06 Jul
2007 April-May, Israel

A Moment With Michael Oren

Author of Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present Since the days of the Barbary pirates, the Middle East has loomed large in America’s imagination and foreign policy. In Power, Faith and Fantasy, historian Michael Oren traces America’s involvement in the region. While 18th-century Americans feared the Arabic-speaking pirates, they were thrilled by the Middle East’s opulence (as portrayed in One Thousand and One Nights), and awed that it was the land of the Bible. American presidents like John Adams dreamed of a “hundred thousand Israelites” marching victoriously into Palestine, re-creating the Jewish state and bringing about the Second Coming. Writers Mark Twain and Herman Melville, along with other American adventurers, journeyed to the sand-swept region for inspiration. A senior fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalem Center, Oren speaks with Moment’s assistant editor,...

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27 Mar
2007 April-May, Issues

Nathan Guttman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Why is America’s strongest faith-based bloc that opposes the war—the Jewish community—sitting this conflict out? From the front lines of the civil-rights movement through the Vietnam War protests and up to the campaign to stop genocide in Darfur, American Jews have never been shy about forming opinions, fighting for them, and even being arrested and harassed for voicing them in protest. So why were there so few placards representing Jewish groups floating above the thousands of antiwar protesters who marched on the Pentagon in March to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War? And why were Jewish groups also absent a month earlier, when tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall to call for an immediate pullout from Iraq? It might seem natural for any religious or ethnic group to sit out the Iraq debate,...

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13 Mar
2007 April-May, Arts & Culture

Einstein and His God

At home in Berlin in April 1929, Albert Einstein received an urgent telegram from Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein of New York: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words.” Boston Archbishop William Henry Cardinal O’Connell had derided Einstein’s famous relativity theories as “befogged speculation” conjuring “the ghastly apparition of Atheism.” An alarmed Goldstein sought to douse these rhetorical flames with reassurance from the great man himself. "I believe in Spinoza’s God,” Einstein wired back, “Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” The rabbi might have saved himself a little money; in the end, Einstein’s reply in the original German used only 25 words. Einstein often saved ink by referring this way—a sort of philisophical shorthand—to Benedict (Baruch)...

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13 Mar
2007 April-May, Issues

Was Einstein a Jewish Saint?

As usual, Albert Einstein hadn’t dressed for the occasion. Most of the 40 or so young men waiting for him that Friday night in January at Princeton’s Murray-Dodge Hall sported the “college man’s” uniform of 1947—their best tweed sport coats and shined loafers. But their guest of honor, when he finally showed up, was wearing a baggy sweatshirt, soft-soled slippers and no socks. Einstein padded to the front of the room to give a short talk—not about the theory of relativity, special or general, or even the unified field theory he was currently working on at the nearby Institute for Advanced Study. Rather, Einstein had a few words to share about the importance of identifying as a Jew. He “stressed that it was important for Jews to be part of a Jewish community,” a student would later...

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