Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter which I liked so much,
that no comments that I can make without embarrassment
would do it justice.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate spring than
a walk along the Mississippi such as you describe. I wish
I could have been along, although I'm sufficiently realistic
to know that my presence might have - would have - spoiled
the party.

I share your fascination with the Cetinkaya correspondence.
I should be surprised, if it can last, if Dr. Cetinkaya will
be able to stomach my interpretation of contemporary science
and especially of modern medical theory and practice, ideas
likely to be intolerable to everyone except to you and Helmut
and Klemens. (Margaret doesn't count; she knows me too well to 
take me seriously.) I hope before he gives up on me, Caner
will give me the opportunity to learn from him about the
language of Turkey, about its literature, music and religion,
about which I know little more than the frivolous libretto
of Mozart's Abduction.  Quite possibly Caner has been so
assimilated to modern Germany that his parents' homeland is
almost as foreign to him as it is to me.

Around the corner from where I sit, on the wall of my parents'
bedroom, between the large mirror back of the dresser and the
door, there hangs very simply framed with black tape to a thin
pane of glass, a small postcard showing in shades of grey, in
very close range, a mountain peak of jagged rock partially
overgrown with clumps of grass. At the very summit, into a sky
of threatening cumulus clouds, looms a large but simple cross,
fashioned of two timbers in the conventional proportions at
right angles. At the lower margin of the postcard the legend:
"Hoch ragt das Kreuz von Golgatha" and immediately below:
"Heimat fuer Heimatlose!" The author of this pious sentiment
is not listed.

To me the postcard is like a scar, almost a birthmark: for better
or worse, it has constituted part of my consciousness at least
for seventy-three years. I remember that before we left Germany,
I considered the postcard my own. Whether it was specially selected
for me or whether it was appropriated by me, I can't remember.
I do remember helping to frame it and thus turn it into a prized
possession. In 1940, when the Medical Center had been built,
and I first had a room of my own, I hung it on the wall above my bed.
There it remained while I went off to Philadelphia and to Cambridge.
When, in 1952, my parents moved into their new house, the postcard
found its place, not inappropriately I think, next to the mirror.
To me it now seems like a yardstick with which I may measure how
much I have changed.

I have a vivid memory, in his lectures on Goethe, of Karl Vietor's
relating to his students that Goethe, who cultivated an optimistic
view of human nature and of human life, was offended by the 
obiquitous display on church steeples of the cross as the symbol
of suffering. I entertained the possibility of adopting Goethe's
sentiments, but ruled against them. Human suffering is terribly
real and ought be neither concealed nor denied. If I nonetheless
object to the public display of crucifixion mementos it's because
I interpret such exhibitions as shameless mockery of the suffering
of which it purports to remind us. I consider them as veils to 
mask, as decoys to distract from the cruelty which is rampant in
our society,  which we conceal from ourselves with curtains of
deceptions and lies; and against the stench of which we spray
ourselves with perfumes of self-righteousness.

As we commute between Konnarock and Belmont, a series
of three crosses, - I haven't counted them - the central one golden,
the one on either side, silvery, interrupt the sequence of other,
secular, advertisements. Since each set of crosses is identical with
the next, I infer organization at work; manufacture is centralized,
distribution is franchised, - on what terms of course I don't know.
In any event, the crosses are made in USA for Golgotha in the
American style. Nonetheless they remind me of the picture postcard
with the cross rising from rocky mountain top toward threatening
cumulus clouds; and I must assume that the public displays of
religiosity that are now offensive to me, have meanings to those
who advertise them, analogous to that which the cross on the postcard
had for me in my early childhood.

All this prefatory to an attempt to address your question of how
I interpret the crucifixion, the answer to which might require more
than one lifetime. I begin with the observation that I consider
"religious experience" pure subjectivity, and therefore ultimately
inaccessible to verbal exposition which being social or interpersonal
is inherently objective.

Given this caveat, I appoint myself as your Rabbi and remind you
that "Golgatha" is a Hebrew expression, that Judaism is broad and
deep enough to emcompass "Christianity" and that neither Judaism
nor Christianity can be properly understood except as phases of
a single religious experience. I make this assertion, because
you have previously told me that it makes you laugh; and making
you laugh, i.e. making you happy is the ultimate purpose of my
letters to you.

The crucifixion has many dimensions, can be understood in many
perspectives. I don't know where I should begin.
I read the Bible as literature,
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/andere/K01.TXT
I read the accounts of the crucifixion as tragedy, evoking pity and
fear, and effecting the purgation of these emotions. (Aristotle,
Poetics) I agree emphatically with your statement:

"Yet it seems as though society harbors a desire
to seek resolution through human or animal sacrifice. 
For example, when things go wrong in government,
or in an organization, there is enormous pressure
for someone "at the top" to resign.  This satisfies
the multitudes that the sin has been expiated,
even though, more often than not, the one sacrificed
was not especially responsible for the transgression,
and the resignation or firing of said individual will
do nothing to make a recurrence less likely."

