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Robert Gottlieb, legendary editor who championed Joseph Heller, Robert Caro and Chaim Potok, dies at 92
(JTA) — Robert Gottlieb, the legendary literary editor who shepherded into print and best-sellerdom such 20th-century classics as Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” and Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen,” died Wednesday at age 92.
Few editors of his generation had as big an impact on the literary culture, from his time as editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster to his later association with Alfred A. Knopf (now Knopf Doubleday). He edited The New Yorker for five years and wrote numerous books himself, including several on one of his many passions: ballet.
The eye and obsessiveness he brought to editing (and what he once described as his “convoluted, neurotic, New York Jewish mind”) were captured last year in a documentary, “Turn Every Page,” about his longtime relationship with Caro, a fellow Jewish New Yorker. The film, by Gottlieb’s daughter Lizzie Gottlieb, remembers when Gottlieb and Caro sat side by side trimming Caro’s massive manuscript for “The Power Broker” — an epic biography of the New York City master builder Robert Moses — into a still weighty 1,200 pages. The book went on to become a bestseller and remains a touchstone for a generation of journalists and city planners.
“From the day 52 years ago that we first looked at my pages together, Bob understood what I was trying to do and made it possible for me to take the time, and do the work, I needed to do,” Caro said in a statement on Gottlieb’s passing. “People talk to me about some of the triumphant moments Bob and I shared, but today I remember other moments, tough ones, and I remember how Bob was always, always, for half a century, there for me. He was a great friend, and today I mourn my friend with all my heart.”
At his death, Gottlieb was working with Caro on the last installment of his five-volume Lyndon Johnson biography. There was no word from Knopf Doubleday on who would finish the edits on the long-awaited book.
A self-described “Jew who knows nothing about Jewishness,” Gottlieb was working at Simon & Schuster when in 1966 he received the manuscript for a novel by a rabbi about two Orthodox Jewish boys — one Modern, one Hasidic. Gottlieb saw the potential in Chaim Potok’s book, thinking it might introduce gentile readers and secular Jews like himself to the world of Orthodoxy while telling a universal story about fathers and sons. Gottlieb advised on the title of the book, and took his scalpel to the manuscript.
“I recognized that the book had come to an end, and that Chaim had written 300 more pages,” Gottlieb told the Paris Review in 1994. “The material that was the motor of the book had worked itself out, and he had gone on to write the sequel. So I called up Chaim’s agent and said, I love the book and would like to talk to him about it, but please explain to him it’s only on the condition that he drop the last 300 pages that I want to publish it; if he wants to leave it as it is, it’s a different book. Chaim immediately saw the point, so there was no problem.”
Following its publication in 1967, the book stayed at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for 10 months. It spawned a movie starring Robbie Benson and Rod Steiger, and a sequel, “The Promise.”
Gottlieb also proposed that Potok write a nonfiction history of the Jews. “I grew up in an atheist household; I never attended anything. I thought that Chaim could write a very popular and useful book that might instruct someone like me,” said Gottlieb. “Wanderings” was published by Knopf in 1987.
Gottlieb’s other credits include fiction by future Nobel laureates Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul; spy novels by John le Carré; lyrics by Bob Dylan; fiction by the Canadian Jewish novelist Mordecai Richler; essays by the Jewish screenwriter, journalist and novelist Nora Ephron, and blockbuster science thrillers by Michael Crichton.
Born and raised in Manhattan, he graduated from Columbia University in 1952. After studying at Cambridge University, he joined Simon & Schuster in 1955 as an editorial assistant. Soon after, he took on a satirical novel by a Jewish writer and former World War II pilot named Joseph Heller. Gottlieb saw its potential when senior editors didn’t, and among his suggestions was changing the book’s title from “Catch-18” to “Catch-22” — to avoid confusion, Gottlieb explained, with Leon Uris’ “Mila 18,” a bestseller about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The book was a huge success and “Catch-22” entered the lexicon as a phrase meaning an unsolvable dilemma.
