Comments (0)Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East
October 9, 2009Bob Jacobson
Special to the Jewish Times
Fred Jerome
St. Martin’s Press 2009, 334 pages (hardcover), $25.95
Fred Jerome has spent several years debunking the common perception of Albert Einstein as an absent-minded scientific genius. As he has demonstrated in two previous books, Einstein was extremely active in a range of issues. His latest book, “Einstein on Israel and Zionism,” is an effort to shatter the myth of Einstein as a proponent of the State of Israel.
In 1952, Chaim Weizmann offered Einstein the presidency of Israel. Before he did so, Weizmann had asked David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.“Tell me what to do if he says yes,” Weizmann said. “If he accepts, we are in for trouble,” Ben-Gurion said.
As it turned out, Einstein declined, saying, “I would have to say to the Israeli people things they would not like to hear.”
As demonstrated in this collection of letters, articles and speeches from 1919 through 1955, Einstein was a longtime proponent of Zionism, but not of the political stripe. He supported Palestine as a national home for the Jews, a cultural and moral center, devoting considerable energy to projects such as Hebrew University. But he did not support a Jewish state, viewing political nationalism as dangerous.
Einstein saw cultural Zionism as the greatest hope for raising the self-esteem and communal spirit of Diaspora Jews, particularly those suffering in Germany and Eastern Europe. He argued for greater cooperation between Jews and Arabs. As late as 1947, Einstein proposed provisional U.N. governance of Palestine with gradual emergence of a bi-national (Jewish/Arab) government. When interviewed by an Egyptian journalist in 1952, he used the opportunity to convey questions to then-new Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser about the new leader’s policies toward Israel.
This book shows clearly that over the course of five decades, Einstein was an active player in the debate over the character of Zionism, one marked by great joy and struggle.