Dallas Jenkins, creator and director of the “The Chosen,” stood alongside the show’s actors Jonathan Roumie (Jesus) and Elizabeth Tabish (Mary Magdalene) as he told the audience and viewers at the 11th annual K-LOVE Fan Awards that they “stand with and kneel for” Israel.
“We are a Jewish show and it’s a reminder, you know, there are innocent people in this conflict that’s going on in the Middle East right now,” Jenkins said as he accepted the K-LOVE Fan Award for Film Impact.
“We love and pray for all of them,” he added. “But the roots of our faith and the roots of our entire lives were birthed in Israel. And this is a Jewish show. We serve a Jewish Jesus. And so, to the people in Israel, we stand with you and we kneel for you. We love you.”
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When asked backstage what he feels that Christians don’t understand about the heritage of who Jesus is and how foundational that is to Christianity today, Jenkins said that “it’s shocking to me sometimes to go around the world and to recognize that there are people who don’t understand that Jesus was Jewish and that the roots of our faith are in Judaism.”
Jenkins shared that one of the “really beautiful things” that he’s witnessed come from “The Chosen” is that the country of Israel, which Jenkins said, “traditionally [is] a little bit resistant towards a Jesus show,” is being accepting and the show’s popularity is “growing rapidly.”
He believes Israel’s favoritism towards the show is due to the fact “The Chosen” honors the “Jewish prayers, [and] Jewish rituals” and isn’t “saying that Jesus represented a new thing, but that he was honoring his heritage. He was just enhancing and uplifting and fulfilling it.”
For example, Jenkins continued, while in Mary Magdalene’s character “we portray her as someone who left kind of the roots of her faith, and then she acts as an audience proxy, to ask questions and to come back to it.”
“So the country of Israel and the Jewish people there, even those who are not believers in Jesus, are so appreciative of the fact that we are not denying the Jewishness of Jesus,” Jenkins said. “[But] we are celebrating it and we’re seeing Gentiles all over the world start to do these prayers, and really embrace it.”
