What did Einstein think of Zionism, Jewish nationalism? - review

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever produced. He conceived of totally new ways of understanding time and space, matter and light, gravitation and the universe.

When he died in 1955, Einstein left all his papers, both personal and scientific, to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which he had been instrumental in founding 30 years earlier. Consequently, that institution is the legal custodian of his intellectual property and literary estate. It was with the university’s active support and collaboration that the truly monumental scheme of publishing the complete collection of Einstein’s papers was initiated in 1977.

The colossal task of compiling, editing, and publishing Einstein’s literary estate is led by the Einstein Papers Project, which is based in the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The team decided to cover Einstein’s life and work chronologically. Accordingly, here we are in 2024 with the publication of Volume 17, and yet we have reached only the documents generated between July 1929 and November 1930.

By 1929, Einstein was already renowned throughout the world. He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921, following the solar eclipse experiment conducted in May 1919 by  British astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington – the experiment that confirmed Einstein’s theory of general relativity. With the results reported widely by the popular press, Einstein became “the world’s first celebrity scientist.” He was now enjoying the fruits of his fame.

The publishing enterprise was planned as a multi-volume series, each volume to include not only scientific papers but also the personal letters, political writings, and professional correspondence that provide the context for Einstein’s work and thinking. The papers are annotated meticulously, with introductions and footnotes that explain the significance of each document.

Each volume contains two books – a documentary edition containing full-text documents, which are mostly in German, and a companion edition containing English translations of selected documents. Volume 17, containing 499 full-text documents in the main edition follows this pattern.

To pursue their journey into Albert Einstein’s personal and scientific life, English-speaking readers will welcome the 460-page companion edition containing a selection of translated documents. This volume in English lists in sequence all the documents contained in the documentary edition, noting under their title the documents not selected for translation. It includes its own 13-page index. The edition in English required the involvement of five translators and nine editors.

ONE EDITOR, Josh Eisenthal, found Einstein’s relationship with Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, which features in this volume, particularly intriguing. Tagore, who in 1913 won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was a poet, short story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, and painter.

Einstein had met him in 1926, and in July 1930 invited him to Caputh, his summer house near Potsdam, Germany. Eisenthal reports that they met again a few weeks later, on August 19, this time in Berlin. Versions of the conversations from both meetings were published in The New York Times and Asia magazine and appear as documents 372 and 396 in Volume 17.

Their first conversation deals with the nature of reality – a deep and lengthy dialogue in which Einstein expresses his belief in an external world independent of human beings, in contrast to Tagore’s concept that the universe, including the divine, becomes reality only through human perception.

Their second conversation turns to the topic of music and the deep differences between European and Indian musical traditions. What especially intrigues Eisenthal is that the two men did not speak to each other in the same language. Tagore spoke in English, and Einstein replied in German. A translator must have been present.

When the first discussion was published, a lot seemed to have been lost in translation, and Einstein, very dissatisfied, wrote that the dialogue should not have appeared in print.

“However, this hasn’t prevented the dialogue from being intriguing to others,” writes Eisenthal. “Indeed, in the decades since Tagore and Einstein first sat down for tea in Caputh, their conversation on the nature of reality has been published and republished dozens of times.”

Albert Einstein's support of Zionism

Volume 17 also contains an intriguing expression of Einstein’s strong support for Zionism in the early 1920s (he modified his views somewhat in later years). Document 79 is a letter he wrote to Willy Hellpach, the state governor of Baden, in response to an article Hellpach had written that was critical about Zionism. Einstein felt the need to respond, he writes, “as someone who is very devoted to Zionism.”

Religion, he argues, is not the only factor binding Jews together. “This is demonstrated by the attitude of other people toward the Jews,” he writes. “I only discovered that I was a Jew when I came to Germany 15 years ago, and this discovery was communicated more by non-Jews than by Jews.”

In short, Einstein felt that the only effective protection for Jews from the intolerance and persecution they were subjected to was the Zionist vision expressed by Theodor Herzl – the creation of what Einstein calls a “homestead” in Palestine.

“Zionism strives not for power,” he writes, “but for dignity and recovery. If we did not have to live among intolerant, narrow-minded, violent people, I would be the first to reject every form of nationalism in favor of universal humanity.”

However, he concludes: “We will never be protected from this intolerance, whether we call ourselves a ‘people’ or a ‘nation,’ or not.”

So, is his obvious corollary, we might as well do so.

Gems like these are scattered among the documents translated into English in this 17th volume of Einstein’s collected papers. This whole publishing enterprise will clearly be a work of enormous value and interest when it is eventually brought to a conclusion.

We can only welcome the progress made so far, and bestow our thanks and best wishes on its dedicated editors and translators. 

• THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF ALBERT EINSTEIN, VOL. 17: THE BERLIN YEARS WRITINGS AND CORRESPONDENCE JUNE 1929 – NOVEMBER 1930
• Edited by Diana Kormos Buchwald
• Princeton University Press
• 1,240 pages; $50