Dear Benjamin,

Thank you for your letter and for sending me the pdf file
of Robert Bellah's article about Religious Evolution, which
I read from beginning to end with great interest. I believe
I understand why you are enthusiastic about it, and I endorse
your enthusiasm. My own immediate reaction is chagrin, chagrin
at my own ignorance about all but the Jewish and Christian
religions, my ignorance of history and my ignorance of the cited
texts, e.g. of Durkheim and Weber, which I always wanted to read,
but never did, or worse, have forgotten. Bellah's essay strikes
me as having some of the characteristics of an intellectual prism
through which each reader perceives a re-definition - into spectral
lines - of his own experience, but as the experiences of no two
readers can be expected to be identical, so their interpretations
of the essay will differ. Of any papers which you yourself write
(on Bellah's topic or on any other) I would be pleased if you 
would send me a copy.

By strange coincidence, I myself have recently been drawn into
studies of religious anthropology of sorts by a letter from one
Jürgen Hartmann, a free-lance historian and journalist who was born
in my father's town Oerlinghausen in the County of Lippe in Westphalia,
Germany, and whose project of many years has been to rediscover and
study the history of Oerlinghausen Jews. He is much pleased to have
discovered me as a descendant of one of the largest Jewish families
of the town, and treats me as is I were a valuable historical artifact
supportive of the topic of his investigation. Jürgen - we are already
on a first name basis - knows more about the Meyers of Oerlinghausen
than I or any other member of the family. I learned from him that 
although ancestors can be traced back four or more centuries, the family
got its name in 1802 when the Dutchess of Lippe ordered all Jews under
her jurisdiction to assume last names. Jürgen has identified the
ancestor who wanted to be called "Meyer". He suggested that I should
write "ein paar Sätze" (a few sentences) about my view of Oerlinghausen
to be included in a history of the Synagoge Congregation there which 
he hopes to publish next year.

I am, however, not sure, whether my thoughts will fit in with his historical
approach, because what has suddenly and unexpectedly become the focus of my
concern is not the organization or politics of the synagogue, but what my 
grandfather and grandmother, what your great-great grandfather and your 
great-great grandmother actually believed, and how they reconciled their
religious beliefs with their apparent loyalty to Kaiser Wilhelm II, for whose
war they persuaded all three of their sons to volunteer, one of whom Ernst Joachim
for whom we are named, was killed in November 1914 soon after the outbreak of
the war. Such "patriotism" is inconceivable to us, and if we can't understand
their "patriotism", how can we possibly presume to understand their religion?
Our (great-great) grandfather left behind a Bible expurgated of the accounts
of divinely ordained genocide which make reading the Bible, for me at least,
so formidable a task. He underlined passages of importance to him, one of which
Exodus 3:13-14, caught also my attention:

13 And Moses said unto God: 'Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, 
and shall say unto them: The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; 
and they shall say to me:What is His name? what shall I say unto them? 	

14 And God said unto Moses: 'I AM THAT I AM'; and He said: 
'Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I AM hath sent me unto you.'

A quick sally to the Internet persuaded me that the interpretation of these
verses has been the subject of much scholarly effort with which I couldn't and
shouldn't try to compete, - and I don't. But neither can I squelch my own observations:
1) that the question is contradictory. The name of "The God of your fathers" is
obviously: God. The questions asks not for an identifier but for a descriptor,
a promotional epithet, and that, Moses is told, is not available, 2) corroborating a
belief of mine and of many others, that the Divine is inwardness, is subjectivity
and is inherently incompatible with propaganda and evangelism. It is also incompatible
with "scientific" knowledge, including history and the various other disciplines
that purport to tells us about the roots, about the nature, or about the essence 
of "religion." If according to Genesis God made man in his own image, or if according
to a sceptical interpretation, man makes God in his own image, then the answer
I AM THAT I AM and its subjectivistic implications seem to me to be of conclusive
import to each of us in his own life.

I apologize, as usual, for having written too much. Please ignore it, don't let my
ideas (or my experience) disconcert you, - and don't try to explain it to your teacher;
he/she might hold it against you.

Stay well and happy.

Love, Yoyo