Controversy over Jewish-Israili actress playing Virgin Mary

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Social media outrage after Israeli Jew cast as Jesus’ mother in Netflix biblical epic

Unfortunately, it appears that reasonable objections to the casting of this show have gotten mixed up with anti-Jewish bigotry (e.g. "that disgusting jew").

Here are my own thoughts. Given the director's stated desire to "ensure authenticity":

DNA tests have shown that most Jews and most Palestinians, especially Palestinian Christians, are very closely related. This is consistent with the known history of Palestine, that most Palestinian Christians are descended from ancient Jews who converted to Christianity. In other words, most Jews and most Palestinian Christians are of the same "race."

So, from a purely physical point of view, Palestinian Christians and Israeli Jews would be equally authentic representations of the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph.

Culturally, though, I'm inclined to agree with the protesters that Palestinian Christians would be a better choice, not only for reasons of cultural heritage, but also because of the shared experience of living under occupation. Mary and Joseph lived under Roman occupation, and there are many aspects of their story, as told in the Gospels, that today's Palestinian Christians can relate to from personal experience.

Also the relevant ancient towns/cities, Bethlehem and Nazareth, are Palestinian cities today. Bethlehem today is a Palestinian enclave in the West Bank. Nazareth is in Israel, but many of its residents are Palestinian/Arab citizens of Israel. (Nazareth was one of the few places in Israel where the Palestinians were not expelled, apparently because the relevant Israeli commander decided that expelling a big bunch of Palestinian Christians out of Nazareth -- the town where Jesus grew up -- would risk getting too much bad press in the West.)

EDIT: Culturally, one could also make the contrary argument, that Mary and Joseph, as Jews, were religiously more similar to today's Jews than to Christians. However, although Mary and Joseph obviously weren't Christians, their religion wasn't modern Judaism either. The Talmud had not yet been put together, and Christianity inherited some aspects of Second Temple Era Judaism (e.g. the idea of Satan as the enemy of God, rather than just the heavenly prosecuting attorney) that were subsequently rejected by rabbinic Judaism.

Be that as it may, it is no surprise to me that Palestinian Christians would be outraged by the casting of Israeli Jews (i.e. first-class citizens of the nation currently oppressing Palestinians) as Mary and Joseph. Palestinian Christians see themselves as the direct descendants of the world's first Christians. They see Christianity as their own ancestors' gift to the world -- and they are quite disappointed, to say the least, by all too many Christians' ingratitude for this gift, and by all too many Christians' tendency to shower favors on Israeli Jews instead.

It's really too bad that current politics and prejudice should raise its ugly head regarding who should play Mary.