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Documentary explores the ‘Talmudic’ relationship between writer Robert Caro and his famous longtime editor
(New York Jewish Week) — Bob Gottlieb, who as editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker ushered into print some of the 20th-century’s most accomplished writers — Nora Ephron, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, John Cheever and Ray Bradbury, to name a few — believes editing is a service job, one that should go unnoticed by the reader.
And yet, it is the relationship between editor and writer that his daughter Lizzie Gottlieb, a documentary filmmaker, explores in her latest film, “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and is now screening at theaters across the country.
Lizzie’s documentary sets out to explore the sometimes tense but ultimately caring relationship between her father, Bob, and one of his longest running authors, Robert Caro, who over the course of 50 years has produced “only” five major books: “The Power Broker,” a classic biography of urban planner Robert Moses, and four volumes of “The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson.”
Jews born and raised in Manhattan, Caro and Gottlieb have worked together since Gottlieb helped cut 350,000 words out of the first draft of “The Power Broker,” bringing it down to a book that ultimately ran 1,338 pages when it was published in 1974.
The thing they squabble over most often? Semicolons, still. Or, maybe, Caro’s overuse of the word “looms.”
The film, seven years in the making, takes on the ways Moses shaped New York City, the mysteries of LBJ’s political power, the sausage-making of bestselling books and the idiosyncrasies of two workaholics. It is also a story of two now elderly men — Caro is 87, Gottlieb is 91 — in what Bob Gottlieb calls an “actuarial” contest to finish Caro’s highly anticipated fifth volume of his Johnson biography.
“My dad and I are very close. We’re in constant contact with each other. If something funny happens, I call my dad. If something sad or confusing happens, I’ll call him. We’re just in each other’s lives all the time, so I didn’t feel that there was a secret I needed to uncover or something unexamined in our relationship,” said director Lizzie Gottlieb, who also teaches documentary filmmaking at the New York Film Academy.
“But the one thing I really knew nothing about in his life was his relationship with Bob Caro,” she said. “Because it was so different from anything else, and it was so kind of private. So really, the whole movie is the process of me understanding something that I didn’t understand before.”
The New York Jewish Week recently caught up with Gottlieb to talk about the making of the film, what it was like growing up in a high-profile family and how Jewishness impacts the work of the two men.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Lizzie Gottlieb is a documentary filmmaker who previously directed “Today’s Man” (2008) and “Romeo Romeo” (2012).
New York Jewish Week: You’ve been working on this movie for seven years. When did you realize you needed to make this movie and how did it get from start to finish?
For a long time, people would say to me, “You should make a film about your father.” I have an incredible father. He’s done a lot of great things. He’s interesting and funny. But I just thought, a film whose message is “look how great my dad is” is not a movie that anybody wants to see.
And then my father was given some award and Bob Caro was presenting the award. Bob Caro gave a speech about working with my dad over what was then 45 years. He talked about how he needs him, and he respects him and how they’re so productive. Then he started talking about their arguments. Somebody in the audience asked what they fought about and he said, “We have very different feelings about the semicolon.” Everybody erupted into laughs and it just hit me like a bolt of lightning. I thought, “This is the movie, this is the story.”
I wanted a story that had forward momentum and had something big at stake. A film about two men in their 60s who had done a lot of great stuff is not that interesting. But a film about two men who are hovering around 90 and are still in it, and engaged in their work, who have a dedication and passion and are in a race against time to finish their life’s work, felt really, really compelling to me.
People say, “Are you sure you should be wasting [Caro’s] time with a movie? He needs to be writing.” My producer Jen Small said we should put on the poster, “No Lyndon Johnson books were harmed in the making of this film.”
Do you think you had a perspective that made you the best person to try and talk about their relationship and document it, or was it challenging to make the leap of them being willing to open up to you?
There was definitely a pursuit of them. I called my father and I was like, “I have the best idea ever. I’m going to make a film about you and Robert Caro.” He said, “No way. Absolutely not. Never. It would not be good for our relationship.”
