The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilized interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything "chosen" about them.

When the letter was made public, many of the faithful reacted with casuistry or anger. Dan Porter, a Christian blogger, dismissed it and quoted Einstein's more religion-friendly gobbets, which Porter suggests should be added to man's corpus of "substantive thinking." Einstein was "no more an authority on religion than Pope Benedict XVI is on quantum physics," added Catholic writer Elizabeth Scalia, who then felt obliged to compare the nonquantum physicist's worldview to a tautological parable about monotheism favored by one Joseph Ratzinger.


The temptation to lure Einstein posthumously into the theistic fold is understandable, if only due to his charm and humanity. He was that rare species of genius who didn't espouse sinister or crackpot theories or go mad, as did logician Kurt Gödel, his walking partner on the quadrangles of Princeton and a likeminded proponent of a prioricity. Avuncular, playful, cuddly … Einstein could be all things to all people, though he never wanted to be. He was a socialist who enjoyed bourgeois creature comforts, a wit who courted celebrity but preferred his hermitage and frequently lost his way home, an internationalist who became an early and fervent Zionist, a pacifist who urged the invention of the atom bomb and then regretted doing so. Still, on matters of ideology, war, and peace, he could express himself plainly.


Einstein underwent a brief elective immersion in Judaism as a boy, but his parents were secular; his father thought the Abrahamic rituals "ancient superstitions." Einstein later told New York Rabbi Herbert Goldstein that he believed in "Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men." (In the 17th century, philosopher Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated from Judaism on suspicion of atheism—allegations that Rebecca Goldstein argues in Betraying Spinoza were, in fact, correct.) When a rumor was circulated in 1945 that a Jesuit priest had converted him, Einstein thundered back: "I have never talked to a Jesuit priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist."