“Inside Albert Einstein’s Zionist Brain,”
by Robert Barsky
(Talk
given at a Faculty Seminar, Tuesday, March 23, 2004
In 1919, the
nature of “light” and our ability to “behold” its properties, were assessed
with differently-situated eyes, thanks to an English eclipse expedition to the
tiny island of Principe, which verified general relativity’s most spectacular
prediction, the deviation of starlight in the vicinity of a massive body. In
the first truly international media blitz, a war-weary world had been made
aware of the implications of this expedition, and there was much discussion
even before the photographic plates were assessed, and when it was confirmed, Albert
Einstein was deified; he had uncovered basic laws of the universe and thereby
provided some sense of hope that the intellect could conquer, among other
things, the barbarism and horror of the First World War. Such an accomplishment
was not lost upon the American Jewish population, particularly those in New
York, who would eventually have a special rapport with this young Jewish
Zionist scientist, in part through the light of the Zionist organization named
“Avukah”, or “torch”, a little-known but deeply significant student group which
attempted to spread the idea of a socialist Zionism and the establishment of a
settlement in Palestine which would be a safe haven for the oppressed peoples
of the world – including, of course, Jews.
Einstein’s accomplishment
captured the imagination, freed people from the constraints of ordinary life,
and fueled the ambitions of those who would eventually try to explain this
event or, more to the point, find a way of achieving similar successes in their
own fields. Einstein himself became a new archetype, a kind of “celestial
physician”, who embodied the promise of science, and the contradictions
implicit in the fact that he was German-born German scientist whose work was
assessed by a British research group when the two countries still hadn’t signed
the treaty ending the war between them.[1]
The idea of using the occasion of the eclipse to verify relativity came from
Sir Frank Dyson in 1917, during a war which was bloody, expensive, and which
made ideas of travel to distant lands rather remote. With the confirmation of
Einstein’s accurate prediction came a flood of publicity: “The day after the
announcement, 7 November 1919, The Times, under a headline on page 12
which read ‘Revolution in Science – New Theory of the Universe – Newtonian
Ideas Overthrown,’ published a detailed account of the proceedings at
Burlington House. Lower down the page there was another article, given the
succinct title ‘Space Warped,’ which briefly described the theory” (ibid 144).
The following day, it added that this new theory had served “to overthrow the
certainty of ages, and to require a new philosophy, a philosophy that will
sweep away nearly all that has hitherto been accepted as the axiomatic basis of
physical thought” (Holton107). Henceforth, considerable efforts were then made
in journals such as The Dial, Current Opinion, Harper’s, Contemporary Review,
The Living Age, and The New Republic to make his theories
comprehensible to a broader public.
Young Einstein coupled his
scientific work with strong political views from the very beginning of his
career; Fritz Stern recalls a 1914 letter from Einstein who was already
refusing an invitation from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg,
on grounds unrelated to his work in physics: “I find it repugnant to travel
without necessity to a country in which my tribesmen are so brutally
persecuted.”[2] And, in
1919, he wrote to a colleague that “the Zionist cause is very close to my
heart…. I am very confident of the happy development of the Jewish colony and
am glad that there should be a tiny speck on this earth in which the members of
our tribe should not be aliens…. One can be internationally minded, without
renouncing interest in one’s tribal comrades.”[3] In
1921 Einstein fulfilled his promise to his “tribe” by traveling to New York
with Professor Chaim Weizmann,
who later became the first president of the State of Israel, to raise funds for
the Jewish National Fund and for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In a
chapter of Einstein’s German World devoted to the relations between
Einstein and the chemist Fritz Haber,[4]
Stern recalls that in 1921, “Haber pleaded with
Einstein not to go to the United States just then, not to sail on an Allied
ship or to associate himself with former enemies.” Haber’s
words didn’t sway Einstein, even when he suggested that Einstein’s actions had
the significance of “the acts of princes” in earlier times, making his departure
"treasonous.” Einstein reiterated his intention to travel to the US,
especially in light of the “countless examples how perfidiously and unlovingly one treats superb young Jews here [in Germany]
and seeks to cut off their chances for education.” On the 7th of
April of the same year, Franz Boas wrote to Einstein to recruit his support for
the Emergency Society for German and Austrian Science and Art on similar
grounds: “You are familiar with the work that is being carried on by the
Emergency Society in Aid of German and Austrian Science and Art. We want to be
sure that the funds that we provide are used in such a manner that they will
help in the best way possible, not only to prevent the threatened breakdown of
intellectual work but that they will also help toward a reconciliation of the
scientists who are still torn by political and racial antagonism. As you are
aware, the funds which we provide are utilized for the maintenance of journals
the existence of which is in danger, for the support of research that cannot be
