In When Ein­stein Met Kaf­ka: Jew­ish Con­tri­bu­tions to the Mod­ern World, Diego Moldes chron­i­cles the key Jew­ish char­ac­ters who shaped many of the most impor­tant areas of Jew­ish life, be they sci­ence, fash­ion, film, or lit­er­a­ture. Both exhaus­tive and infor­ma­tive, the book is a help­ful resource for those look­ing to study the peo­ple, writ­ings, and think­ing of Jews who shaped West­ern civilization. 

Moldes, who is not Jew­ish, describes him­self as an admir­er of Jew­ish cul­ture. This book is just one exam­ple of his ally­ship; he has served as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Fun­dación His­pano­judía (the His­pan­ic — Jew­ish Foun­da­tion) and as pres­i­dent and cofounder of ONG Aso­ciación Fania (the Fania Asso­ci­a­tion), a group that com­bats anti­semitism and sup­ports Jew­ish cul­tur­al endeav­ors. Each page of When Ein­stein Met Kaf­ka shines with gen­uine admiration. 

Before dis­cussing indi­vid­ual Jew­ish thinkers and lead­ers, Moldes spends over sev­en­ty pages answer­ing two impor­tant ques­tions: where does anti­semitism come from, and how does one define a Jew? These two sec­tions are impres­sive for their breadth of sources and detail. Moldes is clear­ly an auto­di­dact and a pas­sion­ate learn­er. As his trans­la­tor, Steven Cap­su­to, writes in his intro­duc­tion, one walks away from When Ein­stein Met Kaf­ka with a pletho­ra of inter­est­ing-sound­ing books for fur­ther read­ing. Since Moldes is well-read in many lan­guages, even the most edu­cat­ed Amer­i­can read­ers will encounter new thinkers and names. Addi­tion­al­ly, Moldes includes dozens of block quotes through­out his book, giv­ing us a taste of these thinkers directly. 

After these open­ing sec­tions, the book turns to the Jews who shaped the mod­ern world. Mov­ing through top­ics as diverse as the inven­tion of glass, lin­guis­tics, com­put­ing, med­i­cine, and sports, the book is full of thou­sands of names of his­to­ry’s most impor­tant Jews. If there is a flaw in the book, it is that it includes too many peo­ple. Rather than unpack the accom­plish­ments of any sin­gle per­son, Moldes often quick­ly explains their con­nec­tion to Judaism and moves on. In some cas­es, an accom­plish­ment or two are men­tioned. In oth­er cas­es, it just lists their name as impor­tant to their respec­tive fields. How­ev­er, what one los­es in detail, one gains in appre­ci­a­tion of scope. One can’t help but remark as they read the book that the world would look very dif­fer­ent, indeed, much poor­er, had these Jews not been around to invent the prod­ucts, found the com­pa­nies, and imag­ine the ideas that we too often take for granted. 

Because he cares so deeply about fight­ing anti­semitism, Moldes is care­ful not to over­rep­re­sent Jews in areas like Hol­ly­wood and pol­i­tics. Moldes is con­cerned about play­ing too close to anti­se­mit­ic tropes and will often con­trast Jew­ish achieve­ments with those of oth­ers and dis­pel myths that only Jews played a role in their respec­tive fields. 

At near­ly 650 pages, this book might be one that read­ers choose to con­sult rather than read cov­er to cov­er. But those look­ing to appre­ci­ate how our world has been shaped by the Jew­ish peo­ple will, after read­ing this book, mar­vel at our accom­plish­ments and Moldes’ exten­sive knowl­edge of them.