I was part of the national German committee to plan celebrations for the 2005 Einstein Year. One hundred years after Einstein made his most famous discoveries, the left-leaning government had decided to spend 20 million euros to show its support of science in general and of left-wing cosmopolitan (ahem!) intellectuals in particular. As the only Jew on the committee, my main function would be as what Orthodox Jews call a mashgiach—someone who guarantees that the premises are kosher. There were exhibits, there were banners, there were lectures, and more. What if they made a mistake?
I spotted one in an early brochure, where Einstein was described as a "fellow-citizen-of-Jewish-background." Did the committee know, I asked, that Einstein had expressly ridiculed that weird circumlocution? "He just called himself a Jew," I said. "Jews don't consider the word insulting." "Is that so, Frau Neiman?" replied the minister of science. She was flustered. "That’s very helpful, just the sort of thing we need to know." Jew in German has two syllables, not one, and I suppose that buried deep in some dreams are memories of sinister mobs shouting Ju-dah! Ju-dah! Perhaps even for atheists, echoes of Judas Iscariot play a role. Germans use phrases with nine syllables, like fellow-citizen-of-Jewish-extraction or fellow-citizen-of-Jewish-heritage, in order to avoid using the obvious two. The habit is so engrained that despite my objection, the second draft of the brochure used the same phrase. "I know we all have many duties here," I said at the next meeting. "But perhaps it has been forgotten that I mentioned that Einstein didn't like this designation. He made fun of it several times." I was learning to use certain forms of polite circumlocution myself. "Of course," said the minister’s deputy. "We’ll see it gets changed." They never did; too many nightmares worked against them.
