Stephen Hawking is right up there in my pantheon but he is being quite the asshat these days.
From Shmuley Boteach writing at The New York Sun:
How Stephen Hawking Abandoned Einstein and Turned on IsraelI would take a look at his minders -- he requires 24/7 custodial maintenance and I would bet that a bunch of progressives have inveigled their way into his inner circle and are feeding him crap. Sad. Let us not forget the dichotomy between the Jewish and Muslim culture -- Muslims have been awarded ten Nobel Prizes, the Jews have been awarded around 200 (I have had a long day and am too lazy to count). Quite the difference between the two cultures especially when you consider the sheer number of Muslims and the scarcity of Jewish people. For anyone to speak bad of Israel speaks loudly for the poverty of their own souls...
Has Stephen Hawking really left the company of Albert Einstein, an avowed Zionist who worked to create the State of Israel, and replaced him with the august company of Elvis Costello and other Israel boycotters?
In 1998, I hosted Hawking for a lecture at Oxford, where I introduced him to 1,000 students. He could not have been more humble and approachable. Aside from his lecture, delivered through his voice synthesizer, on string theory � little of which I understood but which my students assured me was �brilliant� � I remember his love of babies and practical jokes.
Our daughter Rochel Leah had just been born and Hawking and his wife asked us if he could hold her. I can still picture in my mind how his wife took the baby, placed her on his lap, and then wrapped his enfeebled arms around the baby, at whom he stared with a huge grin for minutes. He was enraptured.
After the lecture was over and as we walked Hawking to his car, he suddenly raced off in his wheelchair to Haagen-Dazs where we consumed in ice cream. His wife chuckled that he loved giving his hosts the slip as he indulged his childlike spirit. All who heard and met him were deeply impressed with his humility and accessibility.
And now this, digging a knife publicly into Israel�s back.
Why would one of the world�s leading academic minds condemn the only democracy in the Middle East? Why would he attack a country, situated in a region of such deep misogyny, that celebrates women succeeding in every area of academic, professional, and political life? Why would Hawking pounce on a nation who, with neighbors like Hamas that routinely murder gays on false accusations of collaboration, grants homosexuals every equal right? And why would he condemn a country whose Arab citizens are the freest and least afraid in the entire Middle East?
