The Baltimore Jewish Times talks with the various Jewish cast members of The Passion about the effect their roles had on their Jewish heartstrings.

“The violence carried out on Jesus by the Roman soldiers made me think of the millions who were killed during the Shoah, during the Russian pogroms, in medieval bonfires,” [says Olek Mincer]. “Maybe because I myself am Jewish, it made me think of Jesus as a brother who suffers.”

Really, cuz it makes me think about Martin Luther trumping up the Jews’ role in Jesus’ death and sowing the seeds of antisemitism in Europe. But that’d just be, well…rational.