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Nov. 11, 2005
The Jewish take on Einstein's life
Jerusalem science museum launches a comprehensive exhibit on the
legendary physicist.
WENDY ELLIMAN ISRAEL PRESS SERVICE
"Dear Mr. Einstein," reads a yellowed letter, dated 1951.
"I am a little girl of six. I saw your picture in the paper.
I think you ought to have your hair cut so you can look better."
A few display cases away gleams the Nobel Prize for physics, awarded
to Prof. Albert Einstein in 1921, not far from an elaborately inked
school report card showing Albert's high grades for math and physics.
Handwritten pages from his original 1912 manuscript of the special
theory of relativity are also there, as are his wedding invitation,
family photographs, love letters, his 1939 warning to then-United
States president Theodore Roosevelt about nuclear power and a cogent
response to anti-Semitism that he wrote for Colliers magazine in
1938, entitled "Why Do They Hate Jews?"
The Einstein exhibit, which will be displayed at the Bloomfield
Science Museum in Jerusalem for a whole year, marks the centennial
of Einstein's annus mirabilis (miracle year), in which the
26-year-old Einstein published four revolutionary articles that
became part of the fabric of science.
"This is a big, wide-reaching exhibition," said Prof.
Hanoch Gutfreund of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – the
exhibition's academic advisor and himself a physicist. "It's
our first chance to explain Einstein's groundbreaking ideas to a
large, non-scientific audience that is not especially interested
in physics, and to show science through the individual who stands
behind it."
The exhibition, sponsored by the Jerusalem Foundation, was an initiative
of the Hebrew University, which is the custodian of Einstein's archive.
The exhibit was first mounted at the American Museum of Natural
History in New York in 2002 and its route to Israel led through
the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the Museum of Science
in Boston and the Skirball Cultural Centre and Museum in Los Angeles.
Adapting it and bringing it to Jerusalem has cost its sponsors $500,000
US, and the Jerusalem Foundation has spent a further $1 million
on building a 700-square-metre hall to house the exhibit on the
Bloomfield's previously undeveloped third storey.
The foundation believes that the high cost is money well spent.
It plans to use the newly developed floor for other major exhibits.
"Einstein is the most comprehensive presentation ever mounted
on the life and theories of the 20th century's greatest scientist,"
said Jerusalem Foundation vice-president Danny Mimran. He said the
exhibit, which features a mixed-media biography told in wall panel
texts, photographs, manuscript reproductions and interactive presentations,
"explores Einstein's legacy not only as a scientific genius
who reconfigured our concepts of space and time, but also as a complex
individual deeply engaged in the social and political issues of
his era."
Exactly a century ago, in one single year, Einstein proved the existence
and sizes of molecules, explained light as both particles and waves
and created the special theory of relativity, part of which links
matter and energy, in the equation E=mc2.
"Museums worldwide are celebrating this anniversary with special
exhibitions and events," said Bloomfield Museum director Maya
Halevy, "and the year 2005 has been declared the International
Year of Physics by the United Nations General Assembly. Our Einstein
exhibition will run for a year, and we expect that many more than
our annual 150,000 visitors will come to see it."
"Making an exhibition out of an archive is a long process,"
said Hebrew University president Prof. Menachem Magidor, "but
it has been an enjoyable and very successful experience."
The exhibition falls into three main sections. The first, The Life
of Einstein, begins with the scientist's birth in 1879 and continues
with his family, his lifelong passion for science (sparked by his
father's early gift of a compass), his childhood and student days,
his private letters, diaries, publications and his Nobel Prize.
The second section, Einstein the Scientist, is about the pre-eminent
physicist who radically transformed our understanding of the universe.
It comprises interactive exhibits, multimedia and graphic panels
to demonstrate the scientific revolution wrought by Einstein and
the theories he developed that radically changed our notions of
time, space and gravity and led us into the atomic age. Relativity,
for example, is succinctly explained in a single sentence alongside
a video of a man walking along bouncing a ball.
Einstein and the World shows the father of the atomic age as a passionate
defender of civil liberties and an ardent pacifist, active and outspoken
about the political and social issues of his time. It also shows
him as a champion of Jewish causes and a committed Jew, who advocated
a distinctive moral role.
This Jewish/Zionist Einstein has been considerably expanded for
the Israeli exhibition. Zionism ran counter to Einstein's anti-nationalism
and he grew up in a home which believed that the Jewish religion
no longer suited the spirit of the times. Increasing anti-Semitism
(of which he was a popular target), however, and the inducements
of the Zionists changed his thinking. He became an active, if critical,
supporter of Zionism and Israel and was intimately, if acrimoniously,
involved in the building of the Hebrew University. In 1952, three
years before his death, Einstein wrote, "My connection with
the Jewish people is the deepest human emotion in my life."
Another difference in the Israeli exhibition is the fact that the
wall panels are in English, Hebrew and Arabic and the full texts
are now in Hebrew, with highlights in English and Arabic. Care has
been taken to make all languages both readable and understandable.
The Israeli exhibition features a Reflections section, in which
eminent scientists speak about Einstein on video, their heads appearing
in the middle of a giant mirror. "In the U.S., the scientists
were American," said Gutfreund. "Here, we have featured
Israeli men of science."
Days before the exhibition's official opening in Israel, with last-minute
changes and installations still underway, there was deep unstated
excitement among its progenitors.
"As I walk through the exhibit," said Gutfreund, "my
heart is fit to burst."
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