“I suppose our convoluted, neurotic, New York Jewish minds work the same way,” Gottlieb said about his relationship with Heller.
Gottlieb was married twice, the second time to actor Maria Tucci, and had three children. A famous workaholic, he reportedly was reviewing proofs of a book by the Jewish author Cynthia Ozick while helping his pregnant wife through labor.
Earlier this year, Lizzie Gottlieb told the New York Jewish Week that her father and Caro both strongly identified as New York Jews.
“It’s almost a Talmudic focus on their craft, and without that they wouldn’t be who they are,” said the filmmaker. “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.”
Lizzie Gottlieb also commented on her father’s various eccentric collections, including kitschy Israeli record albums from the 1960s and ’70s.
“Maybe that’s a Talmudic thing as well, like a deep dive into whatever it is that is interesting to him,” she said. “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.”
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Germany has found the culprit behind a deadly antisemitic arson fire. It still hasn’t learned its lesson.
The only way out of the Jewish old-age home at Reichenbachstrasse 27 in Munich ran through a four-story wooden stairwell. On the evening of Feb. 13, 1970, someone soaked that stairwell with gasoline and set it on fire.
It became a chimney. Flames and smoke raced upward, cutting off the residents above. Firefighters rescued many of the roughly 30 people inside, but seven Jewish residents aged 59 to 71, died. 15 people were injured, four seriously. All seven victims had survived Nazi persecution. Auschwitz had been liberated just 25 years earlier.
For 56 years, no one could identify the culprit.
In August, the Munich General Prosecutor’s Office announced that it now believes a right-wing extremist started the fire. Earlier this year, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel identified him as Bernd V., providing only his first name and last initial in accordance with German privacy laws. Der Spiegel also ran a black and white police photo of the suspect. It shows a man with a broad forehead, deep-set eyes and weak chin, wearing an unsmiling, withdrawn expression. The caption read, “Raised with Love for the Führer.”
Bernd V. was 25 at the time of the arson attack and died in 2020. His death means there will be no trial, though prosecutors say the evidence now points clearly to his responsibility. They found no reliable evidence of accomplices.
After his death, a woman contacted authorities and told the police that Bernd V. and two other men had been involved in a botched burglary at a jewelry store close to the Jewish community center on the night of the attack. Bernd V. ranted to his accomplices that the Jews had everything while Germans like him had nothing and verbally threatened to set Jews on fire. Roughly 15 minutes later, the building at Reichenbachstrasse 27 was ablaze.
In April 2025, investigators in Munich reopened the case, which had been closed in 2017 for lack of evidence. Old acquaintances of Bernd V, including relatives of the woman who had provided the new statement and who corroborated her account, remembered a man with a deep hatred of Jews who was obsessed with Hitler. He played records of the Führer’s speeches and practiced shooting around Berchtesgaden, where Hitler once had an idyllic residence. As a juvenile, Bernd V. had been sentenced for blowing up two telephone booths.
More strikingly, he was not a new suspect in the arson case. A former cellmate from one of Bernd V.’s prison stints in the early 1970s told investigators that Bernd V. had boasted to him of carrying out the Reichenbachstrasse attack and described details that, according to prosecutors, were not publicly known. Prosecutors questioned Bernd V. in 1972; he denied involvement, and the case against him was dropped two years later for lack of evidence.
The Reichenbachstrasse fire changed Jewish life in Germany — and the long uncertainty about its perpetrator helped shape a comforting German story about the sources of postwar antisemitism.
Bernhard Purin, the founding director of Munich’s Jewish Museum, has called the attack, quite simply, “the rupture.” Purin, who died in 2024, explained in a 2020 interview that before Feb. 13, 1970, people entered Jewish community centers much as they entered Christian ones. Afterward came police cars, cameras and heightened security, including metal detectors. Jews in Germany drew the bleak conclusion that they could only live under protection.