I just kept pestering and pestering and pestering him. Finally, he said I could call Bob Caro but he would say no and of course Bob Caro did initially say no. Then he said that he’d seen another film of mine and I could come and speak to him. Eventually, Caro said, “I’ve never seen a film about a writer and an editor, and I think this could be meaningful. I don’t think anyone’s ever seen this before.” So he let me start, but he had this kind of hilarious condition, which was that he didn’t want to ever appear in the same room as my father. That seemed funny and a little maddening and sort of endearing. It also seemed like an irresistible challenge to try to make a buddy film where they don’t appear in the same room as each other. A woman came to a screening recently and she said, “It’s a love story, and they don’t get together until the last scene.”
They both say that somehow the making of this movie has brought them closer together and that they have developed a real friendship after 50 years. Maybe just having to articulate what their relationship has meant to each other has made them appreciate it more.
What was it like to grow up in your household, with your father as this major editor and your mother (actress Maria Tucci) on Broadway?
I grew up in a really incredible household. My mother’s an actress, my father’s a publisher and editor. Our house was this kind of vibrant, boisterous household that was always filled with eccentric, incredible people — actors and writers. My dad’s writers would come for dinner and then my mother would go off and do a play on Broadway and then come back at midnight and make another dinner. It was incredible. So I feel that both of their work was kind of integrated into our life and into our family. All of his writers were really like family members, except for Bob Caro, who never came over and who I never met. I think that there’s something particular and peculiar about their relationship that they needed to stay apart and only come together over work. I guess that was something that intrigued me and that’s part of why I wanted to make the movie.
“Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” (Courtesy Tribeca Film Festival)
The Jewishness in the film is a bit more implicit, though you discuss it when talking about their upbringings. How do you think their Jewish identities have impacted their work?
I don’t want to presume to speak for either of them about their Jewishness. I know they both very strongly identify as New York Jews, which probably means something slightly different to each of them, but I think it’s essential to their definitions of themselves. Their humor may be particularly Jewish as well. David Remnick uses a word at the end of the movie, where he says Caro needs to have “sitzfleisch” in order to finish the book. It’s this Yiddish [and German] word that means the ability to sit for long, long periods of time and apply yourself to something. I think that that is something that these two guys have: It’s almost a Talmudic focus on their craft, and without that they wouldn’t be who they are. So to the extent that that’s a Jewish quality, I think that’s essential to their being, to their achievements. There’s something like a Talmudic scholar in going over all these things, the industriousness and the empathy as well, this sort of looking at a thing from all sides and dedicating yourself to this pursuit.
Bonus question: You briefly show the various eccentric collections your dad has, including plastic handbags and kitschy Israeli record albums from the ’60s and ’70s. What is that about?
Yes, he has a lot of collections. He also has a collection of macramé owls. There are many that are not in the movie. Maybe that’s a Talmudic thing as well, like a deep dive into whatever it is that is interesting to him. He says that every subject gets more interesting the deeper you get into it. When something strikes him as charming or funny or curious, he goes all the way with it. My mother doesn’t love them. There’s a little bit of a power struggle there, but he wins. You grow up with something and you don’t really think about it. But I knew I had to find a way to put this in the movie. People kept saying it’s irrelevant, it’s to the side, but I knew I had to because it’s so weird and says so much about him.
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New translation: The life and death of a shtetl during the Russian Civil Wars
אין 1926 האָט רחל פֿײַגנבערג פּובליקירט „חורבן דובאָװע׃ אַ פּינקס פֿון אַ טױטער שטאָט“ כּדי צו פֿאַראײביקן דעם אָנדענק פֿון דער ייִדישער קהילה פֿון דובאָװע, אַ שטעטל אין הײַנטיקער אוקראַיִנע. די דאָזיקע קהילה איז פֿאַרטיליקט געװאָרן אין 1919 בעת דער רוסישער בירגערקריג — אַ קאָנפֿליקט װאָס האָט דערפֿירט צו גרױליקע פּאָגראָמען קעגן ייִדן.
איצט איז פֿײַגנבערגס בוך אַרױס אױף ענגליש ווי אַ טייל פֿון דער סעריע ייִדישע שטימען (Yiddish Voices), אַ שותּפֿותדיקער איניציאַטיוו צװישן YIVO און בלומסבערי װאָס זעצט איבער טעקסטן װעגן ייִדיש לעבן אין מיזרח־אײראָפּע. (איך אַלײן בין אַן אַסיסטענטקע פֿון ייִדישע שטימען.)
