OK, here is a small first step toward putting together a thread on this subject. The problem I had in getting started was how complicated the topic is - how to get it into an understandable form suitable for a discussion thread. I am starting with just these few topics:
First - Einstein was, of course, Jewish. However, his parents were not conventional, traditional Jews. They did not observe the dietary rules, nor did they hold Jewish traditional holidays or ceremonies in the house. They were proud of their secularism. At an early age (said to be about 10), Albert Einstein was sent to a traditionalist Rabbi who instructed him in all the Jewish rules. Einstein briefly became a traditionalist - trying to get his family to use the Jewish diet, observe the festivals, and so on. However, by about the age of 12, he had independently rejected traditional Jewish thought and after that forever became his own source of religious tradition.
Second, Einstein was deeply influenced by several philosophers. Goethe was one. Spinoza seems to be the closest to Einstein's eventual religious belief - a sort of pantheistic nature-God which is not personalized but is rather a manifestation of the entire cosmos. Einstein said this:
While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.
Einstein's "God" was not a personal interventionist or "creator" - it was an inherent and inevitable part of the universe or cosmos. Some philosophers, such as Kant and Neitzsche, seem to be viewed by Einstein as a sort of non-serious philosophical recreation.
Third - (and this is enough for a first post) - Einstein detested the notion of "Human Free Will". He believed that human thought (if taken to correct conclusions) was deterministic, or inevitable. Humans were not capable of a "free will" - all human activity and thought was eventually deterministic.
That thought on free will came as a great surprise to me - but really, this was the fight he waged for the second half of his life against the probability rules of quantum physics. Randomization of what Einstein thought should be clockworklike determinism was something deeply alien to him both scientifically and religiously.
Very interesting to me - my first religious experiences as a very young kid were the Presbyterians - well known for their belief in predestination. I rejected this before the age of ten as being too much of a constraint to human intellect and endeavor.
Maybe I shall take some time to rethink this idea - that is, the notion of "Human Free Will", and whether or not it is really possible.