That security regime has become so routine here that it passes for normal. Police officers and Israeli security stand guard outside synagogues and Jewish schools. Visitors pass barriers and identity checks before entering institutions devoted to worship, education and community.
Permanent security presence has an unintended consequence: It marks official Jewish life as something fundamentally separate from ordinary life. A synagogue behind police barriers may be safer, but that fortification tells Jews and non-Jews alike that Jewish institutions are a world apart.
The attack also has another legacy. Because nobody knew who committed it, the crime gradually became evidence in a wider argument about left-wing antisemitism. In 1969, German left-wing radicals planted a bomb that failed to detonate at the Jewish community center in West Berlin on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Parts of the revolutionary left embraced an anti-Zionism that could turn antisemitic. The Red Army Faction later celebrated the Palestinian terrorists who murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972; German left-wing terrorists subsequently collaborated with Palestinian militants at Entebbe.
But the history of left-wing antisemitism gradually absorbed a crime for which no such attribution had been proved. It fed into the narrative that, as the political scientist Yascha Mounk put in his 2014 book Stranger in My Own Country, “since 1945, the Germans who have committed the most radical attacks on Jews were not right-wing radicals.” Many Germans found it psychologically convenient to believe that the Reichenbachstrasse victims had died at the hands of German antifascists rather than neo-Nazis.
The generation of 1968 performed an indispensable service by forcing West Germany to confront questions its parents had largely evaded: What had Germans done under Hitler? Why had former Nazis returned to positions of authority? What did Auschwitz demand of the generations that followed?
The discovery that some of those self-proclaimed antifascists themselves became antisemites produced a terrible historical irony. It also offered Germans a way to relocate antisemitism. The Jew-haters were now the rebellious children, the revolutionary leftists, the Palestinians and not necessarily the political descendants of the very people who had murdered Europe’s Jews.
Mounk himself called the radical left’s projection of fascism onto Jews and Israel a “psychological coping mechanism.” The apparent solution of the Munich case suggests a parallel mechanism in postwar Germany: antisemitism has often been easiest to recognize when it belongs to somebody else.
Today, that somebody else is frequently Muslim.
At the reopening of the Reichenbachstrasse synagogue last September, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz explicitly acknowledged that antisemitism “was never gone” from the Federal Republic. But within minutes he turned to immigrants, arguing that Germany had ignored the fact that a “considerable” number came from countries where antisemitism was effectively state doctrine. Months earlier, he had told Fox News that Germany suffered from “a kind of imported antisemitism.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jews in Germany have faced alarming hostility connected to Israel and Gaza, including from Islamist and radical anti-Zionist milieus. But that’s only part of the story. Germany’s principal civil-society monitoring network for antisemitism, RIAS, recorded 8,725 antisemitic incidents in 2025. It linked 807 of them to right-wing extremism, the highest number in that category since nationwide monitoring began. And Germany now has a far-right party of enormous electoral strength whose leading figures have repeatedly tested the boundaries of the country’s postwar taboos.
That party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is currently polling around 41% in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of next month’s state election. One of its most prominent politicians, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted for using the banned slogan of Hitler’s SA.
Fifty-six years after seven Jews died in a burning building, prosecutors now believe the likeliest perpetrator was a German neo-Nazi whose fanatical hatred had been visible for years. That finding comes too late to punish him. It does not come too late to unsettle the story Germans have often told themselves about the crime.
And the other legacy of that night remains all around us. The rupture of 1970 has never fully healed. German Jews still worship, study and gather behind cameras, guards and police barricades: constant reminders that Jewish life here is somehow separate.
The challenge is not only to safeguard Jewish life, but to stop treating permanent protection as its natural condition. That requires Germany to confront antisemitism wherever it appears, including on a resurgent far right whose danger is easier to minimize when attention is fixed elsewhere.