פֿײַגנבערגס בוך הײבט זיך אָן מיט אַ פּאָרטרעט פֿון ייִדיש לעבן אין דובאָװע פֿאַר די קאַטאַסטראָפֿעס פֿון 1919. די שילדערונג איז װיכטיק װײַל דובאָװע איז דװקא נישט געװען ספּעציעל װיכטיק. ס׳איז געװען סתּם אַ שטעטל, װוּ אַן ערך טױזנט פּשוטע ייִדן האָבן פֿאַרדינט ברױט, אױפֿגעצױגן קינדער, געפּראַװעט שבת און זיך געקריגט װעגן קלײניקײטן. יאָרן לאַנג האָבן זײ געװױנט מער־װײניקער בשלום צװישן דובאָװעס נישט־ייִדישע פּױערים. װען פֿײַגנבערג באַשרײַבט די פּאָגראָמען פֿילט מען דעם שאָק װאָס די דובאָװער ייִדן האָבן מסתּמא געפֿילט װען אַזאַ טאָג־טעגלעך אָרט איז פֿאַרריסן געװאָרן פֿון גװאַלד.
איך האָב געשמועסט מיט דער היסטאָריקערין עליסאַ בן-פּורת, װאָס האָט רעדאַקטירט די ענגלישע איבערזעצונג פֿון פֿײַגנבערגס בוך, און האָט אױך אָנגעשריבן די היסטאָרישע הקדמה. זי האָט מיר געהאָלפֿן פֿאַרשטײן װי און פֿאַר װאָס פֿײַגנבערג האָט מחבר געװען די מעשׂה פֿון דובאָװע, װוּ זי אַלײן האָט קײן מאָל נישט געװױנט.
פֿײַגנבערג איז שױן געװען אַ געראָטענע ייִדישע שרײַבערין פֿאַר דער ערשטער װעלט־מלחמה. „זי איז טאַקע געװען די ערשטע פֿרױ װאָס האָט געאַרבעט װי אַ פּראָפֿעסיאָנעלע מחברטע אױף ייִדיש — װאָס האָט געהאַט פּרנסה פֿון ייִדישער בעלעטריסטיק און זשורנאַליסטיק,“ האָט בן-פורת געזאָגט. נאָך פֿײַגנבערגס חתונה אין 1914 און דעם געבױרן פֿון איר זון האָט זי אָבער אויפֿגעהערט צו שרײַבן. לױט בן-פורת האָט פֿײַגנבערג „אַנטדעקט אַ נײַ שליחות װי אַ מחברטע“ נאָך די פּאָגראָמען, אַ שליחות װאָס האָט באַנײַט איר שרײַבערישע קאַריערע.
אין 1919 האָט פֿײַגנבערג געװױנט אין יאַנאָװקע אין אוקראַיִנע, נאָענט צו אומאַן און דובאָװע. יענעם זומער האָבן פּאָגראָמיסטן חרובֿ געמאַכט דאָס הױז װוּ זי האָט געװױנט מיט איר יונגן זון (איר מאַן איז שױן געשטאָרבן). זי האָט שפּעטער באַשריבן װי זי מיט איר קינד זענען אַנטלאָפֿן פֿון יאַנאָװקע איבער װעגן װוּ כוליגאַנען האָבן געזוכט ייִדן צו דערהרגענען. אַ בולגאַרין וואָס האָט רחמנות געהאַט אויף איר האָט איר געגעבן אַ קלײד מיט די בולגאַרישע נאַציאָנאַלע־פֿאַרבן, װאָס האָט געדינט װי אַ פֿאַרשטעלונג. פֿײַגנבערג האָט געהאָנגען אַ צלם אַרום איר זונעלעס האַלדז. על־פּי נס זענען זײ אָנגעקומען אין אָדעס.
דאָרטן האָט פֿײַגנבערג אָנגעהױבן אינטערװיויִרן לעבן געבליבענע פֿון די פּאָגראָמען, װאָס זענען אַנטלאָפֿן קײן אָדעס פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע שטעט און שטעטלעך. איר נאָענטער חבֿר, דער מחבר מרדכי ספּעקטאָר — װאָס איז געװען אַ געבױרענער אין אומאַן, נאָענט צו יאַנאָװקע און דובאָװע — האָט זי דערמוטיקט צו פֿאַרשרײַבן די אינטערװיוען.
