WI Albert Einstein accepts the Israeli Presidency?

In 1952 the nation of Israel offered it's presidency to physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein turned it down saying the didn't have the personality for the job.

But, what if he had accepted? How would this change how Einstein is regarded by history? How would this have changed Israel's history - even given the fact that he dies in 1955 in OTL there's a lot that could still happen in just three years.
 
isn't it pretty much a figurehead office anyway? All it would mean would be that Einstein would in a sense have to take responsibility for the policies of a State he had no real power to influence (except for moral suasion, but whatever force that could have would mostly be based on his reputation independent of the presidency).
 
It's a figurehead office, ceremonial. If Einstein accepted, there's a brief interest in such a prominent physicist taking the role of President, but ultimately nothing really changes politically outside Israel. You might see something like the Einstein Institute of Science or Einstein University in Israel. Hebrew University of Jerusalem would benefit since Einstein was on the original Board of Governors (along with Martin Buber, Chaim Weizmann, and Sigmund Freud).

The only real historical changes that I can see happening is if Einstein puts his name to Pinhas Lavon's idea of integrating Arab-Israelis through military service. Lavon thought extending the draft to include Arab-Israelis would help Jewish-Arab relations, and when he experimented with it on a trial basis, thousands of Arab-Israelis answered the call and signed up.
 
I'm not sure Einstein would've just been a figurehead. Master of the Mint was a sinecure, but Isaac Newton took the position seriously and accomplished quite a bit during his time holding the job.
 
Since I really doubt Einstein had any knowledge of Hebrew, and given the recent influx of mostly Yiddish speakers into Israel, there is a possibility that he would carry on communicating in German. Including public speeches etc. Thus Yiddish would remain/become common language of Israel, with Hebrew having more solemn, official, but only de jure position (cf. modern Irish vs. English).

Though the possibilities are very slim, it is already too late I guess. But one never knows.
 
Was it already fully set up like that, or could a more active President have the ability to change it?

It was set up like that from the get-go. The presidency was set in the Transition Law of 5709-1949, and then defined more in-depth with the Basic Law: The Government 1964, but there wasn't really a way for a more active president to change it.

Since I really doubt Einstein had any knowledge of Hebrew, and given the recent influx of mostly Yiddish speakers into Israel, there is a possibility that he would carry on communicating in German. Including public speeches etc. Thus Yiddish would remain/become common language of Israel, with Hebrew having more solemn, official, but only de jure position (cf. modern Irish vs. English).

Though the possibilities are very slim, it is already too late I guess. But one never knows.

Hebrew had already been the unifying language of the Jews in Eretz-Yisrael/Palestine since the early 1900s. And Israel made Hebrew a co-official language of the State along with Arabic in 1948 with the Law and Administration Ordinance 5748-1948. Mizrahi Jews, Yemenite Jews, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Ethiopian Jews all adopted Hebrew because otherwise they wouldn't be able to understand each other. And it doesn't make sense why non-Ashkenazi Jews, who have no connection to Yiddish, learn a language like that when Hebrew is already a unifying factor and there's already a solid Hebrew language learning environment?

Yiddish speakers were routinely pressured or encouraged to speak Hebrew (ivri, daber ivrit! Hebrew [Jew], speak Hebrew!). The only people who really speak Yiddish in Israel, then and now, are the Haredi Jews and maybe a few secular Ashkenazi Jews.

Einstein would probably have a translator assigned to him, and a lot of the early State leaders would have spoken German or understood German.
 
Given it's a rather ceremonial position the biggest change would probably be that Einstein becomes a much more controversial figure.
 
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