Get Ready For Anti-Zionists To Falsely Claim This One

A letter from famous physicist and Time Magazine's Person of the Century Albert Einstein has come to light, where he shares his negative thoughts toward religious belief.

There is really nothing new here, as the world has long known that Einstein, whose very name serves as a synonym for "genius" all over the world, was not a believer.  However, like clockwork, I can just tell that antisemites / anti-Zionists will seize on one unfortunately worded part of the letter:

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 … I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.

In that passage I have emphasized it how antisemites / anti-Zionists will read it.  They will see a take-down of the religion of Judaism and of the Jewish people themselves, through the oft-misunderstood concept of being 'chosen'.

Basically, I can see house-Jew David Harris Gershon frantically penning his Daily Kos diary on it right this minute.

However, what dishonest antisemites / anti-Zionists like Gershon will fail to mention is that Einstein was an ardent Zionist.  In fact he spent much of the 1920s fundraising for Zionism.

And, in fact, this passage from the letter is very pro-Zionist.  If you read it the proper way, you see what needs to be emphasized:

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 … I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.

See that?  The Jews are a distinctive people, just like any other, and in fact Einstein 'gladly belongs' to them.  Like any people, Jews deserve self-determination in a nation-state.  So says a person widely regarded as one of the smartest in human history.

It is not particularly noteworthy that the world's most famous scientist was non-religious.  But this letter drives home that he was a proud member of the Jewish people, and that Jews are a people, not a religion.