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Emil Kalin wins Mendele Prize for Yiddish Literature 2026
דער תּּל-אָבֿיבֿער שטאָטראַט האָט די וואָך אַנאָנסירט, אַז דער ייִדישער שרײַבער עמיל קאַלין האָט זוכה געווען צו באַקומען דעם מענדעלע-פּּריז פֿאַר ייִדישער ליטעראַטור. דעם פּרײַז טיילט די שטאָט אויס יעדע פֿיר יאָר פֿאַר בעלעטריסטיק, ליטעראַטור־קריטיק אָדער אַנדערע בײַטראָגן צו דער ייִדיש־ליטעראַטור.
דעם פּריז האָט מען אים געגעבן אין שײַכות מיט זײַן לעצטן ראָמאַן, „צוזאַמענבראָך“ (2025), וועגן אַ געוועזענעם חרדישן ייִד פֿון ירושלים, וואָס פֿאַרלאָזט זײַן פֿרוי און קינד און לאָזט זיך גיין אויף אַ קאָמפּליצירטן גײַסטיקן דרך. דאָס בוך איז דערשינען אין פֿאַרלאַג ייִדיש-בראַנזשע און לייוויק-פֿאַרלאַג, מיט דער שטיצע פֿון דער „נאַציאָנאַלער אינסטאַנץ פֿאַר ייִדישער קולטור“. מע קאָן עס קויפן דורך leyvik.org.
נישט לאַנג נאָך דער פּובליקאַציע פֿונעם ראָמאַן האָט דער פֿאָרווערטס־רעצענזענט מיכאל קרוטיקאָוו געשריבן וועגן דעם בוך, און בפֿרט וועגן דעם הויפּט־פּערסאָנאַזש, הערש, אַזוי:
קאַלין שילדערט סײַ מענטשן און סײַ לאַנדשאַפֿטן אָן קײן שום באַפּוצונג. ער איז אַ מײַסטער פֿון מעטאַפֿאָרישן אימאַזש, װאָס שאַפֿט אַ געהעריקע שטימונג. די שטאָט תּל־אָבֿיבֿ איז אַ מין לעבעדיקע, פֿיבערדיקע חיה, װאָס כאַפּט הערשן פֿעסט אַרום „מיט בײדע שװיציקע הענט.“ די אױטאָבוסן זײַנען „אומגעלומפּערטע יבשה־שיפֿן, װאָס שנײַדן זיך קױם דורך אַ װעג אין דער ברױזנדיקער באַװעגונג.“ ער אַנטלױפֿט קײן ירושלים מיט אַ האָפֿענונג, „אַז ירושלים װעט מיך דערהײבן מיט זיך, אָבער דאָס פֿאַרקערטע איז געשען: ירושלים האָט מיך דערנידערט, אַראָפּגעשלעפּט מיט זיך אין בלאָטע.״
די דרײַ ריכטער פֿונעם פּריז־קאָמיטעט — דבֿ־בער קאָטלערמאַן, דניאל גלאַי און נירה תּובֿל — האָבן געזאָגט, אַז קאַלינס בוך איז נישט בלויז זייער גוט געשריבן, נאָר איז אויך איינער פֿון די גאָר ווייניק מאָדערנע ראָמאַנען אויף ייִדיש, וואָס באַהאַנדלען טעמעס פֿון דער הײַנטיקער ישׂראלדיקער געזעלשאַפֿט.
אַחוץ „צוזאַמענבראָך“ האָט קאַלין אַרויסגעגעבן צוויי אַנדערע ראָמאַנען, און הײַיאָר וועט דערשײַנען זײַן פֿערטער. די אויסטיילונג וועט פֿאָרקומען דעם 1טן דעצעמבער 2026 אין עינבֿ-זאַל, וווּ עס וועט אויך בײַזײַן דער תּל-אָבֿיבֿער בירגער-מײַסטער רון חולדאי.
