Einstein's Leap of Faith

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To some degree, Einstein's involvement in politics grew out of his close relationship with Kurt Blumenfeld, whom Einstein credited with "having helped me become aware of my Jewish soul." The nascent Zionist movement to create a homeland for the Jewish people was headquartered in Germany, and Blumenfeld was one of its leaders. Einstein often added his name to his friend's statements on Zionist causes and soon began campaigning for an independent state of Israel-much to the chagrin of many of his Jewish colleagues, who worried that his outspokenness would backfire on the community. But Einstein-now married to his second wife, Elsa, who was Jewish-refused to be quieted. Eminently quotable and always blunt, Einstein soon became a poster child for Zionism.

While these years in Germany mark the swell of a general activism that would carry Einstein through the rest of his life, making the initial decision to campaign for Israel was not necessarily an easy one. He had long been a deeply committed pacifist, a philosophy that, for him, was strongly coupled with the rejection of any form of nationalism. He attributed World War I directly to the nationalistic fervor of the German government and blamed the beginning of World War II on the same phenomenon. Uncomfortable with the hypocrisy of condemning nationalism for the Germans yet supporting it for the Jews, he saw value in creating a safe haven for the Jewish people, but worried the cost of Israel's security would be a militarism that stifled the rights of non-Jews. During a 1938 speech in New York, titled "Our Debt to Zionism," Einstein stated that, "Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest."

"This is very awkward, very awkward," Einstein muttered to himself as he paced the floor of his Princeton, New Jersey, home. It was 1952, and Einstein had been offered the presidency of Israel following the death of Chaim Weizmann.

Meanwhile, 5,700 miles away, many Israeli leaders were equally distraught. "What will we do if he accepts?" they whispered. For better or for worse, they were never forced to find out. Einstein turned down the offer, telling the Israelis that he didn't have the skills for politics, but explaining to his stepdaughter Margot, "If I were to be president, sometimes I would have to say to the Israeli people things they would not like to hear."

Indeed, he regularly did tell Israelis things they didn't want to hear, specifically, criticisms of Israel's hostilities toward its neighbors. When Einstein decided to leave Germany in 1932, many in what is now Israel were angry that he chose to move to the United States rather than take a position at Jerusalem's Hebrew University; Einstein cited the Israeli treatment of Arabs as one of the reasons for his decision. Later, in the fall of 1948, Einstein went so far as to include his signature on an open letter, printed in

, that compared the tactics used by Menachem Begin's political party to those of the Nazis. This was one of the harshest comparisons Einstein could have made, and yet he still claimed to love Israel deeply.

In his relationship to Zionism, we see an Einstein who, depending on your point of view, either doggedly held true to his pacifist principles or became increasingly cranky and stubborn as he got older. Regardless of whether he was still exhibiting his legendary skepticism or had moved into downright contrarianism, drawing hard and fast conclusions about a dismissal of Judaism or religion per se was simply not possible.

By the time he had reached his seventies, a growing mulishness had come to pervade many aspects of his life, including his relationship to quantum mechanics. Just as he had helped found Zionism, he had helped found quantum mechanics; by declaring that light was made up of quanta, Einstein was one of the first, along with Max Planck, to show that energy in the universe came in discrete particles, not in continuous streams-an insight that led to a statistical analysis of nature that seems completely accurate to this day. Quantum mechanics is a "statistical" analysis because it is limited to offering predictions and probabilities of where a given particle might be or what its attributes are, without being able to determine such things exactly. Einstein saw quantum mechanics as a useful tool, but kept searching for a theory that could predict exactly where a particle might be at any given moment. Most of his contemporaries, however, led by physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, believed quantum mechanics was an accurate depiction of reality. It was impossible, they said, to determine a particle's exact position or exact speed or exact orientation, not because the math was limited, but because the particle simply didn't have exact characteristics. The position of any given particle, for example, was spread out in space. Its velocity, too, was inexact.

Einstein spent the last decades of his life determined to come up with a more comprehensive theory, a unified field theory that would incorporate both his theories of relativity and quantum mechanics-and, more importantly, destroy the idea that the universe ran solely on probabilities. "God," Einstein said more than once, "does not play dice with the universe." (To which Bohr finally responded: "Stop telling God what to do!") And much as Israeli leaders felt the sting of Einstein's criticism, many of Einstein's physics contemporaries felt personally rejected by his refusal to accept their interpretation of quantum mechanics. Young scientists, like Heisenberg, who had initially entered the field because they idolized Einstein, were reprimanded when they tried to discuss their science with him. Some physicists, like Bohr, kept waiting for Einstein to see the error of his ways, and were, of course, disappointed. Others, like Wolfgang Pauli-who once stuck out his tongue when Einstein cornered him in the halls of Princeton University to announce his latest attempt at a unified theory-regularly mocked him. But today, there are scientists who do believe a grand "theory of everything" is possible, once again demonstrating that Einstein's ability to dig his heels in the mud contributed to a foresight in science that served him well.

In his relationships with light, quantum mechanics, Zionism, and religion, Einstein's rebelliousness and willfulness are obvious. And, if we are to believe his autobiography, we can trace those crucial personality traits back to that defining moment of his youth, when he broke with Jewish observance and internalized a "mistrust of every kind of authority."

That is, however, a pretty big if; Einstein scholars claim that his written recollections sometimes seem modified to suit his later philosophies. But it's hard to resist the fairy tale. Scholars have dissected his papers, his letters, and even his brain in an effort to determine just what gave Einstein his scientific brilliance. While their theories are certainly varied, the constant skepticism pervading Einstein's life has to be considered a prime mover. He wasn't always pleasant, he wasn't even always right, but Einstein's steadfast commitment to what he felt to be true, coupled with the ability to constantly question anything else, determined his relationships with the most important aspects of his life: science and the Jewish people. It may even have been what turned a smart man into a genius.

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