TRAYS
$2,`T,
ED'S MINI DELI
543-6073
Einstein and Zionism in Work by Lewis Feuer
(Continued from Page 30)
understand the prophetic aspect
of Zionism.
"From this point of view,
Weizmann probably would
have classified the circle of
students with whom, as we
shall see, Einstein was asso-
ciated as just another group
VINCENZO'S
Italian-American Cuisine.
1 821 1 JOHN R.
Bet. 6 & 7 Mile Rds.
869-5674
HAVING A
PARTY?
CALL THE
OLYMPIC
GRILL
.
Located In The
SOUTHFIELD
ATHLETIC CLUB
( TRAVELERS TOWER)
101/2 &
Evergreen
3 55-008 0 1
Ask For
Nancy Moceri
Serving Up to 80 For
•SHOWERS
•SWEET SIXTEENS
•BAR or BAS MITZVAS
•POOL PARTIES
•ETC.
CANTONESE-AMERICAN
RESTAURANT
Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m. - 10 p.m.
OPEN
Sat., 11 a.m. - 12 mid. ;
7 DAYS
Sun., 12 Noon - 10 plm.
• DAILY LUNCHEONS • FINE DINNERS
• COMPLETE CARRY OUT
29295 SOUTHFIELD Just North of 12 Mile
424-8765
IN THE FARRELL'S PLAZA
of materialists whose sense of
their cultural heritage had
been decomposed by Their
relativism.
"H o we v e r, Weizmann's
more usual undaunted spirit
was restored in the following
year when shortly before the
first Zionist Youth Conference
in Switzerland in 1901, Weiz-
mann debated the famed
`father of Russian Marxism',
George Plekhanov. For three
days and nights Marxists and
Zionists argued and counter-
argued. To Plekhanov's con-
sternation the debate ended
with 180 students joining the
Zionist society. This was the
so-called Berne Rebellion
that reverberated throughout
the • Jewish student body.
Weizmann was overjoyed; in
November 1901, he wrote:
••••••: "f ,::::"*""'""'
THE WORKSHOP OF A GENIUS: This is the library
and study of Prof. Albert Einstein. It was in this room in
his modest frame house on the Princeton campus that the
great mind came to grips with many of the mysteries of
the universe.
"They (the Marxists) reckoned
that Plekhanov would have the
last word but nothing of the sort osopher Martin Buber and
happened. The comrade who had their Zurich representative,
the floor after Plekhanov gave
up his turn to me, and Mr. Plek- published a pamphlet, Eine
hanov was debunked and routed, Judische Hochschuth (A Jew-
and retreated in the most igno-
minious manner. . . . Terrific ex- ish University). Weizmann
citement. This had .never hap- returned to thig– theme re-
pened in Switzerland before. Just
think of it: Plekhanov, the favo- peatedly, but its realization
rite, the idol who is worshipped was left to the next genera-
so. .
I was in the seventh heaven. at
having knocked out Balaam. I
had been looking for an oppor-
tunity to come to grips with Mr.
Plekhanov for a long time, but
as you know I would not set foot
on his terrain, and here he thrust
himself upon us, for the first
and last time. I doubt whether I
shall ever again be in such spir-
its as I was that evening. We had
an almost sleepless night after-
wards. The Zionists are jubilant.
"Public debates • between
Zionists and anti-Zionists took
place as well in Zurich in Oc-
tober and November 1901,
and Jewish student factions
clashed vehemently in 1902
in Berne. During this time
discrimination aginst Jewish
students in both Russia nd
Germany became so great
that Weizmann and other
Swiss student Zionists de-
voted much thought to the
founding of a Jewish univer-
sity. When the Russian min-
ister of education was assas-
sinated by a student in Feb-
ruary 1901, the Jews were
blamed though the assassin
was a non-Jew; and strict
quotas were decreed for the
number of Jewish students
permissible in the various
university faculties. Weiz-
man reported on August 29,
1901 that "in all German aca-
demic circles, high and low,
a strong anti-Russian (anti-
Jewish) propagnda is now
being conducted with great
success." Therefore, he felt,
it was "no longer a luxury
but a necessity" to start to
think of creating not only a-
university but several techni-
cal schools, possibly on the
Swiss model. In 1902 Weiz-
mann, together with the phil-
Stay up ;Arith Jerry
and Buddy Hackett.
Live from Las Vegas.
Newierry Lcwis Labor Day 'Telethon.
Tune in Sun
10:30 PM. . 5 Chaim el 50
Drawings courtesy of Al Hirschfeld and the Margo Feiden. Galleries N.Y.
the Olympia Academy and
the Marxian-Machian Zurich
circle provide significant rec-
ollections in historical devel-
opments in which subsequent-
ly prominent leaders and
noted scientists were in-
volved. In relation to the
Olympia Academy and the
Jews involved, Feuer rec-
ords:
"This Zurich-Berne counter-
community drew foreign stu-
dent wives into its circle. It
thus became even more a
radical students' internation-
al. In 1903 Friedrich Adler
married a Russian girl, Kat-
ya Germanischskaya, who
was studying physics at the
University of Zurich. Her fel-
low students called her ad-
miringly "the second Sonya
Kovalevski," after the famed
Russian woman mathemati-
cian. Einstein's wife Mileva,
a taciturn girl from a Serb-
ian peasant family, four
years older than Albert, with-
drawn and afflicted with a
limp, was a student of math-
ematics and physics, working
to achieve a teacher's certif-
icate. She had radical politi-
cal views, and evidently
something of the Slavic stu-
dents' back-to-the-people spir-
it. Before the two marriages,
Adler and Einstein together
with their two Slavic future
wives .used to attend the lec-
tures on analytical mechan-
ics given by the great Profes-
sor Hermann Minkowski.
