Einstein Letters On Israel And God Hit Auction Block
Image by getty images
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Five letters written by Albert Einstein to quantum physicist David Bohm covering topics including God, McCarthyism and the new state of Israel will be auctioned off next week.
The letters will be sold in a live auction with participation online by the Winner’s auction house in Jerusalem.
They were put up for sale by the estate of David Bohm’s widow, who died a year ago. The letters were written between 1951 and 1954, are in good shape, and were personally signed by Einstein. The bidding for at least one of the letters opens at $8,000. The entire collection is expected to sell for about $20,000.
Bohm was working at the University of Sao Paulo, and living in Brazil in 1951, where he fled after refusing to testify about his alleged links to the Communist Party to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He told Einstein, who he met when they were both working at Princeton, how unhappy he was in Brazil.
“Israel is intellectually active and interesting but has very narrow possibilities,” Einstein wrote. “And to go there with the intention to leave on the first occasion would be regrettable.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
