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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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California Jewish groups decry antisemitic conspiracy theories printed in governor’s race voter guide
(JTA) — As Californian voters checked their mailboxes this week, they found a voter guide containing conspiratorial claims about Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.
The mailer, which was sent by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to the households of all registered California voters, featured biographical information about candidates slated to appear in the state’s June primaries. In all, there are 32 candidates listed, of whom 10 are considered serious contenders.
Among those who are not: the far-right activist Don J. Grundmann, who is not affiliated with any party and has previously described a group he was affiliated with as a “totally peaceful racist group.” Grundman used his entry in the guide to promote a series of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and antisemitic rhetoric.
His entry claimed that Israel had been behind the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk; purposefully killed U.S. soldiers during an attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967; orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and planned to “suitcase nuke” the United States.
“Israel, the REAL terrorists, created and funds Hamas via Qatar,” Grundmann wrote. “Countless war crimes by lsrael/ Netanyahu. No further funding for Israel. They call Palestinians AND Christians AND America ‘Amalek;—their sworn forever enemy.”
The paragraph, which included a series of links to websites promoting antisemitic materials, also included a series of antisemitic claims about Jewish supremacy.
“We are ‘goyim’ (less than human animals/cattle) that they will enslave. We are stupid chumps,” Grundmann wrote, using the Hebrew word for non-Jews that has been increasingly used by the far-right. “Israel rules our conquered Republic. Talmud—their Bible—says Christ boiling in in Israel allowed/planned/promoted Hamas attack (they murdered their own people) to justify genocide and steal billion$ in Gaza oil/gas rights. Christian Zionism = soul poison. Talmudic Judeo-Christian values’ don’t exist . . .”
In both the print version delivered to voters and the online version of the voter guide, a disclaimer was added for Grundmann’s entry that did not appear for any other candidates: “The views and opinions expressed by the candidates are their own and do not represent the views and opinions of the Secretary of State’s office.” The line also appears on the bottom of each page.
Local Jewish groups, including the Jewish Federation of Orange County, decried the inclusion of the entry, saying in a letter to Weber, “When something appears in an official voter guide, it carries a level of legitimacy and reaches millions.”
Added the groups, including the federation, the Anti-Defamation League of Orange County/Long Beach, the Jewish Community Action Network and Israeli American Council, “By including a statement containing antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories in an official voter guide, the State has effectively provided a government platform for rhetoric that fuels division and undermines the safety and dignity of Jewish communities.”
The groups called on Weber to explain how the statement was approved. They contended that the entry violated the guidelines by making “extensive reference to third parties” and using “largely of inflammatory and conspiratorial claims unrelated to any permissible category of content” included in the provisions.
“At a time of rising antisemitism, including rhetoric rooted in antisemitic tropes in a state publication is deeply concerning,” read the letter. “This isn’t about limiting speech—it’s about enforcing neutral standards and maintaining the integrity of our election materials.”
The voter guide comes as antisemitism has emerged as a notable issue in the upcoming California governor’s race, with several candidates staking out their approach to rising antisemitism in the state at a candidate forum in February. The primary is on June 2.
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Matan Koch, disability advocate who urged Jewish communities to ‘let everyone in,’ dies at 44
(JTA) — Matan Koch needed little introduction as he rolled up to the podium to speak at his synagogue’s Disability Shabbat service in October. His wide smile and power wheelchair made him well known to many his Los Angeles congregation, Ikar.
Still, Rabbi Sharon Brous, beaming at him, described her congregant warmly before ceding the microphone.
“The most important thing for you to know about Matan is that he is a deeply soulful, profoundly decent, and incredibly kind human being. And every single day that you have been in our community, you have made our community better,” she said. “It’s an absolute joy and honor to dive in with you, to call you a friend, and to have you as a beloved member of our community.”
In the sermon that followed, Koch described times that he had felt excluded from Jewish communities, or struggled to be included, because of his own disabilities. He urged his fellow congregants to change the way they think about inclusion.
“Every time you’re looking for one more participant, one more volunteer, one more Torah reader, think about who is excluded from our community by disability or any other reason — and think about how we would be enriched if only they were here,” he said. “Then let that motivate us to create an inclusive community that truly lets everyone in.”
It was a synopsis of the mission that Koch carried with him in his personal and professional life. Koch, who used a wheelchair throughout his lifetime, and who was respected as an accomplished lawyer, a passionate advocate for people with disabilities, and a committed member of Jewish communities, died Friday in Los Angeles, after a brief but fierce battle against stomach cancer. He was 44.
“His condition declined far more quickly than he, and we, had hoped,” his family wrote as they shared the news of his death on his Facebook page, filled with remembrances from hundreds of friends and followers from across the country.
