Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Bullshit or Not: Einstein Edition

There's an old sketch film called Amazon Women on the Moon and one of the bits is a parody of the old Leonard Nimoy show, "In Search Of..." called, "Bullshit or Not?" (found a link to it on YouTube!) with the tagline "Bullshit or not? You decide." So I've stolen it for what is seeming to be a fairly regular series of posts.

This week, Albert Einstein on the two-state solution:

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain -- especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets.
So? Insightful? Naive? Utopian? Ignorant of the facts on the ground? Prophetic?

Does having a nation necessarily breed nationalism and does nationalism undermine that which we have to learn from culture? Is this an explicitly Jewish concern or something more universal?

Or...is it bullshit? As usual, feel free to leave responses ranging from a single word to a worked out dissertation. So, bullshit or not? You decide.