I am reminded of the Jewish ritual by which the sins
of the Israelites are transferred to the scapegoat
which is then sent to perish in the wilderness.
Here's the account from Wikipedia:

"Throughout the year and on the Day of Atonement,
the the record of all the sins of the Israelites
was transferred to the Tabernacle by the blood
of the sacrifices. On the Day of Atonement, the
tabernacle was cleansed of all the accumulated sins
by the ritual described in Leviticus 16. At that
time the high priest transfers the accumulated sins
from the tabernacle to the scapegoat which is then
sent into the desert wilderness. The Tabernacle
is thus cleansed of sin."

My home-brew theology suggests to me that it was Isaiah's
deep understanding of human nature that led him to conclude:
a) that the instrument by which a society cleanses itself
of imperfection (sin) is not really a goat or a lamb, but
is in fact a select member of that society whom it punishes
and destroys.
b) that the cleansing of the society from sin is inherently
a divine function, and that he who thus cleanses society is
"the arm of the LORD" on whom "the LORD hath laid ... the
iniquity of us all." 
By describing the meekness of that select member of society
as that of a lamb, Isaiah created the metaphor of the Lamb of God.
Jesus was a Jew who unconsciously/consciously acted out
Isaiah's prophecy.

In this context Chapter 53 of Isaiah is essential, worth reading
once more:

1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness;
and when we shall see him, there [is] no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were [our] faces from him;
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised
for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one
to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth:
he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment:
and who shall declare his generation?
for he was cut off out of the land of the living:
for the transgression of my people was he stricken.
9 And he made his grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence,
neither [was any] deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put [him] to grief:
when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin,
he shall see [his] seed, he shall prolong [his] days,
and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, [and] shall be satisfied:
by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many;
for he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide him [a portion] with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he hath poured out his soul unto death:
and he was numbered with the transgressors;
and he bare the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

================================

I interpret the "success" of Christian dogma as consequence of the
circumstance that the crucifixion defines a fateful fault-line,
to use the geologist's term, of human nature. The human being
is both an individual and a social creature. Human individuality
and human sociability are on a deep level mutually contradictory
and irreconcilable. Human beings are unconditionally dependent
on each other for their existence; yet to exist, human beings
must assert themselves against one another and compete with one
another. Hence hostility between human beings is unavoidable.
That hostility may be expressed directly between two individuals;
it may also be expressed indirectly through society. The person
against whom hostility is expressed through society becomes a
scapegoat. That explains the high priest's advice: "Es war aber
Caiphas der den Juden riet, es waere gut, dass ein Mensch wuerde
umgebracht fuer das Volk." (But it was Caiphas who advised the
Jews that it was good that a person should be killed for the
people.)

We human beings, I believe, are generally unaware of what we
feel and what we fear. Certainly the spiritual seismic tensions
which are created by the quasi geologic fault of our natures
are as inscrutable to us as are the subterranean forces which
periodically cause earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
I would understand if the Japanese, for example, lapsed into the
habit of wearing Mount Fuji shaped amulets to ward of earthquakes.
I interpret the crosses which dangle from the necks of so many
human geese as amulets to ward off the seismic societal catastrophe
which is epitomized and symbolized by crucifixion as the ultimate
expulsion from society.

These considerations remind me once more of my picture postcard
with its legend "Heimat fuer Heimatlose". The crucifixion creates
an imaginary - but emotionally very compelling - other-worldly
home to which the individual who is persecuted "in this world"
is invited to flee. Moreover, "persecution in this world"
is far more prevalent than we are prepared to admit. Your
description of the film the "Mill and the Cross" suggests that
its scriptwriters found persecution even in the Bruegel
Procession to Calvary where it was on the surface inapparent.
I suspect that a large fraction of gun-toting NRA members
who have crosses dangling from their pickup truck rearview
mirrors feel actually or potentially at odds with society, i.e.,
persecuted. Their being attracted by the powerful symbolism
of the crucifixion is plausible to me.

[I'll postpone comments on interpretation of the crucifixion
in music (Bach's Matthaeus Passion, Johannes Passion and
various cantatas, in architecture such as the German cathedrals
with which I am familiar, in sculpture as in the various Pietas
and statuary of the cross, in graphic art, such as Rembrandt's
etchings of the three crosses and the numerous paintings of the
descent from the cross.]

Another important topic is a fundamental theory of esthetics
which I may have presented before: Having prohibited, in the Ten
Commandments, all pictorial representation, God, after he has sent
snakes to kill his chosen people, changes his mind and introduces
art as therapy, instructing Moses in the Book of Numbers to make
a brazen image of a serpent, and to raise the symbol high before
the stricken people of Israel, ordaining that whoever gazes on the
brazen serpent shall be immunized against the venom of the living
serpents. - Too bad that Aristotle never had a look at the
Septuagint. To my mind Moses' esthetics is more persuasive by far
than Aristotles'.  St. John made the essential connection when he
wrote: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so shall
the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever gazes on him shall not die
but shall have everlasting life. No wonder there are crosses everywhere,
it's eternal life on the cheap, which no one can afford to ignore.
(Consider that Chapters 43 and 44 of Die Freunde might function
as brazen serpents in my legal contest.)

I'm aware of the disorganization of this letter and the inadequacies
of my style. But I'm not in the mood to rewrite it tonight.
I may reuse some of the ideas in another letter or another essay.
If you did not receive the several pdf files which I forwarded
to you from Klemens, please let me know, so I can send them again.
Please try hard to laugh at me and my ideas, and try to be happy.

Jochen