“Ever optimistic, he pushed to squeeze every drop of love and connection and intellectual engagement out of life,” they added. “Even as options narrowed, Matan remained focused on staying present and connected to the people he loved.”
At the time of his death, Koch was the Los Angeles’ ADA compliance officer and director of its disability access and services division, ensuring that the city comported with the requirements of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
In the last post he authored earlier this month, Koch expressed both anger about his illness and appreciation for the many people who were contributing to a crowdfunding campaign to allow him to die with dignity at home. He said he was feeling “fury that my life has been cut so tragically short, euphoric overwhelming at the outpouring of love and support, and awe and gratitude for my family as they work with all of you in a full court press to see my needs met.”
Born in 1981, in New Milford, Connecticut, Koch was both brilliant and precocious and from an early age moved through a world not built for his body with clarity and determination, according to Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, one of his four siblings.
Born prematurely, he had cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that severely limited his mobility and required him to use a wheelchair.
It was just a few years after the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which reshaped the requirements for schools to serve students with special needs. Yet his parents, the late Rabbi Norman Koch and Rosalyn Koch, a Jewish educator, had to fight for services from their local public schools.
Koch advanced to Yale University at age 16 and went on to Harvard Law School when he was just 20, graduating in 2005. He held numerous appointments on disability rights committees, first at Yale and then as vice president of the New Haven Disability Commission. In 2011, President Barack Obama tapped him to serve on the National Council on Disability.
“His whole life was breaking glass ceilings,” Epstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a phone conversation just hours before Matan’s death.
“He had a body that was built for a world that doesn’t yet exist and he spent his whole life working to build systems that recognize ability, expand access and include people across the full spectrum of disability,” Epstein said, adding, “He sees the goodness in every person he meets, and he sees the possibility.”
The family of five kids grew up in a deeply Jewish home. Epstein recalled her younger brother having deep conversations about Jewish values and ideas with her and their father.
“That was something very important to Matan. He really loved to learn and loved to sing. He sang with gusto. And he loved camp,” added Epstein, who serves as executive director of Atra, the Center for Jewish Innovation.
Their parents were leaders at Camp Eisner, the Jewish summer camp in the Berkshires, and the family spent their summers there. “The Jewish community is his home,” she said.
Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and senior vice president for the Union for Reform Judaism, was the director of education at Camp Eisner when Koch was a camper. He recalled a time when Koch asked Pesner to help him to go to the bathroom.
Koch led Pesner back to the bunk and explained step-by-step, how to assist, with laughter and without making Pesner feel self-conscious. “From the earliest age, Matan was engaging, mature beyond his years and non-judgmental,” Pesner said.
After graduating from law school, Koch worked first as an associate at major law firms before striking out on his own as a consultant working to help businesses and nonprofits become more inclusive. From there, he joined a disability rights organization called Respectability, moving to Los Angeles to become its local director.
Many people assumed that because he was quadriplegic, Koch must be helpless, according to Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, the Jewish activist who co-founded the group, now known as Disability Belongs. In fact, she said, his abilities were remarkable.
She recalled the role Koch played during the Covid-19 pandemic, a perilous time for people with disabilities, who faced high mortality rates if they became ill from the virus.
Many of his staff were disabled. They — and countless other disabled people — couldn’t risk going to a grocery store before vaccinations were available.
Koch’s team partnered with Los Angeles and the federal government to change the regulations to allow SNAP beneficiaries to have their groceries delivered in California and in several other states. “That was huge,” Laszlo Mizrahi said.
In Los Angeles, Koch was an active and beloved member of Ikar. In his Disability Shabbat sermon, he recalled an experience in college that led him to take a deep dive into a Talmudic debate on excluding people who might be distracting from leading the priestly blessing, he told them. Ultimately, the rabbis reasoned their way into acceptance.
“In using that text, Matan acknowledged the reality of how a community might interact with someone with a disability,” recalled Morris Panitz, the congregation’s associate rabbi. “People might be uncomfortable at first. But the work of the community is to get to know the person.”
Koch delivered his sermon with conviction, but gently, with his warm smile, Panitz said. This was true of him generally. “He invited people along for the journey,” he said.
“Matan Koch left an indelible mark on our community,” the synagogue told its members in an email on Sunday that added, “Matan’s persistent belief and tireless work to ensure that everyone feels welcomed and known will endure as a moral vision in our community. We will miss Matan’s enthusiastic davening, wide smile, and generous love.”
Koch could hold court in meaningful conversations as easily with heads of businesses as with Jewish texts, said Jack Rubin, one of his closest friends since they met their first week at Yale. Until Koch could not anymore, they talked for hours at a time.
