Princeton, 3 January 1954 Dear Mr. Gutkind!

Inspired by Brouwer's repeated suggestion, I have been reading a great deal in y our book in the last few days, and I thank you for sending it to me. What partic ularly struck me was this. With regard to our actual attitude to life and to hum an society we are broadly similar: an ideal beyond the personal that strives for freedom from self-centred desires, strives to make existence more beautiful and enriched, with an emphasis on the purely humane, where inanimate things are onl y seen as a means to which no dominant role should be granted. (It is this attit ude in particular that unites us as a truly "un-American attitude") Still, had it not been for Brouwer's encouragement, I would never have brought m yself to delve into your book in any way, as it is written in a language that is inaccessible to me. For me, the word God is nothing more than the expression an d product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable but still ex ceedingly primitive legends. No interpretation, however subtle, could change tha t (for me). These rarefied interpretations are by their nature extremely manifol d and are in almost no way related to the original text. For me, the unadulterat ed Jewish religion, like all other religions, is an incarnation of primitive sup erstition. And the Jewish people, to whom I gladly belong and whose mentality I am deeply embedded in, for me, possess no dignity distinct from all other people s'. In my experience, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst excesses by a lack of power. Otherwise I canno t discern anything "chosen" about them. In general, I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to de fend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a human being and an internal one as a Jew. As a human, you claim to a certain extent a dispensation from othe rwise accepted causality, as a Jew a privilege for monotheism. But a limited cau sality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza was the first t o incisively recognise. And the animistic conception of nature religions is, as a matter of principle, not nullified by monopolisation. Such walls will only lea d us to certain self-deceit; but our moral efforts are not advanced by them. Rat her the contrary. Now that I have quite openly expressed our differences in intellectual considera tions, it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in what is essential, i.e. in our evaluations of human conduct. What separates us is only i ntellectual embellishment or "rationalisation" in Freudian language. Therefore, I think we would get along quite well when discussing concrete matters. With kind thanks and best wishes, Yours, A. Einstein