The Freeman Center for Jewish Life’s director Ari Dubin told The Chronicle of Duke, “Six month ago, the media was portraying this as a Christian vs. Jewish problem. Now, many Christians and Jewish people have come together to demonstrate that this is not true. … Jews see the film and see what affects them. Christians see the film and see what affects them. They’re reacting to their experience with the film, and not just to the film itself.”
“I think it would be a tragedy,” he concluded, “to walk out and only talk about whether this film is anti-Semitic or not.”
Dubin’s remarks ? and the Chronicle’s review of the film ? offer source for optimism that great art can indeed speak for itself. This is a welcome message coming from Duke, which once brought us Stanley Fish and a host of deconstructionists teaching the pessimistic doctrine that artistic expression is driven (and therefore limited) by the politics inherent in the medium.