דער באַרימטער היסטאָריקער אליהו טשעריקאָװער, װאָס האָט אױסשעפּיק דאָקומענטירט די פּאָגראָמען פֿון דער בירגערקריג, האָט זיך דערוווּסט וועגן איר אַרבעט. ער האָט איר געבעטן זי זאָל צוגרײטן אַ באַריכט ספּעציפֿיש װעגן דובאָװע. „דערמיט איז פֿײַגנבערג געװאָרן די אײנציקע פֿרױ װאָס האָט געהאָלפֿן טשעריקאָװערן מיטן צונױפֿנעמען זײַן ריזיקן פּאָגראָם־אַרכיװ, חוץ זײַן אײגענער פֿרױ“, האָט בן-פּורת געזאָגט.
פֿײַגנבערגס ערשטער דובאָװע־באַריכט פֿון 1921־1922 איז געװען גאַנץ קורץ און תּמציתדיק. במשך פֿון די קומעדיקע יאָרן האָט זי אים איבערגעאַרבעט און אַנטװיקלט אין אַ שפּאַנענדיקער נאַראַציע, װאָס איז אַרױס אין װאַרשע אין 1926. „דער דאָזיקער נוסח באַשרײַבט בריהש די שטעטלדיקע סבֿיבֿה און די פּערזענלעכקײטן פֿון די פֿאַרשײדנאַרטיקע ייִדן. מע זעט זײ דורך אירע אױגן װי אמתע מענטשן, מיט מעלות און חסרונות,“ האָט בן-פּורת געזאָגט.
אױף מיר האָט געמאַכט אַ ספּעציעלן רושם דער דובאָװער רבֿ, משה אַהרן בערדיטשעװסקי — אַ למדן װאָס איז שױן געװען אַן אַלטער אין 1919. ער האָט זיך נישט אַרײַנגעמישט אין די אָרטיקע קריגערײַען, און איז געווען שטאַרק באַליבט. איך קען זיך אױך פֿאָרשטעלן דעם אַפּטײקער װאָס האָט זיך געשעמט מיט דער אײגענער ייִדישקײט און האָט נאָר געהאַט קריסטלעכע חבֿרים. און אױך משה שװאַרצמאַן דער סטעלמאַך (ראָד־מאַכער), אַן אָרעמאַן װאָס האָט זיך אַלע מאָל באַטײַטיק אַרױסגעזאָגט װעגן קהלשע ענינים.
די ערשטע כװאַליע פֿון די דובאָװער פּאָגראָמען האָבן דורכגעפֿירט די אָרטיקע פּױערים — מענטשן װאָס די ייִדן האָבן לאַנג געקענט. פֿײַגנבערג דערצײלט װי די אָנפֿאַלערס האָבן אױסגעפֿאַרבט די פּנימער כּדי מען זאָל זײ נישט דערקענען. די ייִדן האָבן זײ אָבער אַלע דערקענט. בעת דער צװײטער כװאַליע האָבן באַנדיט־סאָלדאַטן פֿון די קעמפֿנדיקע אַרמײען געפּײַניקט דעם אַלטן רבֿ במשך פֿון אַ פּאָר טעג אײדער זײ האָבן אים דערהרגעט. זײַן קערפּער האָבן זײ געװאָרפֿן אין אַ קאַלך־גרוב צוזאַמען מיט הונדערטער אַנדערע. קרבנות פֿון דער דריטער כװאַליע, אױך מערסטנס דורכגעפֿירט פֿון באַנדיטן און סאָלדאַטן, זענען אַ מאָל באַגראָבן געװאָרן לעבעדיק. פֿאַרגװאַלדיקונג איז געװען פֿאַרשפּרײט.
נאָך די פּאָגראָמען האָט מען חרובֿ געמאַכט דעם ייִדישן בית־עולם און דאָרטן פֿאַרפֿלאַנצט תּבֿואה. חוץ אַ פּאָר לעבן־געבליבענער װאָס זענען אַנטלאָפֿן האָבן די ייִדן פֿון דובאָװע מער נישט עקסיסטירט.
