When Einstein Met Kafka

Jewish Contributions to the Modern World

Diego Moldes (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

700 Seiten

2025
Mandel Vilar Press (Verlag)
978-1-942134-39-8 (ISBN)

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In April 1911, Prague artists, writers, and intellectuals often gathered nightly at the Café Louvre, an intellectual center where music was played and high-level discussions were held. Many of the attendees were German-speaking Jews, such as Franz Kafka and his faithful friend Max Brod, Hugo Bergmann, Oskar Kraus, Franz Werfel, the mathematician Georg Pick, and a new arrival to the city, thirty-two-year-old Albert Einstein. Is it possible that Kafka and Einstein met and exchanged ideas? Did they influence each other from a philosophical or deep-thinking perspective? In neither Kafka's nor Einstein’s correspondence there is not even the slightest mention of each other. But Einstein and Kafka, two icons of our modern era, serve as the starting point for this book on the enormous contributions in the fields of the empirical sciences, humanities, letters, and arts by individuals of Jewish origin in modernity. In this book, the reader will encounter numerous names in the pages that all spring from the fountainhead of these two antecedents, the Einsteinian and the Kafkian.

While Jews account for 0.2 percent of the world’s population and no more than 2.5 percent of any country except Israel, they have made some of the greatest contributions to Western Culture in diverse fields that range from physics and philosophy to music and art. One register of these contributions is the Nobel Prizes: from their first recipients in 1901, 26 percent of awardees in the Nobel’s six fields — among them, physics, physiology/medicine, and economics — have been Jews. What accounts for the extraordinary breadth of these achievements? This is a question that Diego Moldes examines in When Einstein Met Kafka.

His answers include the history of Jewish culture itself, whether religious or secular, with its emphasis on literacy, learning, and especially inquiry and questioning. Until the European Enlightenment in the 18th century, Jews did not have full citizenship and civil rights — they were barred from universities, from government, and from entire professions. The Enlightenment opened the doors!

Despite the outbreaks of violent anti-Semitism — or what Diego Moldes calls Judeophobia — and continuing discrimination in all Western countries, Jews now had legal rights, and they persevered. In a near-encyclopedic fashion, he profiles just how thousands of individual Jews, by name, made original contributions to fields as diverse as medicine, artificial intelligence, philosophy, history, economics, business, world finance, computing, sports, film, architecture, and more! The book itself is an extraordinary achievement, the result of twenty years of intensive research, yet written in an immensely engaging style that has been translated and adapted for English readers from the Spanish by Steven Capsuto.

Diego Moldes is a Spanish writer, an essayist, novelist, poet, critic and historian of cinema and culture. He holds a PhD in Information Sciences (Complutense University, Madrid), a BA degree in Advertising and Public-Relations, an MA in Publishing and an MA in Foundation Management. In 2019, Galaxia Gutenberg published his book Cuando Einstein encontró a Kafka, Contribuciones de los Judíos al mundo moderno. His connection to Judaism led him to collaborate with Raíces: Revista judía de cultura (Roots: A Jewish Cultural Magazine). From 2015 to 2018, he served as the executive director of the Fundación Hispanojudía (the Hispanic-Jewish Foundation). In 2015, he became president and co-founder of ONG Asociación Fania (the Fania Association), a group which combats antisemitism and supports Jewish cultural endeavors. To date, Diego Moldes has published 14 books. Steven Capsuto translates from Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Galician and Ladino. His most recent published translation was Amazônia by Sebastiao Salgado (Taschen, 2022); since 2019 he has been the main Ladino-English translator for the ten-volume Posen Library of Jewish Culture (Yale). He is also the author of Alternate Channels: Queer Images on 20th-Century TV (Original edition Ballantine Books, 2000, revised 20th Anniversary edition, 2020).

When Einstein Met Kafka

Table of Contents

Part 1

1.

Anti-Semitism

Education and Judaism

World Map of Anti-Semitism

2.

Jewish Identity

Judeo-Christianity, Judeo-Christian, or Judaism and Christianity?

Part 2

1. Modern Geniuses of Humanity

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

“Overeducation”

2. Science and Inventions

Mathematics

Six Degrees of Separation

Artificial Intelligence

Topology

Statistics

Invention of the Gasoline-Powered Car

Invention of Aspirin

UNICEF

Origins of the City, Origins of Cement

Invention of Glass

3. Literature and Culture

Hebrew and Jewish Modern Literature (Eighteenth to Twenty-First Centuries)

A Nation without a Territory (Extraterritoriality)

Modern Literature (Authors Born in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries)

“Electric-Fan Writers”and “Sponge Writers”

Franz Kafka

Marcel Proust

Stefan Zweig

Some Modern Jewish Authors

Angel Wagenstein’s Remarkable Trilogy of Novels

Dutch Jewish Writers

Danilo Kiš

Literature of the Holocaust

France

Two Notable Cases: Canetti and Koestler

Other Examples

Italy

Hugo Bettauer and The City without Jews

Exilliteratur

North America

The Pawnbroker, Edward Lewis Wallant’s Great Novel

Playwrights of Jewish Origin

Two Spanish Examples: Aub and Cansinos Assens

Other Contemporary Cases

Clarice Lispector

Latin America

Interview with Gabi Gleichmann

Interview with Ezequiel Szafir

Israeli Literature in Hebrew

The Hare with Amber Eyes: The Story of the Ephrussis

Jewish, Part Jewish, or Non-Jewish?