But Einstein was regrettably
unfaithful in his attendance
so that a few years later Min-
kowski marveled at his
achievement: "For me it
came as a tremendous sur-
prise, for in his student days
Einstein had been a lazy dog.
He never bothered about
mathematics at all."
"The Zurich-Berne circle
was predominantly composed
of students of Jewish origin
—Einstein, Adler, Michele
Besso, Maurie Solovine. One
might, therefore, be led in
explaining the creativitiy and
freedom of this group, to as-
sign a primary role to their
Jewish origin. In a remark-
able essay published in 1919,
the year in which Einstein's
fame rose to unprecedented
proportions, Thorstein Veblen
undertook to account for the
fact that Jew were "partic-
ularly among the vanguard,
the pioneers, the uneasy
guild of pathfinders and icon-
oclasts, in science, scholar-
ship and institutional change
and growth." Veblen argued
that it was 'renegade Jews,'
gifted youths who had es-
tion. No doubt something of
all this reached Einstein's
brooding consciousness. In
1921, when he and Weizmann
toured the United States to-
gether, -they helped organize
groups to cooperate with the
Hebrew University Advisory
Committee. And when the
university finally had its ded-
ication ceremony in 1925 Ein-
stein became a member of
its board of governors.
"Zurich a-nd Berne vied
for the affection of the for-
eign revolutionary colonies.
As Einstein went about the
streets of these cities in 1903
and 1904, he might have stop-
ped to listen to a pale, young
Italian, gesticulating, exhort-
ing small crowds of Italian
workingmen. This was Benito
Mussolini, then a revolution-
ary socialist, who lived in
Zurich and Berne during
those years organizing on be-
half of the Italian Socialist
party in Switzerland. There
too he met his mentor, Angel-
ica Balabanoff, at a Zurich
congress. According to his bi-
ographer and intimate friend,
Mussolini "mixed much with
the Russian students, women
as well as men, all kinds of
them—a strange, dissolute,
eccentric, fantastic group,
Nihilists, and Bohemians, the
last word in fervid, feverish
modernity." Mussolini even
claimed to have frequented
the Federal Polytechnic, and
to have joined the Russian
students, "both women and
men," in their "orgies of
strong talk and weak tea."
Mussolini, however, is said to
have called Switzerland a
"republic of sausages."
"Also haunting political
meetings in Zurich in 1903,
quarreling vociferously with
an anarchist speaker till the
audience threw him out, was
a Polish Jew, Karl Radek.
Radek was employed in a li-
brary and was preparing
himself for a later career as
the world's leading commun-
ist journalist, provost of Sun
Yat-sen University, organizer
of an unsuccessful insurrec-
tion in Germany, and defend-
ant, confessed and convicted,
in Stalin's staged trials in
Moscow among the Bolshevik
comrades."
Lenin's role in the Swiss
debates adds another valu-
able chapter to the Einstein
story in the Feuer book, and THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
.
-
caped from the archaic, tra-
ditional Jewish cultural en-
vironment, who became sci-
entific leaders. They came to
science, he said, with a
`skeptical animus'; more-
over, though they were es-
tranged from their own Jew-
ish culture, they could not
accept the Gentile "conven-
tional verities." Thus, the
Jewish scientist became 'a
disturber of the intellectual
peace . . . an intellecutal way-
faring man, a wanderer in
the intellectual no - man's
land . . .' The young Jew 'is
skeptic by force of circum-
stance over which he has no
control.' "
The views of the scientists
and the disputants of that
era and the Einstein role
have significance in the trac-
ing of life of the great scien-
tists.
The Feuer study adds im-
mensely to the volumes al-
ready produced on the Ein-
stein subject. "Einstein and
the Generation of Science"
thereby gains the value of an
indispensable research about
a man, his era, the influence
upon mankind.
—P.S.
Meaning of Triple
Meals on Sabbath
Jewish tradition requires
a Jew to eat three meals
during the Sabbath.
Rabbinic sources seem to
derive this from an expres-
sion which is repeated three
times when the Bible refers
to the manna which came
down from heaven. The Book
of Exodus (Chap. 16) uses
the expression "eat today,"
three times in this context.
There are some who say
each of the three periods of
the Sabbath, during which
these three meals are eaten,
represent a different aspect
of the Sabbath. The evening
meal on Friday night repre-
sents the universal humani-
trian aspect of the Sabbath
by calling to mind that the
world was created by the Al-
mighty. We thus rest on the
Sabbath in recognition of this
fact.
The morning meal is asso-
ciated with the particular
Jewish aspect of the Sabbath'
which involves the motif of
freedom gained by the Ex-
odus from Egypt. The Sab-
bath, then, is enjoyed as a
special gift from the Al-
mighty to Israel.
The afternoon meal repre-
sents what is sometimes call-
ed the "eschatological motif."
The Sabbath is then enjoyed
as a sample of the "world
to come" when universal
peace and brotherhood
amongst all men will be re-
alized.
Israel's Gen. Tal Due
to Return to Army
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Gen.
Israel Tal, commander of
the armor corps during the
Six-Day War and later deputy
chief of staff, is returning to
the Israel Defense Force as
head of scientific develop-
ment of war means.
Tal has been head of Tel
Aviv University's institute of
strategic studies since leav-
ing the army.
Friday, August 2, 1974-31