Q&A: From His Brain One Could Carve Two Einsteins
From His Brain One Could Carve Two Einsteins
Question
Who do you think was more of a genius: Rabbi Chaim Ozer, Rabbi Chaim, the Rogatchover, the Chazon Ish, or Albert Einstein?
The poet Bialik said about the Rogatchover, "From his brain one could carve two Einsteins" (Noah Zevuluni, "In the Presence of the Rogatchover," the journal "Turei Yeshurun," issue 44, Shevat-Adar 5735, pp. 10–13.)
And who contributed more to the world, Rabbi Chaim or Einstein? (This is also with reference to the song "The Greats of Judaism")
Answer
Hello,
Quite apart from the exaggerated attitude toward Bialik's hyperbole, even if I were to take his words as a plain, literal description, when H. N. Bialik is established in my eyes as a physicist of the level required to understand what Einstein did—we can talk.
I think these comparisons are unfounded, and there is no point in engaging in them. My personal inclination (as someone who is familiar with all these fields and figures) is to say that Einstein was the most talented of them all. But that is, of course, according to definitions of talent that seem correct to me.
As for who contributed more to the world, at least between those two, I also do not know.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed, his philosophy is really not all that brilliant. But I still think the degree of novelty in some of the ideas he uncovered is dozens of times greater than all the small innovations of those Torah sages. You cannot compare quantity to quality.
Moreover, the Torah greats who are considered brilliant are usually not regarded that way because of a collection of local halakhic novelties, but because they founded a method—Rabbi Chaim is of course especially prominent in this. So here too there is one big invention, except that it has many applications. If we compare that invention to relativity and quantum theory, in my opinion there is no comparison.
The attempt to compare people who worked in different fields of knowledge is doomed to fail from the outset.
But two remarks can still be made.
1. Einstein's work, by its nature, has more brilliance to it. It is a small cluster of ideas—conceived over just a few years—that revolutionized all of physical knowledge. By contrast, the great Torah scholars mentioned labored over a much broader body of knowledge and produced a very large number of novel insights—work that extended over entire lifetimes.
Naturally, Einstein's work is more dazzling and more awe-inspiring. But that does not necessarily indicate greater genius.
2. Looking at Einstein's philosophical essays (for example, Ideas and Opinions) can allow for some degree of comparison between him and other geniuses (though even that is not really much).