Jesus Embraces Everyone at the Hollywood Bowl

The super power of love is in all of us

They don’t make Jews like Jesus anymore, as Kinky Friedman sang years ago.

The Kinkster may have been right.

What may even be more accurate is that Jesus has always been in all of us.

We are all God’s children.

So it was perfectly fitting that Cynthia Erivo, an African-American woman, played Jesus in the recent Hollywood Bowl production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

When I watched the performance on Saturday, Aug. 2, at the outdoor amphitheater carved out of the Santa Monica Mountains, I sensed, as we all did, the positive energy in the packed crowd that may have reached the capacity of some 17,000.

Everyone seemed to be delighted with the production not per se because Erivo, star of the recent movie Wicked, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz, and Adam Lambert, who played Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, are members of the LGBTQ community.

That was lovely in and of itself.

But that was not the overriding issue.

No, we were all thrilled at the performances because both Erivo, with her remarkable range and clear tone, and Lambert, with his dark charisma, are gifted singers and performers, who did a beautiful job as the leads of this revival of an early 1970s rock opera classic.

The musical, an Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice collaboration, which debuted on Broadway in 1971, following the release of an album and preceding the film version in 1973, strikes me as having a timelessness about it, one that should hopefully speak to every generation.

The show was daring in the 1970s, as it would be in any era, because, as many have noted, it tells the story to an extent from the perspective of Judas, a traitor and one of the villains in the production, while it also arguably humanizes him.

Other critics have called into question the very human qualities that Rice and Webber wrote into the part of Jesus by making Him appear to be a somewhat reluctant Savior, one who questions His abilities to honor God, the Father.

Moreover, some over the years have been critical of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

Is she more than a disciple?

This is not the only work of art about Jesus that has elicited such controversy.

When Martin Scorsese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ came out in the late 1980s, Universal Studios, then run by Lew Wasserman, a Jewish man, was on the receiving end of protests, some of which had an anti-Semitic tinge, because the film depicted Jesus as being a man as much as he is God, indeed a man with human dilemmas and torments and possible desires, who has a friendship with Mary Magdalene.

Scorsese’s movie, based on a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, also featured a deeply conflicted Judas, humanized by Harvey Keitel, who portrayed him less as a traitor or villain and more as a man who is compelled to turn in Jesus because that is what he believes God is telling him to do.

Lambert’s Judas too was conflicted in Jesus Christ Superstar, though less so.

A burly man, whose shoulders looked accentuated with pads, as if he were a football lineman or Herman Munster, Lambert’s Judas stomped around the outdoor stage in imposing fashion, seeming to dwarf the petite Erivo.

As I sat in the bowl, about halfway up the hill from the shell that was constructed about 100 years ago in the Hollywood Hills, I was reminded at times of a production of Hamlet that I saw years ago in Cambridge, Mass., where a brawny Claudius, who has murdered King Hamlet and usurped the throne, passionately kisses Gertrude, the late king’s wife, in a bathtub before bullying a meek Hamlet, the prince, whom some view as a Christ-like figure.

I will not dwell on that staging of Shakespeare’s tragedy, other than to say that my fears of a bullying Judas towering over a meek Jesus were not realized at the Hollywood Bowl other than in the relative physical stature of the two actors.

Yes, Lambert has a strong and clear voice, but so does Erivo, who earned a standing ovation when she sang “Gethsemane,” a beautiful ballad that elevates the Savior even as He concedes that, while once He was “inspired,” now He is “sad and tired.”

This magical evening in the city of Los Angeles helped a lot of us take a respite from the noise and evil with which we must contend on a daily basis, the noise and evil that have cluttered our minds and souls and threaten to poison us, not unlike the way Claudius poisons a sleeping King Hamlet in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

No, we must not sleep through the current nightmare, as Jesus’ disciples do, when we are living at a time when traitors attempt to destroy our country and poison our world, a world I might add that God created.

Something is indeed rotten in the state of America and the world, as I wrote years ago.

We have a chief executive in our country, who is damaging so many of our institutions.

As we all know, he is freezing billions of dollars granted to our universities that provide critical research on remedying illnesses, and our solipsist in chief is doing so on the false grounds that these universities like Harvard, Columbia, Brown and UCLA have engaged in systemic anti-Semitism.

This is a lie on its face, as I have written before.

Trump has also penalized these schools because they have promoted diversity initiatives, something for which the universities should be applauded, not punished.

One can only imagine what Trump and his lackeys would have thought of the Hollywood Bowl’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar with its cast that was as brilliant as it was diverse.

Nor would it be a strain to imagine Trump bashing the production perhaps on grounds of supposed anti-Semitism.

Of course, none of this would be true.

But it would all be in sync with the ethos of the solipsist in chief and his administration, whose governing mode, as we all know, is to project, to distract and to divert us from the truth, which is that Trump is a tyrant and a traitor, like Herod, who is trying to destroy the world that God created.

In addition to Trump’s hateful policies against our institutions of higher learning, he has also, of course, politicized and weaponized our intelligence agencies and statistical bureaus, firing intelligence officers and economists who do not report what he wants to hear.

And the gas and oil trumpeter has cut funding to and staff at the EPA and the National Weather Service among other environmental bodies at a time when extreme weather events continue to be more frequent and severe.

In 2018, I wrote a piece for Thrive Global, titled “Reflections on Climate Change, Hate Crimes and my Bar Mitzvah, 40 years later,” in which I discussed how experts believe that, as the temperature rises, hate crimes and other acts of violence rise, too.

In that Thrive Global piece, I mentioned that crimes against Jews had risen in the period before the hideous attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, during the first Trump administration.

