From: goldberg@techunix.technion.ac.il (Jacques Goldberg)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Einstein and Judaism
Date: 10 Nov 92 17:20:25 GMT
Organization: Technion, Israel Institute of Technology

emc@doe.carleton.ca (Eli Chiprout) writes:

>In <1dm37rINNe9j@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> bc744@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark Ira Kaufman) writes:

>>   Einstein played an important role in my decision to know about
>>my Jewish heritage.  Although my mother was from a semi-observant
>>background, my father was a typical German reform Jew.  He had no
>>patience for religious ritual, and so I grew up without receiving
>>even an elementary Jewish education.
>...
>>This one short essay changed my life.  If a man like Einstein can
>>write what he did about Jewish values, I knew in a flash that the
>>time had come for me to find out just what I come from.  Although
>>he seemed to have a distorted and hostile view of what he thought
>>was the Jewish G-d, he nevertheless saw what Jewish ideals really
>>are.  I decided to learn about what Einstein seemed to see in the
>>values of Judaism.  And though I my feelings about G-d are oceans
>>apart from those of Einstein, my life was changed forever because
>>of this secular Jew with the really bad haircut!

>Fair enough.  But let me ask you, what is it that Einstein lacked,
>that you have.  I mean this question in a very deep sense, NOT in
>the flippant in the sense of "who are you as compared to Einstein?".
>Every human being has strengths and inadequacies, so we cannot
>expect Einstein to be exempt, and as another poster mentioned his
>area of expertise was physics not Judaism.

>What I am asking is: you have found a deep meaning in Judaism but
>Einstein did not.  Was he not looking hard enough?  Was it because
>he was raised as a liberal Jew (that can't be it because you were
>too)?  Did he see the truth in Judaism but reject it because of
>a bias towards something?  Or worse, did God create him without
>the ability to see Judaism for what it is?  If that is that case
>why.

>Understand my question.  I am not asking irreverantly because I
>respect your profound sense of God and Judaism.  What I am asking
>is, why did Einstein not find this in Judaism?  He died without
>ever having a sense of Judaism that you have. Will he get another
>chance?  Was the first one inadequate?  Why does God allow human
>beings (Jews) to wander through life without ever discovering
>what God would like them to know in the religious realm?
  
   It seems to me, very simply, that Einstein's knowledge of Judaism,
like that of so many Europeans, was so limited, and, much worse, so 
deeply impregnated of Christianism, that he certainly could not reconcile
Science with what he might have heard of religion and God. The bottom line
seems to me, how can one choose without KNOWING first? Unless one actively
studies, does one know anything else than the environmental "culture"?
Jewish tradition says that every Jew carries with himself one little
spark of Abraham's Judaism. Blowing a little bit of oxygen on it makes
the whole of the difference. Asking why Einstein did not blow more on his
is just like asking why did Poincar\'e fail to discover special relativity
before Einstein, he had everything handy, except the little spark or the
intuition to blow.
   Contrarily to what so many believe, it is not enough to read one general
book to go down to the bottom line of what Judaism is, and it takes the
hell of a lot of time to rub off the "current culture" varnish.
>Eli Chiprout                  " 'Al ta'am vereach, ein lehitvakeah!"
   Yaaqov Goldberg
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish