WHEN EINSTEIN MET KAFKA

Moldes surveys Jewish contributions to society and culture in this English translation.

In 1911, Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka lived in the same city and socialized together at Prague’s Café Louvre. Their influence, alluded to in the book’s title, reflects the sheer breadth of Jewish contributions to human development, from Einstein’s groundbreaking advancements in science to Kafka’s indelible mark on the arts. “Never has another people with so few members made such a mark on history,” the author declares. The volume’s opening chapters present a broad overview on Jewish history, identity, and persecution; the bulk of the book provides encyclopedic takes on individual Jews who have aided human progress. Chapters are devoted to Jewish contributions to literature, comedy, anthropology, business, computing, and architecture, with profiles of significant figures from French novelist Marcel Proust to social activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein. Global in scope, the work is careful to not only pay attention to the role of Jews in Europe and the United States, but also to the philanthropic endeavors of Brazil’s Safra family, the literary legacy of Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman, and the Dannon yogurt empire, built by Isaac Carasso in what was then the Ottoman Empire. Writing not only for Jewish readers, Moldes explicitly addresses non-Jews, hoping to counter what the author believes is an uptick in global antisemitism. The book makes a convincing, if not particularly novel, case for the wide array of positive Jewish contributions to the world. Despite Moldes’ relentlessly positive assessment of the Jewish influence on modern history, he’s nuanced in his treatment of contemporary politics, noting that criticism of Israel “is not necessarily anti-Semitism or even anti-Zionism.” Translated from an original 2019 edition published in Spanish, this accessible volume is replete with maps, charts, and other visual elements. The prose is engaging, and the text is accompanied by a wealth of footnotes and a 21-page bibliography, as befits the author’s scholarly background as a professor at Madrid’s Antonio de Nebrija University.

A well-researched, engrossing overview of the Jewish legacy in the modern world.