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.

Table of Contents:
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