“Nothing was outside the bounds of his intellectual curiosity or his capacity to wonder,” said Rubin, whose family spent the first of Passover with Koch at Koch’s home earlier this month.
“We had seder with him, for as long as he had the energy. He asked my kids questions. It was amazing,” Rubin said, holding back tears just a few hours before Koch died.
Although Koch possessed a unique ability to persuade people to embrace inclusion and implement meaningful opportunities for disabled people, according to those who knew him well, he did face limits in his own life.
At one time, Koch hoped to attend Hebrew Union College and become a rabbi, Pesner recalled. He and others tried for a long time to make it happen. But Koch’s complex medical needs couldn’t be overcome within the school’s physical and programmatic constraints at the time.
“It’s the biggest regret of my career that we could not figure out how to get him rabbinic ordination,” Pesner said. “I think it was a loss for the Jewish people.”
Yet Koch never stopped pressing Jewish communities to rethink how they treat members with disabilities, challenging up-and-coming leaders at the Reform movement’s youth conference and being honored in 2016 by the Jewish disability inclusion organization Matan.
“Sometimes you can be a change-maker and be a person who’s putting out really big ideas, but sometimes it can come with a sharp edge,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs said in a movie compiled to honor Koch at the time, which also included a tribute from the actress Mayim Bialik. “With Matan, it comes with love, and he raises people up.”
Meredith Polsky, the director of the organization Matan, said in an email that her group would continue the mission of the friend and advocate who shared its name — a name meaning “gift” in Hebrew.
“Though his final breath came far too soon, we carry that charge forward, committed to building a Jewish community that reflects his vision of true inclusion and belonging,” Polsky wrote.
Koch’s father Norman died in 2015. Koch is survived by his mother, Rosalyn Koch, siblings Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein and Jason, Yonatan Koch, Adina Koch and Aytan Koch; nieces and nephews Amichai, Kobi, Avigayil, Duncan and Jason and his honorary family: Martin Smith, Jack and Stephanie Rubin and their children Olivia and Edward.
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Assault outside synagogue and rock thrown through Judaica shop window ratchet up Toronto Jews’ concerns
(JTA) — A pair of incidents took place outside of Jewish sites in the Toronto area over the weekend, adding to a series of attacks that have left the city’s Jewish community unnerved.
During Shabbat services on Saturday, a man tried to force his way into the Sephardic Kehilah Centre, in the suburb of Vaughan. After the man was turned away by security, he reportedly encountered a father and son on their way to the synagogue and punched the father in the face. The father was left with no serious injuries.
The following day, photos circulated after a rock was hurled and broke the window of Aleph Bet Judaica, a shop on the heavily Jewish Bathurst Street corridor. Police did not confirm which business was hit, but confirmed that a rock was thrown at a business near Bathurst Street and Regina Avenue, and that the Hate Crime Unit “was consulted and is aware.”
No suspects have been identified in either incident.
Unlike other recent attacks on Toronto synagogues and Jewish businesses, which were carried out late at night, these two incidents took place in broad daylight, both around 9:30 a.m.
The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto wrote in a statement that the Sephardic Kehilah Centre incident, which is being investigated by the police’s Hate Crime Unit, reflected “a continued pattern of antisemitic violence targeting our community.”
In March, three synagogues across the Toronto area were hit with gunfire. In the last couple of months, a restaurant owned by a Jewish pro-Israel advocate was shot at twice, at two of its locations. And in 2024, a Jewish girls’ elementary school was hit by gunfire on three separate occasions.
“As these incidents become more normalized, they erode public safety and our way of life as Canadians,” the UJA’s statement read. “This cannot be tolerated.”
The Canadian Jewish News reported that the suspect was turned away by synagogue security on Saturday for “suspicious behavior,” according to an email from the rabbi, and told security that he was Middle Eastern and not there for prayer services. After the man left the building, according to the email, he threw away torn pieces of paper which looked to contain verses of Psalms.
B’nai Brith Canada blasted “people in positions of authority” who it says have “responded with hesitation, weak enforcement, and political platitudes while Jewish communities continue to pay the price.” It also thanked Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca, who wrote that “we must be vigilant and do everything possible to support and protect our Jewish residents.”
The group called for the federal government to take eight specific actions to combat antisemitism, including establishing a national antisemitism task force, providing emergency funding for the protection of Jewish institutions, and prosecuting the repeated gunfire attacks as acts of domestic terrorism.
On Monday, B’nai Brith also released its annual audit of antisemitic incidents, which found that there were 18.6 antisemitic incidents reported per day across Canada in 2025, a 9% increase from 2024.
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