Short answers, pulled from the story.
Eric Gutkind was a German Jewish philosopher born in Berlin on the 9th of February 1877 and died in Chautauqua, New York, on the 26th of August 1965. He studied at the University of Berlin, trained in anthropology under J. J. Bachofen, and developed a philosophy that moved from Gnostic interpretations of history toward Jewish Kabbalistic thought.
In a letter dated Princeton, the 3rd of January 1954, Einstein wrote that God was "nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses" and that the Bible was "a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends." He also described the Jewish religion, like all religions, as "an incarnation of the most childish superstition" and said he could not see anything "chosen" about the Jewish people.
"Choose Life: The Biblical Call To Revolt," published in the United States in 1952, was a reinterpretation of traditional Judaism. It attracted students dissatisfied with both liberalism and orthodoxy who were looking for something more concrete and dynamic than either tradition offered.
The circle included Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, L. E. J. Brouwer, Henri Borel, Frederik van Eeden, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Oppenheimer, Walther Rathenau, Romain Rolland, Upton Sinclair, and Rabindranath Tagore, among others at different points.
His first book, "Siderische Geburt," was published in 1910 under the pseudonym Volker. It became a focal point for his pacifist-mystical circle and later served as the philosophical basis for the New Europe Groups organized in London in the 1920s by the Yugoslavian teacher Dimitrije Mitrinovic.
Gutkind came to the United States in 1933 and began teaching at the New School and the College of the City of New York. He already had an influential following by the time he arrived.