The cards keep coming. The other day we got a beautiful CD compilation of Xmas music hand-picked by a friend of ours from Toronto. It was nicely packaged what with a photo of their daughter on the front and a custom-made wrap on the CD itself. Professionally printed Xmas cards pile up from vendors, clients, and friends. Friends’ children bring hand-made and elaborate Xmas cards to our daughter. Everywhere I look I see wreaths and jewels and red and green lights. Kids television programming is non-stop Xmas. Any time we visit friends, mounds and mounds of chocolate, cookies, cakes and other sweets are piled around along with nuts, fruit, cheese, and breads. Xmas music fills the ears at the mall. Good cheer. And websites everywhere have re-decorated to accommodate the appropriate seasonal color scheme. Even money itself looks green and red these days. It all adds up to incredible anxiety on my part. Are we doing enough? Do we have enough chocolate on hand for our visiting neighbors? Did I buy enough gifts for everyone? Who did we leave out? What about me? What if they find out we’re Jewish? What then? Is New Year’s part of Xmas? Will I seem too Jewish if I work during my vacation time? Are my cats Christian? One came from Poland so I suppose so. The other is from upstate New York. He’s Christian, right? What color really represents Chanukah, anyway? Hey, and how do you really spell that holiday? And why do Jews have to have gold-foiled chocolate gelt (money) to give to their kids. It comes in little bags. Could there be anything more shameful and fun and sterotypical? Why does it have to be money? Do we have enough candles for the menorahs? What about wrapping paper? There’s never enough wrapping paper. We ran out of tape for the gifts. And we didn’t send out cards. Does that make us look irresponsible? Who should I call about the loud Xmas music emanating from a car nearby? Is that a dog? A dog with a Xmas wreath around its neck? What if I’m sick during New Year’s? Will that ruin the holiday for me and everyone? Hey, look, another dog!

I can’t help it. When I read a thing of beauty, I need to call it out. This is the second post about Einstein and I hope it won’t be the last. Here is Einstein in 1931, a full eight years before the German invasion of Poland and then all of Europe. It’s from a piece called The World As I See It:
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

I’m listening to an incredible program from Speaking of Faith entitled Einstein’s Ethics. The author and physicist James Gates Jr. is speaking about Einstein’s very early take on the utter subjugation of blacks in America. As long ago as 1946, he was writing about and speaking about the brilliance of the Americans and their concommitant hypocristy regarding race in America. It’s almost enough to make one cry.
Here is a quote from his piece called The Negro Question,:
In the United States everyone feels assured of his worth as an individual. No one humbles himself before another person or class. Even the great difference in wealth, the superior power of a few, cannot undermine this healthy self-confidence and natural respect for the dignity of one’s fellow-man.
There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the “Whites” toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.
Today, while reading a book about Ireland, I told my daughter that she is part Irish because her mother is half Irish. She asked me if I was Irish, too. I said that I was not. She then said, “You should get Irish.”