Albert Meets America: How Journalists Treated Genius during Einstein's 1921 Travels

Preface

Preface ) Sing of Einstein’s Yiddishe peachtrees, sing of Sleep among the cherryblossoms. Sing of wise newspapers That quote the great mathematician: A little touch of Einstein in the night— —William Carlos Williams, “St. Francis Einstein of the Daffodils” (First Version), 1921 When Einstein joined Chaim Weizmann’s tour of the United States in 1921 to gain support among American Jewry for the Zionist cause, his role was to raise funds for the establishment of Hebrew University. Although news coverage of the trip frequently focused on Weizmann’s fierce disputes with the leaders of American Zionism, I concentrate on Einstein for three reasons . First, in spite of Weizmann’s leading role in the organization and aims of the trip, the central figure in the American and English-language Zionist press reports was Einstein,who just two years previously had gained worldwide celebrity because of a successful test of his general theory of relativity. As one journalist put it, “There is reason to believe that Prof. Einstein was induced to accompany the mission in the hope that his presence would act as a ‘tail to the kite.’ And now, lo and behold, contrary to all calculations (except, perhaps, those based on the theory of relativity), the tail has become the whole kite.” Second, Einstein did not participate in the fierce debate between the Weizmann-led World Zionist Organization and the leaders of the Zionist Organization of America (the “Brandeis-group”), although Einstein followed the debate and supported the views of Weizmann. The two salient points of the debate were (1) whether to build up the Jewish national home in Palestine with private (Brandeis) or public funds (Weizmann’s Keren Hayesod) and (2) whether the Zionist organization should have a federal system with independent member organizations (Brandeis) or the Zionist Congress should be a parliament exerting central control (Weizmann ). (You see the parallel with the federalist and unionist viewpoints in American history!) Weizmann won the debate in Cleveland with the help of the majority of American Jews, the “Easterners” (i.e., those with roots in Eastern Europe), against the official leaders of American Jewry, who were mostly “Westerners” (i.e., of ancestry from Germany). A third reason for concentrating on Einstein is somewhat subjective. Working for the Einstein Papers Project, I have learned that one should be careful with newspaper accounts. As historical scholars, we collect each scrap of newspaper with Einstein’s name in it, but when forming scholarly conclusions, we turn to them only as a last resort. As a result, we now have a sizable collection of clippings, with interesting interviews, events, and commentaries. We keep them in big, black steel cabinets that protect them from floods, fires, earthquakes, and the eyes of readers, I fear. As a conservation -minded person, I cannot tolerate this waste of intellectual treasure and interesting reading. A few words about the news reports presented herein. I had to use microfilm copies of the originals, often on the edge of legibility; hence transcription was the only feasible option for their presentation. Names are another problem. The reporters recorded the names by following their ears. Weitzmann, Weisemann, or Weizmann? These variants cause no trouble because their contexts show they all stand for the name of a well-known person, Chaim Weizmann. But what about Bernstein/Burstein , Hurwitz/Hurevitz, Levin/Lewine, Timen/Teaman? I have left the spelling variants untouched and apologize if any find their ancestors’ names misspelled. You might well wonder whether Einstein really was the kind of Zionist that the journalists portrayed. For a recent discussion of this fundamental issue, please see the seventh volume of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein . xvi ) Preface I enjoyed gathering these materials. I hope you will enjoy reading them, even if not everything that was reported on Einstein is true. Indeed, you may find pleasure in unraveling the roots of the errors—as did I. I express my sincere thanks to Robert Schulmann and Diana KormosBuchwald , for encouraging the whole venture; to Jane Dietrich, Rudy Hirschmann, and Rosy Meiron for translating my English into theirs; to Ze’ev Rosenkranz, for help in finding my way in Jewish matters; and to Daniel Kennefick, for his remarks on Irish matters. I am grateful to Dr. Roni Grosz, curator of the Albert Einstein Archives, for permission to publish the manuscript “Einstein on the Art of Interviewing .” In collecting the sources and illustrations, I received indispensable help from...