Einstein’s historic speech backing ORT on CD

27.05.05

27 May 2005 Historic addresses given by Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw to an ORT fundraising dinner are featured on a commemorative CD released by the British Library. It is the first time the speeches extracts of which can be heard on the World ORT website at www.ort.org have been heard in their entirety since 28 October 1930 when they were delivered at the Savoy Hotel function hosted by Lord Rothschild. H.G. Wells, the author of War of the Worlds, also attended the dinner. For copyright reasons, the CD is not on sale in the USA. However, American residents can buy the CD by accessing the special page on the World ORT website. The result of painstaking research and restoration by the British Library, the CD has been released for Einstein Year, which is part of the International Year of Physics a worldwide celebration of physics and its application to mark the centenary of the publication of Einsteins three most famous theories. Members of the ORT family can take pride in hearing one of the most influential people of the modern era explain his famous formula E = mc2, his commitment to the notion of Jewish community, and the importance of ORTs work in the same breath. The plight of our Jewish community all over the world is at the same time a barometer reading of the political worlds moral standard, Einstein told the dinner, which took place two weeks after the Nazi Party became the second largest bloc in the German parliament. This barometer is very visible in our time. We feel this grievously as part of our fate. But it is this very low point that so reinforces my conviction that it is our duty to ensure the survival and strengthening of this community. There follows one of the twentieth centurys finest examples of public eulogy a tribute to the scientist by Bernard Shaw, who compares him to makers of universes [whose] hands are unstained by the blood of any human being such as Pythagoras, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. There are great men who are great men amongst small men, but there are also great men who are great amongst great men, and that is the sort of great man whom you have amongst you here tonight, the author of Pygmalion said. Richard Fairman, Service Development Officer at the British Library Sound Archive and compiler of the CD, Albert Einstein Historic Recordings 1930-1947 , in which Einstein talks about his life and work, the Jewish people and the world of science, said: A hundred years after his great discoveries, and 50 years after his death, Einstein the man and marvel comes to life again.