אין 1927 האָט פֿײַגנבערגס „חורבן דובאָװע“ געשפּילט אַ ראָלע אינעם פּראָצעס פֿון שלום שװאַרצבאָרד, אַ יונגער ייִדישער אַנאַרכיסט װאָס האָט מיט אַ יאָר פֿריִער דערמאָרדט שימאָן פּעטליוראַ אין פּאַריז. פּעטליוראַ איז געװען אַן אוקראַיִנישער פּאָליטיקער און אַמאָליקער מיליטאַר־קאָמאַנדיר װאָס שװאַרצבאָרד — װי אַ סך ייִדן — האָט געהאַלטן פֿאַר שולדיק אין די פּאָגראָמען. אַ פֿראַנצײזישע איבערזעצונג פֿון פֿײַגנבערגס בוך איז געװען אַ טײל פֿון זײַן פֿאַרטײדיקונג, כּדי צו באַשטעטיקן די גרױלן פֿון די פּאָגראָמען. שװאַרצבאָרד איז באַפֿרײַט געװאָרן פֿון שולד.
„אַ דאַנק דער איבערזעצונג אױף ענגליש װעלן נײַע לייענער אַנטדעקן פֿײַגנבערגס װערק“, האָט בן-פּורת געזאָגט. „אַזעלכע טעקסטן קענען באַװירקן אונדזער קוקװינקל סײַ אױף דער געשיכטע, סײַ אױף די הײַנטיקע צײַטן. די מעשׂה פֿון דובאָװע דאַרף זײַן אַ טײל פֿון די דאָזיקע דיסקוסיעס.“
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Esteemed by Oscar Wilde, England’s ‘greatest Jewess’ may finally be getting her due
For book lovers, the news that Cambridge University has acquired a previously sealed personal archive of Amy Levy, a Victorian Jewish novelist and poet who won praise from literary notables of her era, is a cause for celebration.
Levy’s 1888 novel Reuben Sachs is an exasperated, yet affectionate, look at English Jewish middle-class life. Levy, the daughter of a prosperous stockbroker, knew whereof she spoke. At the British Library in London, Levy rubbed elbows with Eleanor Marx, daughter of the author of Das Kapital.
In her own way, Levy, who died by suicide at the age of 27, was an anti-capitalist, although not because she favored Jewish spirituality instead. Her family only occasionally attended the West London Synagogue of British Jews, a Reform congregation located on Upper Berkeley Street. Instead of finding inspiration in Jewish ritual, Levy, in her 1886 essay, “Middle-Class Jewish Women of To-Day,” printed in The Jewish Chronicle, noted her type of mishpocheh expected daughters to marry and raise children.
Anyone interested in something beyond marriage and family, Levy wrote, must go “beyond the tribal limits” or more or less flee the family home. Levy admiringly cited examples of fellow English Jews who had become independent overachievers in their fields: Helen Zimmern, who translated Nietzsche and wrote on Schopenhauer; Hertha Ayrton, an electrical engineer, mathematician and physicist; and Mathilde (born Cohen) Blind, a poet.
The eponymous hero of Levy’s Reuben Sachs debates a fellow Jew who is dismayed by materialistic, success-obsessed capitalists, Jewish or not. Sachs retorts that despite a “cruel” history, Jewish people have finally “shamed the nations into respect” due to “self-restraint, our self-respect, our industry, our power of endurance, our love of race, home, and kindred.”
Sachs confesses that he is “exceedingly fond of [his] people.” Jews may disappear through assimilation, but the “strange, strong instinct which has held us so long together is not a thing easily eradicated.” He even foresees a form of post-Jewish reunion of Yiddishkeit: “Jew will gravitate to Jew, though each may call himself by another name.”
Levy’s reflections were interlarded with other opinions about Jews that reflected some of the prejudices of her time, about the supposed ugliness of Ashkenazi Jews, compared to the reputed noble beauty of Sephardim (reference is made in the novel to the “the ill-made sons and daughters of Shem”).
But in Reuben Sachs, she also expressed delight at the sheer gusto of Jewish life in London, writing of “excellent” bargain-hunting Jewish shoppers at Whiteley’s department store in Bayswater who radiated a “whole-hearted enjoyment that was good to see.”
