Monsters & Madonnas

Syracuse author sheds new light on anti-Semitism

By Rob Enslin

On Mother’s Day, 2003, Judith Taylor Gold ’55 got an unexpected call at home from Ken Jacobs, the experimental filmmaker. He was so smitten by Gold’s new book, Monsters & Madonnas: The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism, he tracked her down through directory assistance. “It was a very unusual thing for me to do,” Jacobs says in retrospect, speaking by phone from New York City. “I think I kinda’ frightened her. But as a Jew and someone who is interested in Jewish history, I was really impressed with the book. I had to talk with her.”

Judith Taylor Gold ’55

During a recent lunch meeting on campus, Gold admitted to being startled by the call, but not surprised. Her book challenges the traditional view of the source of Christian anti-Semitism being the unflattering depiction of Jews in the first four books of the New Testament. By the time Jacobs reached her, it had already drawn dozens of impassioned letters and phone calls. “I’ve always been interested in religion and in why the Jewish people were singled out to die,” she says between sips of coffee. “You’re not going to have to convince many older people there’s something in [the Book of] John that promotes anti-Semitism. But in the ambiguity of Jesus as a Jewish man or Christian god, they’re probably not going to see it. But younger or more open-minded people like Ken Jacobs might.”

Across the table, Joseph Gold, her editor and husband of 53 years, who also happens to be founding director of the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute, nods in agreement. “People call us, sometimes late at night, after they’ve finished Judy’s book, saying they’ve had ‘an experience,’” he says. “The more they read it, the more they think Judy is right.” Drawing me closer, he lowers his voice and continues.  “This woman may have unlocked a secret that theologians have been cracking their skulls over for thousands of years.”   

Gold contends that the depiction of Jews in the gospels is the result—not the cause—of Christian anti-Semitism. She traces the phenomenon to ancient civilizations that took offense to the Jews’ “difference”—namely, their belief in one God, their observation of circumcision and dietary laws, and their condemnation of child sacrifice and fertility rites. In a review appearing in The Forward, a Jewish weekly, former 60 Minutes producer Joseph Wershba terms the book as “controversial, psychological, original—and terrifying.” He also maintains that Gold is not alone in her depiction of Jews’ abhorrence of fertility religions. “As the old pagan religions died out, many of their fertility rites did not—and certain pagan practices were continued in the new religion that would soon spread across the Middle East and western world: Christianity. Some of these rites were incestuous in nature.”

Gold parts company with many scholars in her Oedipal interpretation of the Christ story by focusing on the wedding at Cana, where Jesus famously turns water into wine (John 2:1-11). She asserts that the wedding was actually a pagan fertility rite, involving the “mother goddess” Mary and her “deity son” Jesus—as the actual bride and bridegroom. The Bible’s dualistic portrayal of Jesus as Christian God and Jewish man is at the heart of her claim. “As God, Jesus was exempt from the incest taboo. Incest was his divine prerogative. But as a Jewish man, it was the ultimate crime,” she says unflinchingly. “Therefore, it was the earthly representation of Jesus who was subject to retribution—as were his mortal counterparts—throughout history. Anti-Semitism is the perception of the Jew as a ‘monster’ [incest figure].”

Some may think this is pretty heady stuff for an author whose formal training goes no further than a dual major in religion and philosophy as an SU undergraduate. But, according to Joseph Gold, don’t let the lack of a Ph.D. fool you. “She’s a person of many abilities, probably a genius in her own way.” Several prominent people agree. To date, Monsters & Madonnas—published in 1988 by New Amsterdam Books and revised in 1999 by Syracuse University Press—has drawn praise from the Rev. Edward H. Flannery, an outspoken critic of anti-Semitism, who says that the book “deserves serious thought,” and from literary lion Norman Cousins. “What makes this book so remarkable,” he writes, “is not just its highly original approach to a problem of blazing concern, but its combination of genuine scholarship and literary talent.” Renowned attorney and author Alan Dershowitz echoes these sentiments, hailing the book a “must-read” for all Christians and Jews. “It is a brilliant and provocative explanation of what was previously inexplicable: the pervasiveness and intractability of anti-Semitism.”

Karen DeCrow G’72, a leading feminist attorney and former president of the National Organization of Women, says she was overwhelmed by the “intellectualism” of the book. “Judy is what I would classify as a public intellectual,” DeCrow said during a recent phone conversation. ”She’s a scholarly person who knows a lot about not only literature and religion, but also psychology and history.” Having known Gold more than 20 years, she recalls taking her course, “Monsters & Madonnas,” through SU’s University College. “It was fascinating to watch this socially retiring person take command of the class with this unusual take on anti-Semitism. I’ve always wondered why she has been fascinated by this subject.”

Gold’s interest in the Bible and in religion stems from an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Born the daughter of a prominent Utica dentist, Gold grew up in Syracuse, spending much of her childhood in the library. She managed to skip a grade at Nottingham High School and enroll at SU at age 16. She continued reading voraciously in college and distinguished herself as the first woman inducted into the SU chapter of the national honor society for religion, Theta Chi Beta.

During her sophomore year, she met Joseph, a bright, handsome medical student at SUNY Upstate Medical University, and the couple married in 1955. For the next six years, they bounced around the country, as Joseph established his career and she held a variety of jobs. “Being a liberal arts major qualified me to do many things,” she says, flicking her short auburn hair. During a stint in California, Gold worked as a secretary for the Unitarian Society of Berkeley in a celebrated case involving attorney Melvin Belli. She also apprenticed under future New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael and launched a Christmas card business called Judy Gold Enterprises. At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, where Joseph was integral to the Project Mercury Astronaut Selection Program, she taught junior high English and history, and briefly served as an editorial assistant for the Dayton Journal Herald. In 1961, the Golds returned permanently to Syracuse to raise their two sons, Skye ’91 and Shannon. Gold reactivated her company, and, in four years, it became one of the Northeast’s largest suppliers of business-to-business holiday cards.

