einstein

approach toward Zionism. 53 The enthusiastic crowds that greeted Einstein and Weizmann on their trip were mainly made up of the eastern
European Jews, while Brandeis and his ilk remained more aloof.
Most of Einstein’s time during the two days he spent in Boston was devoted to appearances, rallies, and dinners (including a kosher banquet for
five hundred) with Weizmann to drum up contributions for their Zionist cause. The Boston Herald reported on the reaction at one fund-raising event
at a synagogue in Roxbury:
The response was electrifying. Young girl ushers worked their way with difficulty through the crowded aisles, carrying long boxes. Bills of
various denominations were rained into these receptacles. A prominent Jewess cried out ecstatically that she had eight sons who had been in
the army and wanted to make some donation in proportion to their sacrifices. She held up her watch, a valuable imported timepiece, and
slipped the rings from her hands. Others followed her example, and soon baskets and boxes filled with diamonds and other precious
ornaments. 54
While in Boston, Einstein was subjected to a pop quiz known as the Edison test. The inventor Thomas Edison was a practical man, getting
crankier with age (he was then 74), who disparaged American colleges as too theoretical and felt the same about Einstein. He had devised a test
he gave job applicants that, depending on the position being sought, included about 150 factual questions. How is leather tanned? What country
consumes the most tea? What was Gutenberg’s type made of?*
The Times called it “the ever-present Edison questionnaire controversy,” and of course Einstein ran into it. A reporter asked him a question from
the test. “What is the speed of sound?” If anyone understood the propagation of sound waves, it was Einstein. But he admitted that he did not “carry
such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” Then he made a larger point designed to disparage Edison’s view of education.
“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think,” he said. 55
One remarkable feature of most stops on Einstein’s grand tour was a noisy parade, which was rather unusual for a theoretical physicist. In
Hartford, Connecticut, for example, the procession included more than a hundred automobiles headed by a band, a coterie of war veterans, and
standard-bearers with the American and Zionist flags. More than fifteen thousand spectators lined the route. “North Main Street was jammed by
crowds that struggled to get close to shake hands,” the newspaper reported. “The crowds cheered wildly as Dr. Weizmann and Prof. Einstein stood
up in the car to receive flowers.” 56
It was an astonishing scene, but it was exceeded in Cleveland. Several thousands thronged Union train depot to meet the visiting delegation, and
the parade included two hundred honking and flag-draped cars. Einstein and Weizmann rode in an open car, preceded by a National Guard
marching band and a cadre of Jewish war veterans in uniform. Admirers along the way grabbed on to Einstein’s car and jumped on the running
board, while police tried to pull them away. 57
While in Cleveland, Einstein spoke at the Case School of Applied Science (now Case Western Reserve), where the famous Michelson-Morley
experiments had been conducted. There he met privately, for more than an hour, with Professor Dayton Miller, whose new version of that
experiment had provoked Einstein’s skeptical response at the Princeton cocktail party. Einstein drew sketches of Miller’s ether-drift models and
urged him to continue refining his experiments. Miller remained dubious about relativity and partial to the ether, but other experiments eventually
affirmed Einstein’s faith that the Lord was indeed more subtle than malicious. 58
The excitement, public outpouring, and dizzying superstar status conferred upon Einstein were unprecedented. But in financial terms, the tour
was only a modest success for the Zionist movement. The poorer Jews and recent immigrants had poured out to see him and donated with
enthusiasm. But few of the eminent and old-line Jews with great personal fortunes became part of the frenzy. They were, on the whole, more
assimilated and less ardently Zionist. Weizmann had hoped to raise at least $4 million. By the end of the year, only $750,000 had actually been
collected. 59
Even after his trip to America, Einstein did not become a full-fledged member of the Zionist movement. He supported the general idea of Jewish
settlements in Palestine, and especially Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but he never had a desire to relocate there himself nor to press for the
creation of a Jewish nation-state. Instead, his connection was more visceral. He came to feel even more associated with the Jewish people, and he
resented even more those who would forsake their roots in order to assimilate.
In this regard, he was part of a momentous trend that was reshaping Jewish identity, by choice and by imposition, in Europe. “Until a generation
ago, Jews in Germany did not consider themselves as members of the Jewish people,” he told a reporter on the day he was leaving America.
“They merely considered themselves as members of a religious community.” But anti-Semitism changed that, and there was a silver lining to that
cloud, he thought. “The undignified mania of trying to adapt and conform and assimilate, which happens among many of my social standing, has
always been very repulsive to me,” he said. 60
The Bad German
Einstein’s trip to America indelibly cast him as he wanted to be: a citizen of the world, an internationalist, not a German. That image was
reinforced by his trips to Germany’s other two Great War enemies. On a visit to England, he spoke at the Royal Society and laid flowers on the
grave of Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey. In France, he charmed the public by lecturing in French and taking a mournful tour of the graves on
the famous battlefields.
It was also a time of reconciliation with his family. That summer of 1921, he vacationed on the Baltic with his two boys, instilled in young Eduard a
love of math, and then took Hans Albert to Florence. They had such a pleasant time that it helped further restore his relations with Mari . “I’m grateful
that you’ve raised them to have a friendly regard for me,” he wrote her. “In fact you’ve done an exemplary job all around.” Most astonishingly, on his
way home from Italy he visited Zurich and not only called on Mari but even considered staying in “the little upstairs room,” as he called it, at her
house there. They all got together with the Hurwitz family and had a musical evening as in the old days. 61
But the mood was soon sullied by the continued collapse of the German mark, which made it harder for Einstein to support a family whose
consumption was in Swiss currency. Before the war the mark had been worth 24 cents, but it had fallen to 2 cents by the beginning of 1920. At that
time a mark could buy a loaf of bread. But then the bottom fell out of the currency. By the beginning of 1923, the price of a loaf went to 700 marks
and by the end of that year cost 1 billion marks. Yes, 1 billion. In November 1923, a new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced, backed by the
government property; 1 trillion old marks equaled 1 new Rentenmark.
The German people increasingly cast around for scapegoats. They blamed internationalists and pacifists who had forced a surrender in the war.
They blamed the French and English for imposing what was in fact an onerous peace. And, no surprise, they blamed the Jews. So Germany in the