Jesus the Messiah, the Jewish people, and well-known Jews who open their souls and tell their conversion stories, either personally or through various experts, are the protagonists of the latest documentary report by Goya Producciones, which is distributing the film together with European Dreams Factory.
Andrés Garrigó's documentary reportage asks whether the conversion of Israel announced by St. Paul can begin to become visible today. The film, which opens on April 10 in Spanish theaters, grips from minute 1 to 81’ in an excellent display of storytelling, and will reach Latin America and the United States in the coming months.
The film explores the relationship between Jews and Catholics over the centuries, without political connotations, Garrigó stresses, despite the coincidences in time with the current war in the Middle East, and begins with a contextualization by Professor Cayetana Heidi Johnson, a specialist in biblical archaeology and Judaism.
Unpublished testimonies and recreations
With international production and shooting in the United States, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Brazil and Spain, In search of the Messiah addresses for the first time on film the delicate subject of the conversion of Jews to Catholicism. It uses unpublished testimonies that reveal what moved these Jews to accept the Messiah rejected by their ancestors, and some brief recreations.
According to director Andrés Garrigó, the project seeks to answer fundamental questions about the identity of the awaited Messiah and the role of the chosen people in current and future times: Why are the Jewish people God's chosen people, and why is it the only one that continues to exist after more than three thousand years? What role do the Jews have to play in these turbulent times? However, the docudrama avoids the political approach, and focuses exclusively on the spiritual realm.
“More than ever we live in uncertain times,” says Garrigó, “in which people are thirsty for truth and for a peace that only God can give. This film could be the spark that brings those people closer to the faith that the protagonists of this story have discovered”.
Fascinating figures, search for truth
Some Jewish converts who tell their stories in the film are as follows.
1. Roy Schoeman: was a professor at Harvard Business School. His conversion was born of a double mystical experience.
2. Fabrice HadjadjFrench philosopher and writer, who moved from atheism and nihilism to the Catholic faith. Hadjadj says, for example, that “it was Nietzsche who brought me closest to Christ”.
3. Robert AschBritish literary critic and Chesterton expert, who found in music and literature the key to approach Christ.
4. Dawn EdenAmerican writer and journalist, known for her transition from rock music to teaching theology and canon law.
5. Edgar Leite Ferreira Neto: president of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy. He was a rabbi and an encounter in the grotto of Lourdes changed everything.
In addition, the film pays tribute to characters century, also converts from Judaism, and also converts from:
6. Eugenio Zolli, who was Chief Rabbi of Rome, defended the Hebrews against anti-Semitic laws and in 1944 resigned from his post to convert to Catholicism. The professor explains Giovanni Maria Vian, former director of L'Osservatore Romano.
7. Edith Stein, German philosopher and then a Carmelite nun and saint, as described by the professor Milagros Muñoz, author of the thesis “Pedagogy with meaning in Edith Stein's thought”.
8. Max Jacob, French painter and poet murdered in Auschwitz and great friend of the Malaga painter Picasso, as commented by the scholar Patricia Sustrac.
9. Bernard Nathanson, a gynecologist who went from killing tens of thousands of babies in his clinics, according to his own confession, to being a world pro-life leader and finally converted in 1996 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, according to a report from Terry Beatley.
Nostra Aetate: Judaism and the Catholic Church
The declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), promulgated during the Second Vatican Council, marked a profound change in the Catholic Church's relationship with the Jewish people. Some of its key ideas are reflected in the film.
For example, the condemnation of anti-Semitism, or the fact that “not all Jews, neither then nor now, can be held responsible for the death of Jesus, correcting a historical interpretation that had caused a lot of suffering” (Goya Productions).
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