Rand was a life-long atheist with a secular philosophy. “She was Jewish, but she always said her religion had no meaning to her," says Jennifer Burns, a history professor at the University of Virginia and author of the biography “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.”
But in 1973, she made the first monetary donation of her life to the state of Israel. Scholars are still trying to explain it.
Some say the donation had nothing to do with religion. “Rand had a tendency to overlook certain facts when she was enthusiastic about something,” says Heller.
“You have to remember what was happening in the region at that time,” says Edward Hudgins, director of advocacy at the Atlas Society, in a telephone interview. The second Arab-Israeli War began in October 1973. “In a sea of the most irrational and savage barbarism philosophically and politically, Israel was one shining place that valued the principles of civilization.… It was a beacon of modernist, enlightened values.”
Rand did see Israel as a bastion of civilization in the region, but her individualist philosophy of honoring only commitments one chooses – unlike family or religion, which one is born into – makes her contribution to Israel notable, says professor Burns in a telephone interview. “Her donation raises some interesting questions about whether her religion was more important to her than she was willing to publicly admit.”
