Einstein bio reveals new facets to the 'locksmith' of the cosmos
Einstein: His Life and Universe
by Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2007, 675 pages, $32
Sidebar: 'Young Frankenstein'
For the scientifically challenged, undertaking the reading of a nearly 700-page book on the life of Albert Einstein may seem an impossibly formidable task. Let me assure readers: Don't be afraid. Walter Isaacson, the author of critically acclaimed biographies of Henry Kissinger and Benjamin Franklin and the former managing editor of Time magazine, has written a reader-friendly tome whose chapters are evenly divided between covering Einstein the scientist and chronicling the personal and political life of this iconic figure. Isaacson also uncovers a great deal about his subject's attitude toward and involvement with Judaism and Zionism and reveals how his response to the virulent anti-Semitism of his native Germany forged his identity as a Jew.
Like many Jews of his generation (and ours), Einstein as a child went through a religious phase and then rebelled against it. His parents were entirely irreligious. His father, in fact, referred to Jewish rituals as "ancient superstitions," and when his son was six, he sent him to a Catholic school where he was enrolled in the standard religious courses. The boy did so well in his studies that he helped his classmates with theirs. Nevertheless, young Einstein could not help being aware of his Jewish roots. Isaacson reveals that he was often taunted on his "racial" characteristics, and that "physical attacks and insults on the way home from school were frequent…sufficient to consolidate, even in a child, a lively sense of being an outsider." Anti-Semitism would continue to plague Einstein into adulthood — even after his formulation of the theory of relativity. Failing to attain an academic position due in part to his quirky personality and because he was a Jew, Einstein for some time worked in a Swiss patent office in order to earn a living to support his family.
Despite his parents' rejection of the faith, young Einstein developed a passion for Judaism, and was so fervent in his belief that he observed religious strictures in every detail. He kept the kosher dietary laws and observed the Sabbath. His commitment to Jewish ritual and observance, however, was short-lived. Through the reading of scientific books, he was soon weaned away from Judaism, having reached the conclusion that the Bible stories could not be wholly true. As the author informs us, "The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression."
As a result, Einstein would avoid religious practice for the rest of his life, especially "an aversion to the orthodox practice of the Jewish or any traditional religion, as well as to attendance at religious services." When his first wife, Marie, a Catholic, had their two children baptized, Einstein's response was, "They've turned Catholic. Well, it's all the same to me." His rejection of religious creeds also inculcated in him a resistance to all forms of dogma and authority, which was to affect both his politics and his science.
Nevertheless, around the time Einstein turned 50, he began to articulate more clearly his deepening appreciation of his Jewish heritage and, somewhat separately, his belief in God — albeit a rather impersonal, deistic concept of God, owing more to Spinoza than to Scripture. Isaacson argues that Einstein's turn to a Creator resulted from his empathy for his fellow European Jews who were subject to continued oppression. It seemed, states Isaacson, that his awareness of anti-Semitism, especially on the eve of Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, reawakened some of his lost religious sentiments.
Isaacson writes, "Whether embracing the beauty of his gravitational field equations or rejecting the uncertainty in quantum mechanics, he displayed a profound faith in the orderliness of the universe. This served as a basis for his scientific outlook — also his religious outlook."
Einstein wrote in 1929 that the highest satisfaction a scientific person can attain is the realization "that God Himself could not have arranged these connections any other way than that which exists, any more than it would have been His power to make four a prime number." Einstein's religious feelings of awe and humility informed his sense of social justice and drove him to eschew excess consumption and materialism and dedicate his life to efforts on behalf of the oppressed.
Einstein's identification with the Jewish people manifested itself in his support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Offered the presidency of Israel after the death of Chaim Weizmann, Einstein rejected the honor but told Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban that he saw the birth of the state as one of the few political acts in his lifetime that had a moral quality. He was, however, concerned that the Jewish state was having trouble learning to live with the Arabs and warned that "the attitude we adopt towards the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people."
Isaacson concludes this biography, which is sure to become the standard work on Einstein, with this summary of his subject's life, "He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe." How poetic, how true.
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