By Rich Barlow, 6/12/2004

This is a story about two people who have known financial blessing and private pain, who share a passion for religion that has brought their lives, figuratively, to an intersection.

The first is Mel Gibson, whose "The Passion of The Christ" was one of the year's most contentious events, and its box office gross one its most staggering. Gibson credits his traditionalist, conservative Catholicism with pulling him through personal crises years ago.

The second person, Elizabeth Goldhirsh, is a Harvard Divinity School student and 25-year-old Boston heiress who is more 25-year-old than heiress. She greets a visitor to her apartment in casual get-up -- midriff-baring T-shirt and sandals -- apologizes for the untidiness, and exudes the breathless enthusiasm of youth.

"This is an ancient Hebrew seal," she said, displaying a textbook photo. "Isn't that awesome?"

Her father, Bernard Goldhirsh, founded Inc. magazine, which he sold for an estimated $200 million in 2000. He died last year of a brain tumor, four years after stomach cancer claimed Goldhirsh's mother. The lesson of that double loss -- life is short -- and the sour taste the debate over Gibson's movie left has led her to an unusual philanthropic effort promoting Christian-Jewish relations.

She is pouring hundreds of thousands of her own dollars into a national essay contest. Contestants between the ages of 16 and 22 may choose from one of three questions on ecumenical relations. Winners, to be announced Nov. 15, will split $100,000 in prize money. Goldhirsh is bankrolling everything from the prize money to ads in major newspapers and the costs of a website -- www.ReachingCommonGround.com -- with contest details. A partner, the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, will provide scholars to judge the entries.

So consumed did she become with the contest that she temporarily withdrew from school this year. "I must have pulled 15 all-nighters at Kinko's. I'm not exaggerating. Like, I slept at Kinko's," she said.

Goldhirsh can sound wise beyond her years when she explains her nuanced take on "The Passion." Gibson's movie deeply divided religious conservatives, many of whom couldn't abide doubts scholars raised about the historical accuracy of the Gospels as presented in the film, and liberals who criticized the work as anti-Semitic.

Goldhirsh thought the film was less incendiary than some critics portrayed, though she said she thought Gibson "did give a pass . . . to Pontius Pilate" on the crucifixion.

She also thinks Gibson failed to stress that Jesus was a Jew engaging in an intra-Jewish debate. But it was the national argument over the movie, rather than the film itself, that inspired her contest.

"I really felt that no one was making room to talk about the common ground shared by Christians and Jews," she said. "It's really important to contextualize the Gospels . . . so you understand [the arguments described] are intra-Jewish, not anti-Jewish."

Religion and biblical history mesmerize Goldhirsh to the point where, if someone were to write an essay for her contest embracing Gibson's conservative take on that particular moment in Jesus's life, she wouldn't find that "inherently problematic."

"I've actually never encountered anti-Semitism myself," Goldhirsh said. "I'd actually be interested in talking to someone who had those viewpoints."

She described herself as largely nonobservant but fiercely culturally Jewish, saying, for example, she would only marry a Jewish man. She also is well aware of the importance of religion in national life.

"America is a really religious country. . . . I think that, living in the Northeast, we don't really understand what that means," she said.

"We live in a sort of bubble in Boston, New York. The rest of the country -- it really is a red and blue divide, and not just on the Electoral College map. There are a lot of people in this country who care deeply about faith and care deeply about the Bible."

She hopes to make the essay contest an annual event. Meanwhile, she had dedicated this one to her parents. Her father taught her to follow her passion; she learned the value of love from her mother's words and example, especially during her final illness at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"[On] the hospital ward, there were people from, like, all around the world -- Arabs, Jews, there were people from Europe, people from all over -- all on the same ward, all trying to get better from cancer," she said. "It was so clear, like, in the end, that's all that matters.

"By the time I was 24, I had lost both my parents," Goldhirsh said. "When you see someone die -- I was there when both my parents died; my brother and I had to take my mom off the respirator, my mother died at home -- you really get that . . . life is so short."

And you get a sense of what matters in life.

"I'm obviously fortunate financially," Goldhirsh said, "but I would trade all my money to have my parents back."

Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org

This story ran on page B2 of the Boston Globe on 6/12/2004. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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