Despite such enthusiasm, the UK-based newspaper The Jewish World kvetched that Levy “apparently delights in the task of persuading the general public that her own kith and kin are the most hideous types of vulgarity.” The critic added with dismay that Levy proudly supported “anti-Semitic theories of the clannishness of her people and the tribalism of their religion.”
Closer to the truth was Levy’s own explanation, published in the essay “The Jew in Fiction,” two years before the publication of Reuben Sachs, that she felt that Jewish characters should be depicted as well-rounded humans with good and less admirable aspects. For Levy, Dickens, Thackeray, and even George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda were unacceptably “superficial.” Levy saw the Jews in Deronda as improbably noble, calling them a “little group of enthusiasts” with their “yearnings after the Holy Land.”
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Her sometimes ironic dismissal of Jewish beliefs and concerns were summed up in an obituary that appeared in an 1890 edition of Woman’s World, written by its editor, Oscar Wilde, who had published her articles. Wilde observed that Levy’s “family was Jewish,” but as she matured, she “gradually ceased to hold the orthodox doctrines of her nation, retaining, however, a strong race feeling.”
Levy was also a self-assertive urban dweller; her hometown of London was an essential part of her life. In her tongue-in-cheek “Ballade of an Omnibus,” she celebrated her disobedience of the social convention that women should remain in the sheltered interior of London city buses; Levy preferred to delight in views from the top deck of vehicles (“When summer comes, I mount in state/The topmost summit.”)
Literary historian Carolyn Lake has suggested that Levy may have been concealing a lesbian identity, hypothesizing that Levy’s tragic destiny may have been partly due to the pressure of being marginalized in three groups, as a Jewish woman who did not conform to a heterosexual orientation.
In 1926, the historian Beth Zion (Roochel) Lask, author of The Jews in England: A History For Young People read an essay before the Jewish Historical Society of England arguing that Levy was the “greatest Jewess England has thus far produced.”
Levy’s stout-hearted resolve to innovate pursued her even posthumously; she specified in her will that she should be the first Jewish woman to be cremated in England. Her family respected her wishes in this respect, just as the fact that personal papers have survived to be purchased by Cambridge University is partly due to the faith of the Levy family in the enduring value of her work. The Cambridge archive, when fully examined by researchers, may help to change Levy’s reputation from writer appreciated by comparatively few mavens to a literary Lazarus with a wide-ranging readership that she has long deserved.
The post Esteemed by Oscar Wilde, England’s ‘greatest Jewess’ may finally be getting her due appeared first on The Forward.
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Equal Rights Started with Abraham and Sarah
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
Few revolutions have shouted louder about equality — or practiced it more selectively — than the French Revolution. As Alexis de Tocqueville later observed in his study of that turbulent era, “The French nation is prepared to tolerate … those practices and principles that flatter its desire for equality, while they are in fact the tools of despotism.”
In 1789, the streets of Paris rang with the cries of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! It sounded like the dawn of a new moral age, born out of years of indulgent corruption and indifference by the French king and his aristocratic associates.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was hailed by its revolutionary authors as humanity’s most perfect charter of freedom. Except — as soon became painfully clear — the word “man” in the title meant quite literally only men; women were barred from becoming citizens.
To be clear, this didn’t land well. Thousands of women, including the fearsome fishmarket Poissards, all fiercely loyal to the Revolution, had marched to Versailles from Paris in October 1789, demanding bread and justice. As they gathered outside, they presented a petition calling for full equality. The newly formed National Assembly simply ignored it.
A few brave voices did try to challenge the exclusion of women. The philosopher Nicolas de Condorcet and the feminist pioneer Etta Palm d’Aelders appealed to the National Assembly to grant women the same civil and political rights as men.
Condorcet put it bluntly: “He who votes against the rights of another — whatever that person’s religion, color, or sex — has henceforth repudiated his own.” But for all its lofty rhetoric, the Revolution had its limits. Their pleas were dismissed, and the march for “equality” rolled on without half the population.
Then, in 1791, Olympe de Gouges, the scandalous playwright and flamboyant pamphleteer, decided to expose the absurdity of the Revolution’s double standard. She published the satirically pointed Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, a transparent rewrite of the men-only manifesto.
“Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights,” she declared. With biting sarcasm, she observed that women could be guillotined for opinions they weren’t even allowed to express: “If woman has the right to mount the scaffold, she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.”
