Yes, another case of Deja vu. The publication of a new volume of Einstein includes previously unpublished materials about his 1921 visit to America to raise money for his pet project, the establishment of my alma mater, Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The Jewish public adored him but the Jewish (Harvard) elite did not. So writes Walter Issacson in the Dec. issue of the Atlantic. It includes these wonderful Einstein quotations:

On Zionism -

Zionism really offers a new Jewish ideal that can give the Jewish people joy in its own existence again.

On his trip -

I am not keen on going to America, but am just doing it on behalf of the Zionists. . . .I must serve as famed bigwig and decoy-bird … I am doing whatever I can for my tribal brethren, who are being treated so vilely everywhere.

I had to let myself be shown around like a prize ox … It’s a miracle that I endured it. But now it’s finished and what remains is the fine feeling of having done something truly good and of having worked for the Jewish cause despite all the protests by Jews and non-Jews—most of our fellow tribesmen are smarter than they are courageous.

On Harvard -

It would not even have been serious if all universities had withheld invitations . . .although I certainly know that it is a Jewish weakness always anxiously to want to keep the Gentiles [Gojims] in a good mood.

On the Jewish elite -

They merely considered themselves as members of a religious community. . . . The undignified mania of trying to adapt and conform and assimilate, which happens among many of my social standing, has always been very repulsive to me.

In 1922 Einstein went to Singapore to raise money. He explained:

If science is pre-eminent through its universal predomination, then one may ask, why do we need a Jewish University? Science is international but its success is based on institutions which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means. We need to do this all the more on account of the present political developments and especially in the view of the fact that a large percentage of our sons are refused admission to the Universities of other nations.

He was in Jerusalem for the foundation ceremony and said

I consider this the greatest day of my life. Hitherto I have always found something to regret in the Jewish soul, and that is the forgetfulness of its own people -- forgetfulness of its being, almost. Today I have been made happy by the sight of the Jewish people learning to recognize themselves and to make themselves recognized as a force in the world. This is a great age, the age of liberation of the Jewish soul, and it has been accomplished through the Zionist movement, so that no one in the world will be able to destroy it.