Gibson, Crouch — who may have learned a lesson or two from the icy reception in Jewish circles to “The Passion of the Christ” — is going out of his way to court Jewish support for his film in advance of its release. Screenings for rabbis and leaders of Jewish organizations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are in the planning stages, according to Juda Engelmayer, a public relations executive with strong ties to the Jewish community who is in charge of organizing the previews. A screening before the Knesset, which Lapin facilitated, had to be canceled following the outbreak of the war with Hezbollah, Crouch said.

That's funny, I didn't know "Knesset" meant "multiplex." Thanks, Rav. But wait, Lapin says it's kosher, right? So what's the problem? Oh yeah, Lapin's a crackpot.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a close ally of Christian conservative leaders and one of the most vocal Jewish defenders of “The Passion of the Christ,” has also lent his support. The debate surrounding Gibson’s movie, which drew fierce criticism from some Jewish communal leaders and commentators, is not something Crouch or his film’s advocates would like to repeat, they said.

...During the editing process, Crouch turned to Lapin — whose defense of Gibson and attacks on Jewish communal leaders have made him a controversial figure in the broader Jewish community — for guidance on biblical accuracy. Lapin, who in recent years was the host of a television program for TBN, said that while fictional elements that don’t appear in the Book of Esther are woven throughout the film, as they are in “Haddassah: One Night With the King,” the novel by Tommy Tenney on which the script is based, it is done “sensitively in a way that no Jew can take offense.”

Translation: if you're offended, you're a whiny "oversensitive" type. Probably even a PC-er, you dirty pinko, you. How dare you impede the great art being done here? You're probably the same type of "Biblical-accuracy" Nazi that yelled at Mel for having Jewish Temple guards toss Hay-seuss off a bridge. It was totally in the Bible- in his MIND! Duh! (See Book of Mel, chapter 5: the Deadening, now with Jews!)

Back to Lapin:

“This is the only blip on the radar screen of history where Christians are making a dramatization of a book of the Bible that is totally respectful,” said Lapin, calling the film “historical.”

Hey Rav, first, dramatizations and historical generally don't jive together too well. Also, how are you an authority on this? I must have missed the spot on your wall that mentions your "Near-Eastern archaeologist/cultural anthropologist" degree (though I'm sure if you spend some time on it, you'll be able to come up with a nifty template in Photoshop). Reading the Book of Esther really doesn't give you the qualifications to determine whether of not a given depiction of Esther's world is "historical", particularly since it, you know, happens in PERSIA.

And again, "respectful" is a really tricky term. Mel thought he was being respectful (and you agreed with him) when he said "we all killed Christ". Sorry, that's not my idea of respectful, we simply have to agree to disagree there. But you don't get to say, "Yes, on the basis of me being a rabbi (rabbis get quizzed on ancient Persian history all the time, as I'm sure my educated readers know), I'm positive that my OLD BOSS' kid has done a fine job on his dinky movie. Anyone who says otherwise is a self-hating Jew, or even better, a Christian-hating liberal."

Still, Lapin acknowledged that some would undoubtedly use the film as a tool for proselytizing Jews.

Duh?

But on the whole, he praised the movie’s producers and the evangelical population in the United States for their friendship with the Jewish people. “Exactly the same people who made and support this movie are the same people keeping Bush’s toes to the fire on his support of Israel.”

Because that's totally topical. Has your check come yet, Danny-boy? Well, if the Rav's on board, I guess this film must be good for the Jews. After all, he's never steered us wrong before.

The ADL comment is interesting, too:

Eric Greenberg, associate director for interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, said he had not seen the film, but expressed skepticism that a movie based on a novel by a Christian pastor could accurately portray the story from a traditional Jewish perspective. Greenberg said that the film should not be presented as “either historical or biblical.”

It's a great point, but it also makes me wonder if an evangelical could ever make a movie about a Jewish theme (or character, or story) that I or many other Jews would accept. I think it would ultimately depend on how willing they were to sublimate their own POV (which would quite likely be heavily informed by their belief system and, in particular, specific interpretations of a given narrative that they were taught as children or adults) to mainline Jewish ones.