Was J. Robert Oppenheimer a Zionist? Sort of - opinion

The book In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz, published shortly after the 1982 war in Lebanon, consists of essays from interviews with representative voices in Israeli society speaking about the issues Israelis wrestled with then, and still do. One essay, “The Tender among You and the Very Delicate,” is from an interview with a veteran farmer, identified as Z, a political hawk and hardliner, who believes that “throughout history, anyone who thought he was above killing got killed.” Toward the end of the interview, Z points out that had Jewish brains spent less time trying to save the world and reforming humanity (he mentions Marx, Freud, Kafka, and Einstein) and had instead set up a tiny independent Jewish state 10 years earlier, along with “a teeny weeny atom bomb for this state,” the Holocaust would not have occurred.

Sadly, the point about a tiny Jewish state is valid. The Peel Commission Report of 1937 recommended partitioning the Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jews allocated 17% of the total area: a tiny state, but a state. While contentious because of its small size, Zionist leaders such as David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann were in favor. However, the idea of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine was not acceptable as far as the Arabs were concerned. As to the point about the atom bomb – well, that would have been more of a challenge. After all, the Manhattan Project – the US effort to build the bomb – was a four-year endeavor that employed 130,000 people and cost $2 billion ($34 billion in today’s currency).

However, the connection Z makes between Jewish minds and the atom bomb is well founded. The Los Alamos National Laboratory website notes that two-thirds of the leadership of the Manhattan Project’s Theoretical Division, those who calculated critical mass and modeled implosions, were Jews. Some, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, were American-born Jewish physicists, but at least half were Jewish refugees from Europe, a number from Hungary and Germany.

Jews in Europe

Saving the democratic world from the Nazis may have been the primary focus of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. However, many who were Jewish must have also been thinking of the fate of their people in Europe. By late 1939, the situation for Jews in Europe was clearly dire. This was after the Evian Conference of 1938, which resulted in virtually no succor for Jews. It was also clear that not only the lives of the Jews of Germany and Austria were at stake but also those in Czechoslovakia and all of Eastern Europe.

Two of these scientists, Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer, were integral to the success of the Manhattan Project. Einstein’s role was simply signing a letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt, dated August 2, 1939, which warned that Germany might be developing a new and terrible explosive device. Actually written by Leo Szilard, a Jewish-Hungarian physicist who ended up working on the Manhattan Project, it was Einstein, with the gravitas needed to impress Roosevelt, who signed it. (Einstein later stated that he would not have signed it had he known that the Germans had not succeeded in developing an atom bomb.)

Einstein was born in Germany 25 years before Oppenheimer’s birth in the US. Both men had secular German-Jewish backgrounds. (Oppenheimer’s father was an immigrant from Germany, while his mother’s family arrived in the US from Germany in the 1840s.) Both had universalist world views that conflicted with the particularism inherent in their Jewish backgrounds, and yet, in the final analysis, both were Zionists – sort of.

Einstein was a pacifist who rejected nationalism and refused to support the German war effort during WW I. On the other hand, he was acutely aware of the perilous position of the Jews of Germany and elsewhere. When Zionist leader (and prominent scientist) Chaim Weizmann asked Einstein to help him raise funds in America to establish the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (in Mandatory Palestine), Einstein agreed. The fundraising trip took place in 1921. In 1923, Einstein toured and lectured at the nascent institution in Jerusalem and later served on its board of governors. When Weizmann, the first president of Israel, died in 1952, the presidency (a largely ceremonial but influential position) was offered to Einstein. He respectfully declined, saying he was not suitable for the position.

While Einstein was not a nationalist, he made an exception when it came to Zionism because he knew that modern Zionism was a survivalist imperative. In Out of My Later Years (1950), he wrote “The Jews of Palestine did not fight for political independence for its own sake, but they fought to achieve free immigration for the Jews of many countries where their very existence was in danger…”

What about Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, often referred to as the father of the atomic bomb? After reading two comprehensive biographies, one by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, and another by Ray Monk, and seeing the recent film Oppenheimer, I thought I knew almost everything there was to know about J. Robert Oppenheimer. I was wrong. Both books, and the movie, mention Oppenheimer’s disinterest or, at best, his ambivalence toward his Jewish heritage. Both books note that Oppenheimer contributed to charities supporting refugee scientists from Germany, and that he helped family members get out of Germany, but there is no mention of an Israeli connection.

On November 11, 1947, a little more than two weeks before the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Weizmann met with Einstein and Oppenheimer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The main topic discussed was the possible development of a nuclear reactor in what was then Mandatory Palestine (apparently, Oppenheimer cautioned against it).

We know that Oppenheimer made at least two trips to Israel. One in 1958 to participate in the inauguration of a nuclear physics program at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and another seven years later to participate in a meeting of the board of governors of the institute.

(The 2006 book The Bomb in the Basement by Michael Karpin reports that Oppenheimer visited Israel with Edward Teller in 1952 and that they had a lengthy meeting with Ben-Gurion to discuss plutonium production. Karpin does not indicate a source for this meeting in his notes, nor does Teller mention such a meeting in his lengthy 2001 autobiography, Memoirs. Teller does refer to several visits to Israel, but he mentions that his first visit took place in 1965.)

Oppenheimer’s visits to Israel and his advisory role at the Weizmann Institute do not make him a Zionist. However, two speeches that he gave, the first one in May 1958 at the inauguration, and a second in December 1958 at a dinner for Weizmann Institute supporters at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, indicate that he understood, appreciated, and empathized with the Zionist enterprise.

Martin Kramer, a historian at Tel Aviv University, reproduced the speeches in a recent Times of Israel blog. A sample excerpt, from the Waldorf Astoria speech, reads:

“In this society, forced by danger, by hardship, by hostile neighbors, to an intense, continued common effort, one finds a health of spirit, a human health, now grown rare in the great lands of Europe and America, which will serve not only to bring dedicated men and dedication to Israel, but to lead us to refresh and renew the ancient sources of our own strength and health.”

In a later blog, Kramer notes that according to Meyer Weisgal, then-acting president of the Weizmann Institute, Oppenheimer, just six months before his death in 1967, informally agreed to assume the presidency of the institute. Kramer notes the lack of a corroborating account, but even if Weisgal remains the only source for this revelation, it suggests that Oppenheimer’s interest in Israel was more than a passing fancy. Perhaps J. Robert Oppenheimer was not as estranged from his people as thought.

How does all this relate to Z, the Amos Oz interviewee mentioned at the start of this article? Well, to Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, the traumatic events of October 7, along with the ensuing worldwide storm of antisemitism, have reminded them of the importance of a Jewish state to Jewish survival, one of Z’s main points. As to nuclear capability, Z’s other point, it is widely accepted that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for decades, although official policy is one of ambiguity. Today, Israel’s survival depends on the Iron Dome rocket defense system, cyberwarfare measures, and a new laser weapon, Iron Beam. ■

Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.