Her audacity sealed her fate. Two years later, the Revolution that had promised equality sent her to the guillotine.
The man behind this extraordinary hypocrisy was Maximilien Robespierre, known to all — without a trace of irony — as “The Incorruptible.” He had begun as a fierce opponent of capital punishment, denouncing it as inhumane and unworthy of a civilized nation.
But as the Revolution gathered pace, Robespierre enthusiastically embraced the guillotine. First, the king and queen were executed, then anyone deemed a “traitor to the Revolution” — many of them his former allies. The erstwhile champion of virtue became its most zealous executioner, reduced to a despotic murderer.
His “Reign of Terror” descended into the “Great Terror” until, inevitably, Robespierre himself was dragged to the very guillotine he had glorified. The Revolution he had championed finally devoured its own moral prophet.
Every age has its Robespierres — people who loudly preach justice and identify threats, while in reality serving only themselves. The faces have changed, but the pattern remains. Today, they come dressed for television and curated for social media, but they are the same moral frauds who, in every generation, manufacture enemies and thrive on paranoia.
Tucker Carlson thunders about freedom but gushes over autocrats and neo-Nazis. Candace Owens rails against victimhood even as she builds a brand based on grievance. Nick Davis claims to defend the oppressed although he finds every excuse for his favored oppressors.
At the other end of the spectrum, Zohran Mamdani and AOC deliver moral lectures while refusing to condemn the chant “Globalize the Intifada,” while Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker livestream moral outrage for millions, though their moral clarity seems to blur significantly whenever the topic is Hamas.
This week, it hit me just how differently morality is projected in the narratives of the Torah compared to the modern moral code shaped by the ideals of the French Revolution. At the beginning of Parshat Chayei Sarah, Abraham mourns Sarah, his equal partner in every way.
The passage opens with an unusually phrased verse (Gen. 23:1): “And the life of Sarah was one hundred years, and twenty years, and seven years — these were the years of Sarah’s life.” Rashi observes that the repetitive phrasing means all of Sarah’s years were equally good — not because her life was easy, but because her faith, integrity, and moral strength remained constant.
More importantly, Abraham’s reaction to her death — and the Torah’s deliberate framing of her life — make it clear that Sarah was not some kind of footnote to Abraham’s mission. She was his full partner, his equal in every respect.
The Midrash teaches that the beautiful hymn Eishet Chayil — the “Woman of Valor” (Prov. 31:10–31) — was originally composed by Abraham as a eulogy for Sarah. One line captures her essence perfectly: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.” Sarah was no passive companion; she was a voice of insight, a moral compass, and a spiritual equal.
Together, Abraham and Sarah launched a true revolution — the most revolutionary idea in human history: that God exists, and that all human beings are created equal b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of God. Long before France even dreamed of equality, Abraham and Sarah lived it.
The contrast with Ephron the Hittite — the antihero of Chayei Sarah — could not be more striking. When Abraham asks to buy a burial plot for Sarah, Ephron’s reply sounds magnanimous: he insists Abraham take the land for free. But once the crowd disperses, his true colors emerge. “What is four hundred shekels between friends?” he says with faux humility — while shamelessly gouging Abraham.
Ephron’s civility and generosity are pure theater. Beneath the polished manners lies greed and hypocrisy. Like Robespierre’s “virtue,” Ephron’s altruism was all performance. When the mask came off, what lay beneath was ugly.
Abraham and Sarah’s model could not be more different. Their virtue was real. They lived their principles. Their tent was open to all, and their respect for each other sincere. It was Sarah’s wisdom, in fact, that shaped the destiny of their family.
God tells Abraham, “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice” (Gen. 21:12). In that single line, God affirmed what the French Revolution never could — that true justice rests not on dominance, but on moral partnership.
And when Abraham eulogized Sarah, he didn’t speak of liberty, equality, or fraternity. He spoke of kindness, faith, and valor — qualities that endure long after slogans fade. Robespierre’s Revolution ended in blood and betrayal. Abraham and Sarah’s Revolution endures in blessing. So much for the “Rights of Man.”
The real Revolution didn’t begin in Paris in 1789, but in Hebron three millennia earlier — when a man and a woman stood together as equals before God.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.