by stephen mark dobbs
correspondent
One of the blockbuster books of this literary season is likely to be a biography about the most famous scientist — and, we say with great pride, a Jew — of the 20th century.
Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine and author of the acclaimed “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life,” has produced the first full treatment of Albert Einstein’s life and universe since all of his papers were recently made public on the 50th anniversary of his death in 1955.
Little in Einstein’s boyhood suggested he would become one of the great scientists of all time. His upbringing as a Jew was also unremarkable.
Like many families, his parents (descended from tradesmen on both sides) were highly assimilated into German culture. There was no room for Jewish religion or ritual, which Einstein’s father called “ancient superstitions.”
Even though there were no Jewish schools in Einstein’s neighborhood, and he was the only Jewish student in a large Catholic school, the young Albert did have a Jewish tutor who imparted lasting life lessons regarding the reconciliation of religion and science. Isaacson skillfully analyzes the profound influence of this teacher on the young Einstein, who was receptive to philosophy and about to become the first “cosmologist.” Isaacson tells us how Einstein’s “faith in determinism and causality reflected that of his favorite religious philosopher, Baruch Spinoza,” a 17th-century Jew from Amsterdam.
Like Spinoza, “Einstein did not believe in a personal God who interacted with man … Einstein embraced Spinoza’s concept of an amorphous God reflected in the awe-inspiring beauty, rationality, and unity of nature’s laws.”
In fact, Einstein was unable to accept the uncertainties of quantum mechanics, which explained the universe in terms of probabilities and chance. He insisted that “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.”
Politically, Einstein was disturbed by the nationalism and tribalism he saw in Europe in the early 20th century — so much so that at 17 he renounced his German citizenship.
In the 1920s and 1930s Einstein witnessed rampant anti-Semitism, which he had first experienced in elementary school. When he sought a high school physics post in 1908, he was one of 21 applicants but did not make the finals. This was three years after the publication of his epochal paper on the Special Theory of Relativity.
Einstein eventually was hired as a professor at the University of Bern, but only after the faculty was reassured that he did not exhibit any “unpleasant peculiarities.” In 1921 Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics.
The rise of the fascists in Europe produced a counter-reaction in Einstein, who reconnected with his Jewish roots and became a major public figure speaking out for, among other causes, a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He once shared Chanukah with 15,000 landsmen in Madison Square Garden for a Zionist fundraiser.
Einstein visited Palestine only once, in the early 1930s, but he played a role in establishing the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And there’s a local note to this story, too: Einstein did not get along with Oakland-born Judah L. Magnes, the university’s first president, which may account for Einstein’s rejection of a faculty position.
Einstein was also becoming more spiritual, arguing with other scientists about the existence of God. Isaacson has probed more deeply than other biographers into this complex side of Einstein, who never joined a synagogue or observed Jewish holidays.
Reflecting the reverence and regard in which Einstein was held throughout the world, he was invited by David Ben-Gurion to become Israel’s second president after Chaim Weizmann’s passing in 1952. But Einstein had not left the United States since his arrival at Princeton in 1933, and he had no talent for organizational leadership. After all, he can’t be good at everything.
Isaacson’s splendid biography portrays Einstein’s eventful life in terms of how his powerful mind reshaped modern physics and drawing on his Jewish roots pondered deep questions of spirituality.
“Einstein: His Life and Universe” by Walter Isaacson
(675 pages, Simon & Schuster, $32)
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California