Manhattan Rare Book Company

“This little work has made a deep impression on me. It expresses in a clear manner the meaning of Judaism, as it had always hovered indistinctly before me.”-Albert Einstein

AN EXTRAORDINARY SIGNED 1943 STATEMENT DEFINING EINSTEIN’S CONCEPTION OF JUDAISM THROUGH REASON AND SPINOZA, WHILE WARNING AGAINST “CLERICAL DOMINATION” IN A FUTURE JEWISH HOMELAND.

Of course, we all know Einstein as the great scientist. From the theoretical physicists among us, to those of use who barely survived high school physics, we are all captivated by the man and accept his place at the outer limits of human intellectual capacity. Yet, it’s when Einstein leaves the world of relativity and theoretical physics that we are often most drawn to his never-ending charisma. Especially exciting to so many of us are his deep convictions about human affairs, especially politics and religion.

Einstein famously was irreligiously religious. Born to a secular Jewish family, his upbringing lacked the complex ritual we associate with Orthodox Judaism. He briefly became curious about religiosity as a child, but his attempts at following religious ritual and doctrine ended a few years later as he confronted the conflict between scientific ideas and Biblical stories. Yet, one still sees a deep spirituality in Einstein, who saw a special camaraderie in the 17th-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Jewish radical, who had little patience for endless ritual. He did not see God as a being intervening in human affairs, but as a great rational force who formed the universe using rational methods. We become close to God, therefore, by trying to understand the natural world, not obeying endless rituals. One can easily see Spinoza’s approach as appealing to Einstein. In Spinoza’s view, the scientist is the holyman, his work bringing him closer to God's creations.

While in 1943 many of Einstein’s contemporaries could accept such a view, in seventeenth-century Amsterdam it was another matter: Spinoza was formally expelled from his Jewish community.

Shikmoni’s Pamphlet & Einstein’s Views
Humanistisches Judentum [Humanistic Judaism] was not a conventional commercial publication. It was issued privately in Haifa in 1948 “on behalf of a Circle of Friends,” with Einstein’s contribution prominently advertised on the title page as a “Geleitwort von Prof. Albert Einstein.”

Shikmoni’s short pamphlet aligns closely with Einstein’s view of religion. Its central proposition is quite radical: a genuinely renewed Jewish culture must recover what Shikmoni regards as Judaism’s original combination of humanism and a rational worldview. He traces that tradition through Moses and the Prophets, incorporates Jesus (“the Nazarene”), and sees it culminating in Spinoza. For Shikmoni, as for Einstein, Spinoza offered a way of reconciling Jewish intellectual identity with reason and freedom from religious orthodoxy.

Shikmoni’s devotion to Spinoza extended beyond this pamphlet. In 1950, he founded the Spinoza House (Bet Shpinozah, or Spinozaeum) in Haifa, a center devoted to promoting Spinoza’s philosophy in the newly established State of Israel. The organization attracted prominent supporters, including David Ben-Gurion and Albert Einstein.

The Document
The typescript we have here was written by Einstein on his Princeton letterhead in November 1943 in response to Shikmoni's pamphet and would eventually be published as Einstein’s foreword to the pamphlet. The pamphlet would not appear until 1948, five years after Einstein wrote these words.

It is not difficult to understand why Shikmoni’s manuscript made such an impression on Einstein. He recognized in it many of his own ideas about Judaism, religion, and Spinoza. Indeed, in the typescript Einstein begins by admitting that Shikmoni had articulated something that he himself had long felt but had struggled to define: “This little work has made a deep impression on me. It expresses in a clear manner the meaning of Judaism, as it had always hovered indistinctly before me.”

What follows is almost a miniature statement of Einstein’s own religious philosophy: “liberation from petrified ritual; adherence to the social ideal formulated so early; struggle against the spirit of unreason in every form; striving toward Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis.” Like Spinoza, Einstein’s Judaism is not defined principally by ritual observance, but by ethics, reason, intellectual freedom, and the pursuit of understanding.

But Einstein then moves from religion to politics. The typescript is dated November 1943, five years before the establishment of Israel. We see Einstein already contemplating the character of a future Jewish homeland and warning against allowing religious authority to dominate it:

“May a favorable fate preserve us from failing to recognize the danger and, for a second time in our history, falling in our own homeland under clerical domination, which over the course of history has alienated several of our finest people from the community.”

The warning brings us directly back to Spinoza. Einstein had just invoked a Jewish thinker who had himself been expelled from his religious community for his unorthodox ideas; in the very next paragraph, he warns of religious authority once again alienating “several of our finest people” from the Jewish community.

There is another important feature of the present typescript. When Einstein’s statement was finally published as the foreword to Shikmoni’s pamphlet in 1948, one of its most forceful phrases had disappeared. Einstein’s original reads:

“Kampf gegen den Ungeist in jeder Form” (“struggle against the spirit of unreason in every form”).

The entire phrase is omitted from the published version. The present signed typescript therefore preserves a substantive passage from Einstein’s original statement that did not survive into its eventual publication.

Full German Transcription
Diese kleine Schrift hat tiefen Eindruck auf mich gemacht. Sie spricht den Sinn des Judentums, wie er mir immer dunkel undeutlich vorschwebte, in einer klaren Weise aus. Loslösung vom versteinerten Ritual, Festhalten an dem so früh formulierten sozialen Ideal, Kampf gegen den Ungeist in jeder Form, Streben nach Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis, in welchem das soziale und weltanschauliche Ideal des Judentums vereinigt sind.

Möge uns ein gutes Schicksal davor bewahren, dass wir durch Verkennung der Gefahr zum zweiten Male in unserer Geschichte in unserem eigenen Heim priesterlicher Bevormundung anheimfallen, die im Laufe der Geschichte mehrere unserer Besten der Gemeinschaft entfremdet hat. Möge wer anders denkt und fühlt die Kraft aufbringen, die hier berührten Fragen vorurteilslos zu erwägen, bevor er urteilt.

Princeton N.J. November 1943
A. Einstein

English Translation
This little work has made a deep impression on me. It expresses in a clear manner the meaning of Judaism, as it had always hovered indistinctly before me: liberation from petrified ritual; adherence to the social ideal formulated so early; struggle against the spirit of unreason in every form; striving toward Spinoza’s amor dei intellectualis, in which the social and philosophical ideals of Judaism are united.

May a favorable fate preserve us from failing to recognize the danger and, for a second time in our history, falling in our own homeland under clerical domination, which over the course of history has alienated several of our finest people from the community. May those who think and feel differently summon the strength to consider without prejudice the questions touched upon here before passing judgment.

Princeton, N.J. November 1943
A. Einstein

In a single page, later published in an obscure German pamphlet, Einstein brings together some of the convictions that defined his life beyond physics: his Jewish identity, his reverence for Spinoza, his distrust of religious orthodoxy, and his belief that reason, humanism, and intellectual freedom should prevail over dogma.

Typescript on Einstein’s Princeton letterhead with his embossed Mercer Street address at top; signed by Einstein "A. Einstein." at bottom right. Princeton, New Jersey, November 1943. One page (approx. 8.5 x 11 in); rust mark from paper clip at top left; scattered foxing; two binder punch holes at right margin.

A RARE CLEAR EXPLANATION OF EINSTEIN'S RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND HIS RELATIONSHIP TO JUDAISM.

Price: $43,000 .