carried on for lack of funds and for the support of young scientists, who
without such help may have to give up their scientific career.”[5]
Boas considered that there was “urgent” need for “help” in this matter, and
Einstein responded enthusiastically, on April 11, 1921: “It is with great
pleasure for me to express to you my deep appreciation of the work of Relief to
which you and your Society devote so much time and effort. This work I consider
to be of the greatest importance in the struggle for the existence of the
scientific research of the scientists themselves. In this time of acute crisis
the relief that you can provide is most urgently needed if the advancement of
science is to be maintained; also in these amongst the highly civilized
countries which are now poverty stricken as a result of the war.” Indeed, “Einstein
lent his name to many such causes. He
took his fame as a warrant to make public utterances on a number of subjects;
he had come to realize during the war as well as in his scientific work that
the outsider, the Einspanner, may intuit
truths that are at odds with conventional wisdom. Among academics, he had been
almost alone in his absolute if quiet opposition to the war – and he had been
right. After the war, and in a sense justified by its end, he espoused
pacifism, internationalism, Zionism, and a mild brand of socialism. These were
causes that his scorn for German imperialism had taught him: they were the
reverse of chauvinism and German nationalism. Postwar progressives in many
countries held similar views (with the exception of Zionism), and they were
anathema to most German academics.”[6]
Just prior to his departure in
1921 for the United States, Einstein wrote a prophetic letter, dated March 8th,
to Maurice Solovine: “I am not at all eager to go to
America but am doing it only in the interest of Zionists, who must beg for
dollars to build educational institutions in Jerusalem and for whom I act as
high priest and decoy... But I do what I
can to help those in my tribe who are treated so badly everywhere.”[7]
Einstein’s trip to the US was very successful, and he was courted for positions
in different universities, including a “extravagantly generous” offer from
Columbia. He was still committed to Europe, however, but upon his return to
Berlin, he gave a talk, published along with four others given between 1921 and
1933 as Mein Weltbild,[8]
which already set out a major theme of an approach to Jews and to Zionism which
would make place his ability to stay in Germany into question. In a prescient
statement, Einstein warned: “We need to pay great attention to our relations
with the Arabs. By cultivating these carefully we shall be able in future to
prevent things from becoming so dangerously strained that people can take
advantage of them to provoke acts of hostility. This goal is perfectly within
our reach, because our work of construction has been, and must continue to be,
carried out in such a manner as to serve the real interests of the Arab
population also. In this way we shall be able to avoid getting ourselves quite
so often into the position, disagreeable for Jews and Arabs alike, of having to
call in the mandatory power as arbitrator. We shall thereby be following not
merely the dictates of Providence but also our traditions, which alone give the
Jewish community meaning and stability. For our community is not, and must
never become, a political one; this is the only permanent source whence it can
draw new strength and the only ground on which its existence can be justified.”[9]
Einstein’s guru
status didn’t pass unnoticed by those who hoped to pursue lives in science, and
his Zionism had a profound impact upon the Jewish community in America, who
looked to him for inspiration and guidance on issues beyond science. One
association of American Jews, called “Avukah”, bears special consideration in
this regard, on account of the special ties it had to Einstein, through shared
political views, and on account of the important links made between him and the
organization through the person of Zellig Harris, who was not only Noam
Chomsky’s teacher, but the eventual husband of Albert Einstein’s principal
assistant, Bruria Kaufman. Zellig Harris had joined Avukah as an undergraduate,
and even though it had significant impact upon a sector of Jewish American
life, it has been virtually forgotten from history, even Zionist history.
Assessing the work of Avukah brings us to four major political issues which
would dominate Zellig Harris’s political work throughout his lifetime:
Arab-Jewish relations, the kibbutz movement in Palestine, Jewish immigration
(to Palestine and the US), and to the problems of American Jewry.
The story of
Avukah began inauspiciously at Harvard University, where a couple of students
decided that a new Jewish student organization was needed on campus to address
some crucial concerns. In the Avukah
Annual 1925-1930, Joseph S. Shubow describes the moment when he and Max
Rhoade “lighted the torch” of Avukah. Shubow was a student at Harvard,
concerned by “social smugness and complacency, the cowardly Jewish
self-effacement and assimilatory tendencies on the part of so many of our
fellow students” (37). To help initiate change, he and others involved in the
Harvard Zionist Society invited speakers to Zionist meetings, even drawing an
editorial in the venerable Harvard Crimson, the college daily, which
helped stimulate interest and even made attending Zionist meetings on campus
“fashionable.” Along the way, a number of students engaged in serious scholarly
study of the Hebrew language, Jewish history and Zionist affairs, to the point
where their “entire college life was illumined by these thoughts and
activities” (38).
