Abraham Pais on Einstein and Zionsim/Israel

About Einstein and Zionism

Excerpt from

'Subtle is the Lord...':
The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein

Was Einstein a political Zionist?
Supported Israel?

Read:
Einstein, Zionism and Israel:
Setting the Record Straight

[Abraham Pais was a renowned theoretical physicist and scientific historian. He worked with Einstein, Oppenheimer, Dirac and Feynman among many others. The relationships he forged during his research career gave him his unique perspective from which he wrote many highly acclaimed biographies, including this one. For more, click on the above link. In an essay "Physics in hiding - a young physicist hides in Amsterdam during Nazi occupation" published in Discover, April 1997, Pais described his "Zionist connections," which is pertinent to better appreciate his reflections on the relationship between Einstein and Zionism.]

Einstein's active interest in the fate of the Jews also began in the Berlin period. To him this concern was never at variance with his supranational ideals. In October 1919 he wrote to the physicist Paul Epstein, 'One can be internationally minded without lacking concern for the members of the tribe'. ... In December he wrote to Ehrenfest, 'Anti-Semitism is strong here and political reaction is violent. ... He was particularly incensed about the German reaction to Jews who had recently escaped worse fate in Poland and Russia. 'Incitement against unfortunate fugitives ... have become an effective political weapon, employed with success by every demagogue.' ... Einstein knew of their plight especially well, since a number of these refugees literally came knocking at his door for help. To him supranationalism could wait so far as the hunted Jew was concerned. It was another case where the patient would have been dead (and often was) before the cure.

There was another irritant. 'I have always been annoyed by the undignified assimilationist cravings and strivings which I have observed in so many of my [Jewish] friends. ... These and similar happenings have awakened in me the Jewish national sentiment.' ... I am sure that Einstein's strongest source of identity, after science, was to be a Jew, increasingly so as the years went by. That allegiance carried no religious connotation. In 1924 he did become a dues-paying member of a Jewish congregation in Berlin, but only as an act of solidarity. Zionism to him was above all else a form of striving for the dignity of the individual. He never joined the Zionist organization.

There was one person who more than anyone else contributed to Einstein's awakening: Kurt Blumenfeld, from 1910 to 1914 secretary general of the Executive of World Zionist Organizations, which then had its seat in Berlin, and from 1924 to 1933 president of the Union of German movement. Ben Gurion called him the greatest moral revolutionary in the Zionist movement. He belonged to the seventh generation of emancipated Germany Jewry. In a beautiful essay, Blumenfeld has written of his discussions with Einstein in 1919, of his efforts 'to try to get out of a man what is hidden in him, and never to try to instill in a man what is not in his nature.' ... It was Blumenfeld whom Einstein often entrusted in later years with the preparation of statements in his name on Zionist issues. It was also Blumenfeld who was able to convince Einstein that he ought to join Weizmann on a visit to the United States (April 2 - May 30, 1921) in order to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University. Blumenfeld understood the man he was dealing with. After having convinced Einstein, he wrote to Weizmann, 'As you know, Einstein is no Zionist, and I beg you not to make any attempt to prevail on him to join our organization. ... I heard ... that you expect Einstein to give speeches. Please be quite careful with that. Einstein ... often says things out of naiveté which are unwelcome to us.' As to his relations with Weizmann, Einstein once said to me, 'Meine Beziehungen zu dem Weizmann waren, wie der Freud sagt, ambivalent.' [meaning (added from a footnote), As F. would say, my relations with W. were ambivalent.]

The extraordinary complexity of Einstein's life in the 1920s begins to unfold, the changes in midlife are becoming clear. Man of research, scientific administrator, guest professor, active pacifist, spokesman for a moral Zionism, fund-raiser in America. Claimed by the German establishment as one of their most prominent members, though nominally he is Swiss. Suspected by the establishment because of his pacifism. Target for anti-Semitism from the right. Irritant to the German assimilationist Jews because he would not keep quiet about Jewish self-expression. It is not very surprising that under these circumstances Einstein occasionally experienced difficulty in maintaining perspective, ....

Courtesy: Abraham Pais. 'Subtle is the Lord...': The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein [Oxford University Press, 1982], pp. 314-315.

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