Trump, who famously said that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and still not lose any votes, exudes violence, as I have written before; and he bears some responsibility for the increased levels of violence and hate crimes in our country with his rhetoric, angry and hateful, directed against people of color, Muslims, immigrants and anyone who is different.

If I can return to the recent production of Jesus Christ Superstar, the crowd at the Hollywood Bowl was filled with people of all backgrounds and races, all ethnicities and sexual orientations, all religions and undoubtedly political points of view.

More than anything, it was filled with people, who enjoy the arts, theater, music, dance, as well as nature.

While I sat outside in the crisp Los Angeles night, a large cross known as the Hollywood Pilgrimage Memorial Monument illuminated a hillside not far away from the Bowl.

The illumination of that landmark had a divine resonance.

I could not help but think of how lucky all of us are that we can still enjoy an evening out in Griffith Park, surrounded by greenery, a lovely recreational node in the midst of the city of angels.

It almost reminded me of being out in a garden, perhaps like the Garden of Gethsemane, not far from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

There was even a screen at the back of the stage that showed an image of a tree or two growing in a garden, symbolizing the trees in Gethsemane, where Judas betrayed Jesus.

As for the Mount of Olives, it is believed to be the location where the Resurrection will take place.

Whether we imagined that we were in the holy land or the city of angels, we were all grateful for the L.A. Philharmonic as well as the city and county of Los Angeles and its parks department for this premium entertainment in open space, the kind of entertainment that improves the quality of life for all of us in L.A.

But how much longer will we be able to enjoy such nights of splendor and awe?

We cannot ignore the political climate in Washington, one of repression that has led to the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and has also led to what one might call the hijacking or usurping of the Kennedy Center by a wannabe dictator.

If we are to continue to enjoy nights of wonder and joy in green space, we also cannot ignore the very real truth of climate change, the facts of nature.

The Guadalupe River overflowed a month or so ago and killed scores of campers and others in Texas.

A recent earthquake in Russia prompted tsunami warnings in Hawaii and southern California, which might suggest the anger of God as much as it does global warming.

Of course, the temperature is rising once again here in the Southland, with fire season upon us, just seven months after the tragedies of the Eaton and Pacific Palisades fires.

The Glendale News-Press reported that there has been an 83% increase in the number of parcels in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, not far from Altadena, that will now require even more fire abatement measures than in the past.

We can be grateful that the city of Glendale and other cities are taking care of the land in the area by mandating brush and tree pruning and other safety protocols.

But we might also ask what can be said of a political leader who denies climate change, who guts President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides for green jobs, and who touts fossil fuel companies at the expense of solar, wind and renewable energy.

As Mary Magdalene, played by Phillippa Soo in Jesus Christ Superstar, sings plaintively, “Could we start again, please?”

Could we?

I wish that we could.

I wish that we could erase the damage inflicted upon us by the solipsist in chief.

I do believe that we can overcome his evil.

We know what happens to Herod and to Judas and the other villains in Jesus Christ Superstar.

As Carol, my wife, pointed out, Herod might be a useful stand-in for Trump, not only because the king of Judea at the time was famously corrupt and evil.

Herod, as portrayed marvelously and with great wit by Josh Gad, back after having COVID, also resembles Trump in that he was dressed in hilariously gaudy fashion, with gold baubles, not unlike the bloated orange man, who wants to spend $200 million on a tasteless ballroom that no president has ever needed and that will clearly leave a carbon footprint that is larger than that of any other renovation in the history of the White House.

Why would our solipsist in chief do such a thing?

Because everything he does in his mind has to be bigger than anything that any president has ever done before, like the massive ordnance that he dropped on Iran’s nuclear facility, like the so-called, “One Big Beautiful Bill,” like the supposed record number of peace deals that he claims to have sealed in the past six or seven months.

And then there is the endorsement that he has received from his ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who wrote in a text, according to the New York Times, “God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential president in a century —maybe ever.”

The most consequential president…maybe ever!

That is what Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, wrote.

He added, “You have many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice.”

According to Elisabeth Bumiller’s article in the Sunday, Aug. 3, print edition of the NYT, the White House published that text “five days before” Trump made the decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Later in the piece, Bumiller explores an End Times prophecy, one espoused by some evangelicals, in which Jews will return to Israel, in addition to which there will be seven years of war and other calamities.

Then at such time that the Second Coming occurs, Jews will be forced to accept Jesus as the Savior or else be sentenced to hell.

When asked about that final element of the prophecy, Huckabee did not take a stance on it.

“The older I get,” said Huckabee, “the less I know, because it’s one of those things that’s a mystery of God.”

Yes, God does work in mysterious ways, as we know from the Book of Job and the entire Bible.

And it may be that aspects of the Book of Revelation and other prophecies, such as those foretelling Armageddon, could transpire.

No human does know.

But we do know that God is love. That is the overwhelming message of the Bible. That is the overwhelming message of Jesus.

Yes, it may be true that they don’t make Jews like Jesus anymore, to quote once again the late Kinky Friedman.

Still, as Bobby Dylan, a friend of Friedman’s, sang during what has been dubbed his Christian phase, “I believe in you even if I’d be outnumbered.”

I believe in God, too. I believe in Jesus. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, a force of love that is available to all of us.

This is God’s world, of which we are simply stewards or caretakers.

We need to do a better job of protecting Mother Earth, and we need to do a better job of welcoming people of all backgrounds to this country and all countries.

God wants us to embrace everyone and to do so with kindness and love.

It is also true, as Dylan sings, that “it’s only people’s games that you’ve got to dodge.”

We may indeed have to dodge a few games from corrupt individuals, who “mistake our kindness for weakness,” to quote Dylan yet again.

But we can do so with love even as we confront evil.

Then when it is our time we can ascend to the heavens, like Jesus.