JEWISH JOURNAL
Influential Jews Share in ‘Genius & Anxiety’
by Jonathan Kirsch
January 22, 2020

A certain buzz has attached itself to “Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947” (Scribner), by London-based author, journalist and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht, if only because the role of Jews in world history is always a fraught subject. The author himself is quick to disavow any intention “to make a case for Jewish exceptionalism,” and he denies any belief in the proposition that “Jews are genetically gifted above the average in mathematics, entertainment, and money, as is often claimed, usually with malice.”..So the author’s cast of characters includes the usual gang of world-changers — Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka — but he also calls our attention to such high achievers…READ MORE