Jesus and the other Jews

IN "PASSOVER and the Passion (Op-ed, April 2), James Carroll suggests that "Christians revise their relationship" to the Passion story that is at the heart of the Easter celebration. Carroll is asking people of conscience to move in precisely the wrong direction. The point, as Carroll correctly notes, is not to blame "the Jews" for the crucifixion. The point, as the Catholic Church and other Christian authorities have asserted for centuries, is to identify ourselves with the crowd calling for Jesus' blood. For "the Jews," we must read "us"; for Pontius Pilate, I must read "me."

This is no modern sleight of hand of contemporary theology; this is an ancient, solemn obligation made physically palpable when, every Good Friday as the Passion is retold, church members are obligated to declaim the horrible words, "Crucify him, crucify him!"

Carroll insists that we must "defuse" the Passion story. Should we do so, we would lose the very thing that reveals our own darkness and the staggering vision of a God who dared to be everything we fear in ourselves: weak, vulnerable, and powerless. This Easter, Christians would do their Jewish brothers and sisters -- in fact, all peoples -- a favor, not by defusing the Gospel message, but by embracing it.

JONATHAN KRANZ
Melrose

JAMES CARROLL'S thoughtful Holy Week reflection on the tensions between Christians and Jews drives home the obvious but oft-overlooked reality: Jesus was a Jew. His crucifixion resulted from a cynical collaboration between a Roman political official and Jewish religious authorities.

The desire of Caiaphas and his circle to be rid of a gadfly who questioned their authority has been replicated time and again, as has their resort to a compliant politician to do their bidding. The unholy alliances of Torquemada and Ferdinand and Isabella and of Henry VIII and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer 15 centuries later were just variations on the theme.

The Gospel portrayal of the trial and execution of Jesus is not an indictment of a race of people. It is the story of the establishment bolstering its position with the aid of government coercion. For believing Christians, obviously, it is something more: the triumph of love and sacrifice over power and self-interest.

J. CHARLES MOKRISKI
Newton

THE GOSPELS in several places attribute Jesus' condemnation and crucifixion to "the Jews." Matthew 27:25 contains the notorious phrase "his blood upon us and on our children."

For centuries, some Christians taught that these statements demonstrated the collective responsibility of all Jews for Jesus' death. Vatican II repudiated this doctrine. However, even a literal reading of the text, in context, clearly absolves the Jewish people as a whole from any responsibility. Those observers who cheered on Jesus' crucifixion were, from the context, just a subset of the Jerusalem rabble. There was no way that they could speak for the entire Jewish people, which at that time resided from Spain to Iran.

Substitute "some Jews" for "the Jews" in the translation and you have a more accurate account, still in conformity with the original Gospel text. Christians need not stop believing in biblical literalism, as Carroll urges, in order to repudiate anti-Semitism and Jewish collective responsibility in Jesus' death.

MICHAEL E. MALAMUT
Dedham