The Creation of Brandeis University: Just One Year After the End of World War II, Albert Einstein Wants to Guarantee American Jewish Youth Access to Higher Education

He writes a prominent Rabbi, “It is my hope to discuss with you and the very few other leading gentlemen of your city an educational project in which I am deeply interested and which I believe is necessary for our own Jewish Youth.”

Einstein’s personal experience of anti-Semitism while in Germany, combined with the horror of the Holocaust, deepened his ties to the Jewish people. Referring to the prejudices faced by Jews around the world, Einstein noted that “there are no German Jews, there are no Russian Jews, there are no American Jews….There are in fact only Jews.” His attachment was so strong that, near the end of his life, Einstein was offered the presidency of the State of Israel, but he declined, citing ill health and a lack of experience “dealing properly with people and…exercising official functions.”

When Einstein spoke of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, he envisioned it as a spiritual and cultural center. One of the most important features of such a homeland, in Einstein’s view, would be an excellent educational system. To this end, Einstein toured the United States in 1921 with Chaim Weizmann, then head of the World Zionist Organization and later the first president of Israel, to raise money for a new university in Jerusalem. Hebrew University opened its doors in April 1925, and to mark the occasion, Einstein wrote “The Mission of Our University”. In an interview with The New York Times that month, Einstein commented, “I know of no public event that has given me such pleasure as the proposal to establish a Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The traditional respect for knowledge that Jews have maintained intact through many centuries of severe hardship has made it particularly painful for us to see so many talented sons of the Jewish people cut off from higher education.” The fact that college educational opportunities for Jews were limited is illustrated by the fact that the Ivy League universities in the United States limited the number of Jewish admitted.

Middlesex University was a medical school located in Waltham, Massachusetts, that was at the time the only medical school in the United States that did not impose a quota on Jews. The founder, Dr. John Hall Smith, died in 1944. Smith’s will stipulated that the school should go to any group willing to use it to establish a non-sectarian university. Dr. Smith’s son learned of a New York committee headed by Dr. Israel Goldstein that was seeking a campus to establish a Jewish-sponsored secular university. Goldstein agreed to accept an offer from Smith, proceeding to recruit George Alpert, a Boston lawyer with fundraising experience as national vice president of the United Jewish Appeal. He was involved in assisting children displaced from Germany. Alpert was to be chairman of Brandeis from 1946 to 1954, and a trustee from 1946 until his death. By February 5, 1946, Goldstein had recruited Albert Einstein, whose involvement drew national attention to the nascent university.

The founding organization was announced in August and named The Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc. The new school would be a Jewish-sponsored secular university open to students and faculty of all races and religions.

Initially, the trustees wanted to name the University after Einstein, but he declined. Instead, the school was named Brandeis University after Judge Louis Brandeis., “whose exemplary life as a great American Jew will have, we hope, through such university, a worthy memorial dedicated as a Jewish contribution to the promotion of higher learning in America for the advancement of human culture and science and for the enhancement of under standing, good will and righteous living among men.”

Typed letter signed, on his blind embossed Princeton letterhead, June 27, 1946, to Rabbi Joseph Gorfinkle. “I write to ask that you and Mrs. Gorfinkle do me the honor of visiting me Sunday afternoon, July 14, at my home in Princeton. It is my hope to discuss with you and the very few other leading gentlemen of your city an educational project in which I am deeply interested and which I believe is necessary for our own Jewish Youth. If you let me know that you will be my guest for the afternoon, I shall arrange for your transportation.”

We have never seen another letter of Einstein relating to founding Brandeis and his personal interest in higher education having reached the market.