After months of speculation about the final form The Passion of Christ will take, the first Jewish expert on interfaith affairs to have seen the nearly final cut says earlier fears that the Mel Gibson film about the last hours of Jesus would foment anti-Semitism are no longer necessary.

"A fear that this would result in pogroms against Jews is unwarranted," David Elcott, U.S. director for interfaith affairs at the American Jewish Committee, told The Jewish Week Tuesday night just after leaving a screening of the film.

Elcott watched The Passion of Christ at the Willow Creek mega-church in suburban Chicago, an Evangelical congregation, with 4,500 Christians who included ministers from all over the country.

Though Elcott said he planned to consult with Catholic and Lutheran theologians before issuing his full reaction, he did say that while the movie wasn't as dangerous as had been feared, "that does not mean that we won't be disappointed and frustrated by it."

At the same time, interfaith experts are looking past the opening of the film, which is scheduled for the Catholic holy day Ash Wednesday on Feb. 25, to its long-term impact.

The Passion of Christ is slated to open on 2,000 screens nationwide and already is generating business that seemed unimaginable when controversy about it first hit last spring. Written, directed, produced and paid for by Gibson, the $25 million epic is in Aramaic and Latin with English subtitles.

While news reports have been claiming that Pope John Paul II saw the movie and gave it his imprimatur, the Catholic News Service reported this week that the pontiff's secretary is now saying that the prelate viewed the film in his apartment but has told no one what he thinks of it.

Even after the opening-related brouhaha dies down, some are worried about the film's long-range impact.

"In the modern age in which we live, the movie will come and go. It's the DVDs I fear," said Rabbi A. James Rudin, a veteran of interfaith dialogue and now consulting as senior interreligious adviser to the AJCommittee. "It may be used over and over again for decades to come in church schools and even in seminaries, God forbid. My great concern is that the Catholic bishops, when it comes out, do not endorse it for official use."

And in the less-hierarchical world outside the Catholic Church, there is no telling what an impact it may make, he said.

"We can't control what Evangelicals are going to do," Rabbi Rudin said. "And it will play in Islamic countries, in areas where there are few Jews. The movie has the potential to validate already existing anti-Jewish stereotypes."

Rabbi Rudin saw a rough cut of the film in Houston last August and was planning to see the latest version Wednesday night in Orlando.

"I was told by a minister friend who just saw it that it isn't much changed from what I saw then," he said.

"It's a very violent movie," the rabbi said. In August Jews were portrayed as "a bloodthirsty, monolithic, shrieking mob led by the high priest Caiphas. The followers of Jesus were softly portrayed and from the story you wouldn't have known that they were all Jews."

"In real life [the Roman governor] Pontius Pilate was a bloodthirsty governor occupying Judea, a ruthless ruler," Rabbi Rudin said. But in the rough cut of the film he saw in August, Pilate is portrayed "as indecisive and is a puppet of the Jewish high priest."

"It was typical of Passion Plays," he said.

Elcott said of this week's screening that he had heard about Christian viewers in other audiences "sobbing, that it was electric. I didn't feel that electricity," he said. "Nothing about this movie played obviously in a way that would make it easier to say thumbs up or down. It's a complicated movie. It's not a wonderful story or a horrendous assault."

But there seems little doubt that the film is going to be a hit, with an unexpected flood of ticket requests, The New York Times reported last week. And some within the Jewish community say the controversy around it, started by Jews concerned about anti-Semitic content, is to blame.

"Because of what the Jewish community did, we made the film successful," said Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.

As a result, the business "The Passion of Christ" will do "will make ‘Lord of the Rings' look tiny. It will be the biggest hit Gibson will ever have," he said.

Many communal leaders are now consciously shifting the strategy they plan to use to respond to the movie.

"We're vigilant right now about not getting caught in an out-of-control rhetorical battle like the one from this past summer," said Elcott. "My colleagues at other organizations agree. We want to have a careful, responsible response."

Last year's public battle between some in the Jewish community and Gibson, played out in the pages of newspapers and magazines, created unnecessary problems, said Elcott.

It "turned what should have been a Christian discussion into a story of Mel Gibson against the Jews," he said. "There was no need for this movie to be about the Jews, and we made it into that, which was deeply unnecessary. It allowed Mel Gibson to stake a claim of saying he was being unfairly assaulted about a movie that wasn't even out yet."

Going forward, Elcott said, "We need to be much more careful. Calling someone an anti-Semite is a serious indictment, evoking the Holocaust and genocide. Before I use that term I have to be quite sure it applies."

A spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League, which was an early and strong critic of the film, said "we haven't changed our strategy at all."

"We have serious concerns about the film, and until we see it, they remain," said Myrna Shinbaum. "We have reached out to Mel Gibson and his people so they understand we'd like to see this film, and to discuss it with him," but have not received a response, she said.

Many involved in interfaith work say their focus from here on in will be in dialogue with Christians about the film rather than statements to the press.

The AJCommittee has just published a 47-page resource guide, edited by Rabbi Rudin, which includes guidelines for the presentation of Jesus' Passion, as his last days are known, issued in 1988 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and suggested talking points.

It has been distributed to all of the AJCommittee's chapters. And according to Elcott they and Jewish community relations councils across the country are planning dialogues about the film.

"We are trying to bring together the interreligious community to talk about ways to reaffirm and recommit ourselves to mutual religious respect at a time when there's great religious tension in the world," Elcott said. "All of our chapters will work very seriously on this."

Shinbaum said that any additional response from the ADL will not be in the form of a boycott or other public protest.

"We would raise our concerns and work, hopefully, with all our counterparts in the Christian community, Catholic and Protestant," she said.

At the end of the day, the film "may do just the opposite of what everybody's worried about," said Rabbi Ehrenkranz. "It might create opportunities for rabbis and priests to get together and discuss it. It may be one of the best things that could have happened."