Inspired by a
visit to the campus by Max Rhoade, Shubow began to think of a “sound, powerful
student Zionist organization” to revive the nearly-defunct Intercollegiate
Zionist Organization. To begin, he sent out invitations “to students among the
more active Jewish college groups to attend a national conference at Washington
on June 27, 1925, immediately preceding the National Zionist Convention” (39).
The call was answered, and “sixty or more students and graduates from about
twenty-two universities attended our gathering at the mayflower Hotel and there
we exchanged our views and experiences; and, guided and inspired by our guests
from Palestine, we founded our present organization.” “We felt like alchemists,
who after considerable mystical rather than scientific experimentation had
discovered the magic flame, Avukah, that would transmute the spiritual apathy
and indifference of American Jewish college youth. We were no doubt too
optimistic but as we look back, though we are far from satisfied, even the most
critical must admit that we kindled a spark which may yet flare into that
luminous torch we originally saw in a vision.” (39) That this flame is described as “magical”
links up with a range of themes, because Avukah would come to be linked with
the study of the basis of language and search for a magical key to decipher it,
and also because Avukah promulgated the teaching of Hebrew as a kind of magical
common bond linking Jewish students to the dream of establishing a homeland in
Palestine. Avukah’s “flame,” this attempt at (re)kindling magic through
Zionism, spread quickly through Harvard, and then through universities in New
York, New Haven, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and
Wisconsin.
Zellig Harris’s involvement with the organization began in his early
days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. On March 29th,
1928 a little journal called Rostrum
published its first issue, under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania
chapter of Avukah. On page 2, signed by Z.S.H. [Zellig S. Harris], appears an
article called “The Torch Unlit”, describing the “Palestine youth Commission”,
sent to America to deal with the problem of Jewish youth here…. Their mission
was to influence organized and unorganized Jewish youth in the direction of
Zionism.” This discussion led to the calling of conferences in New York, and
meetings were organized, bringing together heads of organizations, right up to
the 28th Zionist Convention in Washington, when Avukah was formally founded on
the basis of the program already in existence in the Palestine youth
Commission. Zellig Harris writes: “Like most similar organizations, it had a
two-fold purpose: to widen the ranks of the Zionists among the students, and at
the same time to foster a deeper understanding of the movement among those who
had already accepted the principle. From its ranks the future leaders should
evolve – men with practical experience and close to the Zionist ideal. It would
be comprehensively Jewish – thus filling a certain need in every national
Jewish student; and above all it would be fair and open-eyed, nationalistic
without chauvinism.”
The direction this Avukah torch
was aimed at was towards a new homeland for a Jewish population in Central and
Western Europe, which was considered by many to be doomed to suffering, or even
total annihilation, at the hands of the increasingly vocal anti-Semites. But Avukah’s
policies, outlined variously, included the idea that this “homeland” should
simply be a place where oppressed peoples, including Jews, could find freedom,
a kind of region which would expand to encompass the interests and needs of
suffering populations around the world. Einstein was sympathetic to Avukah’s
approach, and supportive of its method. A link between them was clearly
established when Einstein spoke to Avukah, rather than to a whole host of media
outlets who had solicited him to give public comments, upon his arrival in the
US in 1929. Invited by Zellig Harris and other members of the Avukah
administration, Einstein spoke over radio relays from coast to coast in the US,
as well as to England and Germany, about the “difficulties which seem to face
us at present in Palestine,” notably limits placed by the British upon Jewish
immigration. “Undoubtedly certain statements and measures, taken and pronounced
by British officials have been just subject for criticism. We can not, however,
be satisfied with this, but we must learn the lesson of what has recently
happened. In the first place, we must pay great attention to our relations with
the Arab people. By cultivating these relations we shall be able to avoid a
development in the future of those dangerous tensions, which can be exploited
for the purpose of provoking hostile action against us. We can very well attain
this end, because our upbuilding of Palestine has been so conducted and must be
so conducted that it also serves the real interests of the Arab population…..”
(2).
Einstein
reiterated this view in the years leading up to the creation of the state of
Israel; in his 1938 talk to the National Labor Committee for Palestine, for
example, he said: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs
on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state.”
And in personal correspondence to Weizmann about force-backed nationalism, he
suggested that: “If we do not find the path to honest cooperation and honest
negotiations with the Arabs, then we have learned nothing from our 2000 years
of suffering, and we deserve the fate that will befall us. Above all, we should
be careful not to rely to heavily on the English. For if we don’t get to a real
cooperation with the leading Arabs, then the English will drop us, if not
officially, then de facto. And they will lament our debacle with
traditional, pious glances toward heaven with assurances of their innocence,
and without lifting a finger for us.”[10]
Einstein’s words on this matter are of great import because of the guru-like
status he held, particularly for Jews of the period, and because he knew well
the strong and the weak points of emigrating to Palestine.