עמיל קאַלין איז געבוירן געוואָרן אין 1982 אין בוקאַרעשט, און האָט מיט זײַן משפּחה עולה געווען קיין ישׂראל אין עלטער פֿון 7 יאָר.
ער האָט פֿאַרענדיקט זײַנע הויכע לימודים אינעם העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט אין ירושלים, און האָט לאַנגע יאָרן געאַרבעט אין הײַטעק. הײַנט לערנט ער פּסיכאָלאָגיע אינעם תּל-אָבֿיבֿער אוניווערסיטעט.
קאַלין האָט אויך איבערגעזעצט אויף ייִדיש דאָס דײַטשישע בוך „דער גאַנג פֿון די הינט“, וואָס איז אַרויס דורכן פֿאַרלאַג „אָלניאַנסקי טעקסט“. זײַנע אַנדערע ביכער זײַנען אַרויס דורך די פֿאַרלאַגן „ייִדיש בראַנזשע“ און „ה. לייוויק“.
זײַנע קירצערע ווערק קען מען לייענען אינעם דיגיטאַלישן זשורנאַל „ייִדיש בראַנזשע“, רעדאַקטירט פֿון באָריס סאַנדלער.
אין יאָר 2025 איז ער פֿאַרבעטן געוואָרן אויף אַ טור אין אַכט שטעט אין דײַטשלאַנד, כּדי פֿאָרצושטעלן דאָס בוך „צוזאַמענברוך“.
ער וווינט אין תּל־אָבֿיבֿ מיט זײַן פֿרוי שבֿע כּהן און זייערע דרײַ קינדער.
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Brussels Airlines workers threaten strike over flights to Israel, citing ethical objections
(JTA) — A Belgian union has threatened to strike against Brussels Airlines for compelling staff to work on flights to Israel, saying that anyone with “safety or conscientious objections” should be able to refuse.
ACV Puls, Belgium’s largest trade union, said on Tuesday that the company was breaking previous agreements to rely on volunteers for flights to Tel Aviv. The airline resumed flights to Tel Aviv on August 3, following a five-month pause because of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, and its first flights were operated with volunteers.
“Serious concerns exist among the staff regarding both physical safety and the mental and ethical impact of these flights,” ACV Puls spokesperson Jolinde Defieuw said in a statement. She added that making staffing mandatory was “particularly serious in the context of the ongoing war and the genocide in Gaza.”
ACV Puls, which represents aviation employees including pilots, cabin crews and ground staff in Belgium, said that a strike could follow if Brussels Airlines does not reverse its decision to resume regular staffing. The union argued that flying to Israel could not be deemed sufficiently safe, citing Belgium’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which advises against “all non-essential travel to Israel and Jerusalem.”
They also said that workers should be able to decline the flights for ethical reasons. Those who have “safety or conscientious objections must be able to refuse these flights without financial, professional, or disciplinary consequences,” said the union.
Nico Cardone, a spokesperson for Brussels Airlines, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that safety was the company’s “highest priority, whether we operate with volunteers or not.” He added that the airline was “not a political party” and made decisions about flight operations based on safety and demand.
“We do not engage in political discussions about the governments of certain destinations, and we ask our staff to uphold this same professional standard,” said Cardone.
ACV Puls said the airline was compelling crews to work because it had not found enough volunteers. Cardone disputed that, saying the airline always aimed to return to regular crew scheduling over time.
Along with threatening a strike, the union called on the Belgian government to weigh in. ACV Puls said the government should take a stance on the availability of commercial flights to Israel “despite the ongoing war, the massive civilian casualties, and the serious accusations of war crimes and human rights violations against the Palestinian population.”
Belgium has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and Israeli settlements in the West Bank since 2023. Earlier this year, Belgium banned aircraft carrying military equipment bound for Israel from crossing its airspace. The government in July approved a ban on goods imported from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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