NEWS: Tonight is the Start of Passover, and We Now Know What Albert Einstein Thought About It
/Tonight is the first night of Passover, and Albert Einstein has something new to say about the Jewish holiday of liberation, thanks to a recently discovered -- or at least recently publicized -- letter. Tablet magazine reports on an April 3, 1945 letter that the great physicist wrote to A. Goodman & Sons, a New York maker of matzo, the unleavened bread that is a staple of the Passover seder meal:
I thank you cordially for sending your excellent matzo. It is truly the only religious notion that falls on fertile soil with me.
Einstein's views about his faith were complicated: he was proudly Jewish, and crusaded against the anti-Semitism that forced him to flee Europe, but he was uncomfortable with organized religion; he was a Zionist, who believed in the founding of the State of Israel, but he also had misgivings. It does seem, however, that there was one thing he was unambivalent about, matzo -- he was a believer.