One autumn day in 1963, while working at the now-defunct Addis Company department store, Gold had an epiphany. “A friend of mine came in and bought a Christmas card showing Joseph and a very pregnant Mary in the flight into Egypt,” she reminiscences. “I remember turning over the order form and, on the back, beginning to draw triangles—lots of triangles—whose points represented triad relationships.” She produces a pencil, and, on a paper napkin, sketches several triangles, indicating the Holy Trinity (e.g., Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), the Earthly Trinity (e.g., Jesus, Mary, and Joseph), and the Freudian Trinity (e.g., Id, Ego, and Super-Ego). “Later that night, I told Joe, ‘I think I know what the Christmas card really means,’” she adds, referring to the Christ story’s Freudian overtones. “That’s what gave me the idea for Monsters & Madonnas.”

Gold quit her business in 1965, just about the time her husband was creating the Syracuse Cancer Research Institute, and she spent the next two decades working on her book. (For years, her “day job” has been serving as the institute’s associate director.) The bulk of her research was carried out at the SU and Cornell libraries, as well as at the former main branch of Syracuse Public Library, whose smell and hushed atmosphere Gold recalls with fond pleasure. It was in the downtown library, one fateful day in the late ’70s, that Gold struck on the Oedipal overlay of the wedding at Cana. Inspired by the interpretations of Rudolf Bultmann, a German theologian who “demythicized” singular events of the gospels, she revisited the Book of John through a more critical lens. “It dawned on me that the wedding at Cana, with its abundance of wine, was in reality a pagan fertility rite. At that time, Jewish people could participate in pagan cults, which were open and democratic. But times have changed.”

Part of the allure of Monsters & Madonnas is its shock factor; horror, incest, and pornography can make for lively reading. In a thorough review in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Texas Tech University professor James Whitlark points out that since Gold’s Oedipal theory is difficult to prove, she doesn’t try. “Instead, she explores the peripheries of her subject … and proceeds to the easier task of demonstrating that there has been much anti-Semitism,” he writes. The book holds a certain attraction to Catholics, admits Gold, but the response has been cooler among some Jews and Protestants. Zachary Braiterman, associate professor of religion at SU and an expert in modern Judaism, labels Gold’s theory as “theo-psychological speculation …. It’s an interesting thesis, but I’m a little uncomfortable with it because it’s impossible to argue,” he says. Braiterman prefers to use the term “pagan anti-Judaism” to refer to tension between Jewish monotheism and Greek polytheism under Roman rule of the Holy Lands. (“Anti-semitism” wasn’t coined until the 1870s.) “On the ground, much of pagan anti-Judaism has to do with conflict over economic resources and prestige in the Roman Empire,” he adds. “The Roman government was pretty tolerant about what we today call religions. Maybe Jews were able to finagle special privileges that other groups couldn’t."

“The prototypical European ‘Other,’ even before the Christian era, has been the Jew,” observes Richard Wilkins in an article about Gold’s book in the Jewish Observer. “Greeks and, later Romans, would incorporate conquered people’s gods into their pantheons. Reciprocal treatment was expected. The Jews, of course, would have none of that.” Wilkins goes on to say that they were, thus, viewed as unsociable and aloof.

While a single explanation for Judophobia is difficult, the overriding goal of Monsters & Madonnas is clear: to defuse prejudice of all kinds. “If there were no Jews, would there still be anti-Semitism?” Gold asks me. “Everyone needs a scapegoat. As long as Jews are held accountable for perceived impropriety between Mother and Son, there always will be guilt and retribution.” Gold, who self-identifies as a Reformed Jew, says the solution largely rests in Jews familiarizing themselves with the Old and New Testaments. She further recommends that future editions of the New Testament provide explanations about the history, times, and conditions under which the gospels were written.

Willis Barnstone, distinguished professor emeritus of comparative literature at Indiana University, would probably side with Gold’s recommendations. As translator of the Restored New Testament (W.W. Norton & Co., 2009), which returns the names of all people and places to their original Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, Barnstone believes that Jews are depicted fraudulently in the Bible. One example, he cites in an e-mail to me, is the reference to “Rabbi Jesus” in the Gospel of Mark. “In standard translations, ‘rabbi’ is changed to ‘teacher,’ ‘master,’ or ‘Lord’ to disguise Jesus’ Jewishness. Only I and the New King James Version, a popular watered-down version of the King James Bible, have the honesty to call a ‘rabbi’ a ‘rabbi,’” he continues. “Rabbi Jesus was a Jew and would have been in a gas chamber, without exception, during the Nazi period.” Pathetic theological history and pathetic translation history, he adds, amount to prejudice and deceit.

“History has been so God-awful,” Ken Jacobs says with more than a little bit of conviction. “Judy Gold’s psycho-sexual explanation [of the Christ story] is pretty startling, and makes a lot of sense. I think she’s onto something.” Gold, who is in the throes of completing her first novel, takes the compliment in stride. “Throughout history, good, sane people, acting in the name of God, have done what they’ve been programmed to do: kill the monster. The unconscious underpinnings of the Holocaust are still in place, ready to be reawakened. My hope is that this book will get people to think differently.”