What is clear
from the Einstein and the Harris archives is that Einstein’s work and the
allure of a science of language won over the young Zellig Harris, and his range
of personal relations with different scientific disciplines grew as he moved
through his graduate work and into his faculty position at the University of
Pennsylvania. The ability to move from particle physics to linguistics, and to
theories of aesthetics, reflected the fact that Einstein’s work offered whole
new ways of considering space and time. It’s not so much that the range of
tools available to linguistics were any better at this time, but rather, there
seemed to be new avenues which could be explored to solve the mysteries of
human language and some of these avenues seemed to relate to Einstein’s work.
This would have particular resonance for Harris, who on the one hand was
searching for “new methods” to assist in the developing American structuralist
linguistics, and on the other was inspired by Einstein’s version of Zionism,
with its emphasis upon Arab-Jewish relations and its internationalist
perspective.
Einstein came to
know Harris, mostly through the Avukah work but through the latter’s interest
in mathematics as well, partly manifested by his work with Bruriah
Kaufman. But Einstein had strong doubts about the implications of his work for
any field outside of his own, and thus challenged misappropriations of his work
into areas such as theology, philosophy, cultural anthropology and even art. We
see this in the frosty reception he gave to Wilhelm Reich theories of orgon accumulation, after a bout of enthusiasm at the very
outset, something which I would suggest led to the eventual demise of Reich.
And Gerald Holton recalls that an [un-named] art historian once sent a draft
essay entitled “Cubism and the Theory of Relativity” which argued for close
connections, notably relationships and simultaneity of several views.
Einstein’s reply was firm: “ The essence of the theory of relativity has been
incorrectly understood in [your paper], granted that this error is suggested by
the attempts at popularization of the theory. For the description of a given
state of facts one uses almost always only one system of coordinates. The
theory says only that the general laws are such that their form does not depend
on the choice of the system of coordinates. This logical demand, however, has
nothing to do with how the single, specific case is represented. A multiplicity
of systems of coordinates is not needed for its representation. It is
completely sufficient to describe the whole mathematically in relation to one
system of coordinates. This is quite different in the case of Picasso’s
painting, as I do not have to elaborate any further. Whether, in this case, the
representation is felt as artistic unity depends, of course, upon the artistic
antecedents of the viewer. This new artistic ‘language’ has nothing in common
with the Theory of Relativity. (Cited in Holton 109)
In the end, much
of what I have described here, both in terms of linguistic research and
political objectives, Zionist and otherwise, collapsed. With the end of World
War II came the promise that the international community would support the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, if for no other reason than to
offer some form of compensation for the Holocaust. This came as a great blow to
those who had struggled against such a proposal, and right up until May of
1947, the Executive Committee of the Hashomer Hatzair Workers’ Party in
Jerusalem, which had had formal ties with Avukah, was making The Case for a
Bi-National Palestine under the assumption that it was “the best manner
whereby Zionist aims might be realized on a bi-national basis and on the steps
necessary to secure cooperation between Jews and Arabs for the development of
Palestine and the establishment of a common State while maintaining unhindered
Jewish immigration” (5). Offering salient critiques of the status quo, of
partition (of the type proposed by the British in the Royal Commission), and of
the idea of establishing Swiss-style cantons, the book concludes that these
“alternatives… are nothing less than disastrous and would inevitably end in
hideous failure” (122). It is stunning to read such words today, but it is only
in this context that we can understand the writings of, say, Yoram Hazony who suggests in The
Jewish State[11] that
“For well over a century, Jewish intellectuals – and especially those
German-Jewish academics who constituted the mainstream of Jewish philosophy in
the last century – have had serious doubts concerning the legitimacy and
desirability of harnessing the interests of the Jewish people to the worldly
power of a political state. On the Holocaust, the most extreme demonstration of
the evil of Jewish powerlessness imaginable, succeeded in turning the
objections of the intellectuals to the Jewish state into an embarrassment, for
the most part driving their opposition underground. Yet Jewish intellectuals,
even in Israel, never became fully reconciled to the empowerment of the Jewish
people entailed in the creation of a Jewish state.” With Jewish nationalism and
concomitant militarism Einstein’s words resonate powerfully, and just as the
theories he so wondrously discovered through creative and scientific prowess
have stood the test of time and space, so too have his dire predictions;
Avukah’s light was extinguished amidst the fighting of World War II, the
socialist Zionist flame was dimmed, and getting dimmer.