“We have set it up like the Dead Sea Scrolls, to protect them but also to give the feeling of entering a kind of holy of holies, which is how we view it,” said Hanoch Guttfreund, a physics professor, former president of the Hebrew University and curator of the exhibition. “ And you can actually see Einstein work as you look at the pages.” 

Image A detail of one of the pages.  Einstein’s wife Elsa donated the manuscript to the Hebrew University on the occasion of its opening in 1925.  Credit... David Silverman/Getty Images

Einstein’s wife Elsa donated the manuscript to the Hebrew University on the occasion of its opening in 1925 and in a letter he thanked her for doing so.  A founder of the university and a member of its board, he donated all his papers to it upon his death. 

And there, outside the room where the theory of general relativity is on display, are a few more of his papers, including a postcard he sent to his mother in 1919 after a British astronomer confirmed during an eclipse one of Einstein’s key predictions.  It too offers a poignant mix of the celestial and personal. 

“Dear Mother!”  it begins, “Today some happy news.  Lorentz telegraphed me that the British expeditions have verified the deflection of light by the sun.”  So sorry, he adds, to hear that you are not feeling well. 

Einstein’s relationship to Israel was complex.  A self-described universalist, he became a Zionist when he witnessed anti-Semitism in Europe.  Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president, was a key influence on him.  Walter Isaacson, who wrote a 2007 biography of Einstein, said by telephone that Einstein wanted Jews to move here but did not back a separate Jewish nation-state until after it was declared in 1948.