Australian-American actor and director Mel Gibson—he of the anti-Semitic outbursts, the abused girlfriend, The Passion of the Christ—has just closed a deal to make a film for Warner Bros. with screenwriter Joe Eszterhas about the life of Judah Maccabee. Gibson described his project in an interview with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: "Oh, my God, the odds they faced. The armies they faced had elephants! How cinematic is this! Even Judah's dad—what's his name? Mattathias?—you kind of get this guy who more or less is trying to avoid the whole thing, but he just gets to a place where he had enough, and he just snapped!"
Despite the Jews' celebration of Hannukah, the Book of Maccabees belongs to the Christian rather than the Jewish canon. Still, for some, the combination of Gibson and Jews is beyond the pale. "It would be a travesty," said Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, "to have the story of the Maccabees told by one who has no respect and sensitivity for other people's religious views."
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