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Einstein renounced religion at the age of 12, when he decided his Jewish beliefs were incompatible with the analytical mind-set of his truer devotion, science. Yet the world never stopped seeing him as a Jew, and over time he became a champion for his oppressed people and a supporter of the Zionist cause. “Einstein had alienated himself from the larger Jewish community, but the times forced him to realize that his heritage was an inalienable part of who he was,” writes philosophy professor Gimbel in this look at Einstein's relationship to Judaism and his political activism.
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