D O C U M E N T 4 5 7 M A R C H 1 9 2 9 6 5 5 ALS. [120 768]. [1] Ussishkin (1863–1941) was a Russian-born Zionist leader and chairman of the Executive Com- mittee of the Jewish National Fund in Jerusalem. The JNF’s main role during the British Mandate in Palestine was the acquisition of land for Jewish settlement. [2] Einstein first met Ussishkin in late March 1921 when they both traveled to the United States as part of a Zionist delegation to raise funds for the Hebrew University (see Vol. 12, Introduction, pp. xxxi–xxxii). [3] For Ussishkin’s letter congratulating Einstein on his fiftieth birthday, see Abs. 935. [4] This is a reference to his move to Berlin in late March 1914 (see Vol. 8, Calendar entry of 29 March 1914). He had turned thirty-five years old on 14 March 1914. However, in later reminis- cences Einstein claimed that his experiences as a Jewish pupil at his elementary school in Munich had already instilled in him a “vivid sense of strangeness.” (see Einstein to [Paul Nathan], 3 April 1920 [Vol. 9, Doc. 366]). For Einstein’s complex relationship with his Jewish identity prior to 1914, see Rosenkranz 2011, pp. 15, 28, 31–36. [5] Mileva Einstein-Marić was actually a Serbian Orthodox Christian (see Milentijević 2010, p. 21). Among Einstein’s closest Jewish friends during his Swiss years were Michele Besso and Maurice Solovine (see Rosenkranz 2011, p. 28). [6] Soon after his move to Berlin, Einstein expressed himself semi-publicly for the first time on the issue of anti-Semitism when he rejected an invitation to travel to Russia from the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, as he refused to visit “a country in which my ethnic comrades are being persecuted in such a brutal manner” (see Einstein to Pëtr Petrovich Lazarev, 16 May 1914 [Vol. 8, Doc. 7]). [7] Chaim Weizmann. Kurt Blumenfeld (1884–1963) was president of the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland. On the roles of Weizmann and Blumenfeld in Einstein’s exposure to the ideas of Jewish nationalism, see Rosenkranz 2011, pp. 50–55, 133.