Conversos in Castile in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries

4. Philosophy, History, and Thought

The Frankfurt School

Anthropology

Linguistics

Psychology and Psychiatry

Film Criticism and Essays

Hinduism and Sanskrit

A Spanish Cultural Example

Historians from Jewish Backgrounds

5. Business, Banking, and the World of Finance

Building American Capitalism

Examples from the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Nobel Prizes

Various Economic Examples

Real Estate

Shell

Mattel

Hasbro

Kraft

Danone (Dannon)

Nivea

Mercedes-Benz

Citroën

Philips

Heineken

Hartz Mountain

Dunkin’ Donuts

Life Insurance

Sara Lee Corporation

Louis Dreyfus Group

BlackRock

Tamares Group

Bernie Madoff

The FIAT Group

Glencore

Coca-Cola

Private Aviation

Consulting and Auditing: The Big Four

Jews Prominent in Germany’s Economy before the Holocaust (1825–1933)

Jews Prominent in the United Kingdom’s Economy

Jews Prominent in Canada’s Economy

Jews Prominent in Brazil’s Economy

Jews Prominent in Argentina’s Economy

Jews Prominent in Russia’s Economy

Jews Prominent in Asia’s Economy

Jews Prominent in Spain’s Economy

Jews Prominent in the International Diamond Trade

Jews Prominent in Marketing

Anti-Semitic Magnates

Summary

6. Computing and the Internet

Google

Beginnings

The Example of Israel: A Start-Up Nation

Computer Scientists and Computer Engineers

7. Fashion, Textile Industry, Cosmetics, and Retail

Retail

Bookstore Chains

8. Sports

Soccer

Basketball

European Basketball

Chess

Boxing

Paralympic Games

9. Cinema, Television, Music, and Entertainment

Jews and the Movies

Jewish Producers in Hollywood

Jewish Producers Who Won Oscars (or Had Best Picture Nominations)

Jewish Film Directors in Hollywood

Other Examples

British Cinema

Film Studios in the Twenty-First Century

The “Big Three” Entertainment Agencies: WME, CAA, and UTA

Other Parts of the World

Acting

Jewish Actresses

Actresses Who Converted to Judaism

A Mysterious Case: John M. Stahl

Cornel Wilde: Kornél Lajos Weisz

Jon Favreau

Some Examples in Modern Cinema

Film Scores

Hollywood Films about Anti-Semitism

Jewish Casablanca

Examples of Jewish-Themed European Cinema

Kapo (Kapò, 1959)

Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Romeo, Julie a tma, 1959)

Passenger (Pasazerka, 1961–63)

The Trial (Le procès / Il processo / Der prozess, 1962)

Intimate Lighting (Intimní osvetlení, 1965)

The Shop on Main Street / The Shop on the High Street (Obchod na korze, 1965)

Father (Apa, 1966)

The Night Porter (Il portiere di notte, 1974)

Mr. Klein (Monsieur Klein / Chi è Mr. Klein?, 1976)

Au revoir les enfants (German title: Auf Wiedersehen, Kinder, 1986)

Life is Beautiful (La vita è bella, 1997)

The Pianist (2002)

Shoah (1985)

Entertainment Companies and Television

Saban Entertainment

Film Meets Internet, Through Jewish American Entrepreneurs

Other Show Business

Dance and Ballet: Ida Rubinstein, Maya Plisetskaya, and Alicia Markova

Ida Rubinstein

Maya Plisetskaya

Alicia Markova

Magic and Illusionists

Music and the Recording Industry

French Music Hall: Théâtre des Trois Baudets and Canetti

Rock and Pop Music

Classical Music

10. Comics

11. Art

Collecting

Art History

12. Modern Architecture

13. The Publishing Industry

14. Journalism

The Case of Naomi Klein

Photography

15. Media and Advertising

Advertising

The PRISA Group and El País

Italian Media

16. Justice and Politics

Justice

Politics

Labor Organizing in the United States

Feminism

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Elected Officials

The Pentagon and CIA

An Unusual Case in Ukraine

The Obama White House

Socialism

Anarchism

The Greens

Communism

Intellectuals and Communism

Josef Stalin

17. Conclusions and Questions for Discussion

Part 3

Appendix, Postscript, Bibliography, and Videography

Appendix

Postscript

Bibliography and Videography

Selected Bibliography

Essays, History Books, Memoirs, Biographies

Jewish-Themed Literature: Fiction (Novels, Novellas, Short Stories) and Poetry

Graphic Novels and Comics

Selected Videography Consulted on DVD and Blu-Ray Discs

Main Websites Consulted

Acknowledgments

Erscheinungsdatum	12.09.2025
Übersetzer	Steven Capsuto
Zusatzinfo	Illustrations
Verlagsort	CT
Sprache	englisch
Maße	177 x 254 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-942134-39-8 / 1942134398
ISBN-13	978-1-942134-39-8 / 9781942134398
Zustand	Neuware