There was a time when the word Jewish genius summoned images of chalk-dust, violin cases, telescopes pointed toward the heavens, and a tiny man from Ulm bending reality with a pencil. Einstein was not perfect—far from it—but he symbolized something that has defined the Jewish people for centuries: an obsession with ideas, ethics, responsibility, questioning, and the search for truth.
And today? The headline “Jewish” is splattered next to Epstein, a grotesque symbol of corruption, exploitation, and moral decay. How did we get from the quivering moral antennae of an Einstein to the bottomless moral vacuum of an Epstein?
This is not simply about two men. It’s about the cultural, communal, and moral arc of the modern Jewish world, a century-long slide where intellectual ambition mutated into narcissistic ambition, where ethical responsibility was traded for elite access, where brilliance without moral grounding devolved into depravity.
This is the question we must confront—fiery, unapologetic, and without euphemism: What happened to us?
Einstein represented more than relativity and a wild head of hair. He was a moral philosopher masquerading as a physicist. He warned of tyranny, pleaded for refugees, defended civil rights, begged the Jewish people to resist their own extremisms, and feared the atom bomb he helped unleash.
He embodied a distinctly Jewish idea: Intelligence is worthless without conscience.
After the Holocaust, a traumatized Jewish people made a silent pact with the American Dream:
“Never again be powerless. Never again be poor. Never again be shut out.”
It was understandable. It was even necessary. But with success came a new idolatry.
The children and grandchildren of immigrants moved from scholarship to social climbing, from intellectual prestige to financial prestige. The old moral vocabulary was replaced by a new American one: networking, influence, endowments, real estate, exclusive clubs.
There were still giants— Rabbis Mendlowitz, Soloveitchik, Kook, Kotler, Feinstein, Kamenetsky, ideological heirs, the visionaries of Jewish values. But after them rose a new class of Jewish elites: brokers, donors, fixers, operators, and gatekeepers.
A class more fluent in access than ethics. More dazzled by power than conscience. More eager to be close to presidents and princes than philosophers. It was only a matter of time before someone like Jeffrey Epstein stepped onto that stage.
The moral catastrophe of Epstein should not be dismissed as a scandal. It is a wake-up call. If Einstein represents the Jewish capacity to elevate humanity, Epstein represents the Jewish capacity to betray it. Between these two poles lies the future of the Jewish people.
We must choose. Do we continue down the path of worshiping access, influence, and brilliance for its own sake? Or do we reclaim the older, humbler, fiercer Jewish tradition in which intellect serves conscience, not ego?
Because if we do not confront how we got here—honestly, painfully, fearlessly—then we guarantee something worse will follow. The question “How did we get from Einstein to Epstein?” is really “How did we drift from moral ambition to moral anesthesia?”
But the Jewish tradition has never been afraid of self-rebuke. Prophets did nothing else. The remedy begins where it always has:
Teach that intelligence is a gift only when it serves humanity. Teach that Jewish success is meaningless without Jewish responsibility. Teach that the moral universe is real—and it always cashes its checks.
From Einstein to Epstein is a fall. But it is not irreversible. If anything, it shows us how desperately we must climb back.