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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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New York lawmakers approve 50-foot buffer around houses of worship in challenge to Mamdani
New York legislators Tuesday approved a sweeping buffer zone measure as part of the state budget, in a measure that would establish criminal penalties for violations.
The legislation, proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and negotiated with the Democratic-led majorities in the state legislature, establishes a 50-foot security buffer around houses or worship and educational centers in response to or anticipation of a planned protest outside its premises. The bill would make it a class B misdemeanor — a low-level criminal offense — when a protester “knowingly or intentionally engages in a course of conduct that places that individual in reasonable fear for their safety.”
The measure defines a place of religious worship broadly, covering not only sanctuaries but also community centers and schools being used for services, education and religious observance. And it gives police the authority to establish a security perimeter beyond 50 feet, within which demonstrations are not allowed, when anticipating large protests or clashes.
“New Yorkers will be safer because of it,” Hochul said in a statement after its passage by the State Assembly. The incumbent Democrat is running for reelection this year and is making a play for Jewish votes.
The bill goes further than Hochul’s original proposal earlier this year, which called for a 25-foot buffer zone around religious institutions statewide. “We’ve seen demonstrations targeting faith communities outside synagogues, mosques and churches,” Hochul told reporters last month. “This is not free expression, this is harassment, and it has no place in the state of New York.”
The statewide approach contrasts with the New York City law that Mayor Zohran Mamdani allowed to become law without his signature in April. That measure, advanced by the City Council, requires the NYPD to develop safety plans for protests near houses of worship and manage access during demonstrations.
Civil liberties advocates and progressive groups had raised concerns about broad restrictions on protest activity. Mamdani, a strident Israel critic who faces scrutiny from mainstream Jewish organizations over his response to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests, vetoed a similar bill that applied to schools and educational institutions.
The City Council introduced a revised measure that does not apply to libraries, teaching hospitals, and colleges and universities.
Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein, who represents the Orthodox-populated Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, said the state intervention became “critically urgent” following Mamdani’s veto of the school safety reporting bill. “If New York City fails to take the necessary steps to protect vulnerable New Yorkers, the State of New York must act,” said Eichenstein.
A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the state law.
The push for buffer zones followed repeated disruptive protests since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza, focused on synagogues hosting real estate sales of property in Israel and in the West Bank. In recent months, protests outside the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan and Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills in Queens featured antisemitic slogans and chants that Zionist organizations view as antisemitic.
The mayor has not intervened to discourage demonstrations. Following a recent clash between protesters and supporters of Israel outside a synagogue in Brooklyn, the mayor emphasized his support of “the constitutional right to protest and counter-protest” peacefully, without intimidation or hatred.
Jewish organizations and Orthodox leaders had pushed for stronger protections, arguing that some protests outside synagogues crossed the line from political expression into intimidation and harassment.
The UJA Federation of New York thanked Hochul and the bill sponsors for demonstrating “strong leadership in their unwavering effort to help ensure safe access to critical community institutions and safeguard the right to worship free of harassment and intimidation.”
Opponents of restrictions are expected to seek legal challenges to statewide restrictions, based on concerns about infringement on free speech rights in public spaces. Hochul said last month she’d defend it in court.
Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, a progressive group aligned with Mamdani, called the state legislation “disgraceful” and “an astonishingly irresponsible course of action.” Sophie Ellman-Golan, a JFREJ spokesperson, said “it’s outrageous and dangerous” that Hochul and members of the legislature chose to criminalize protest “at a time when the federal government is actively persecuting activists and organizers” in the name of Jewish safety.
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Woody Allen’s biggest fans were easy marks for a fake monologue about antisemitism
Those still wondering “what would Woody Allen say about today’s antisemitism” were treated to what looked like an answer last week in the form of a viral monologue bemoaning the price of coffee in a roast of Ivy-educated anti-Zionism.
The only issue: It seems to be entirely fake.
The post, according to X, where the post first gained traction, was initially posted in Spanish by a pro-Israel writer named Simy Benarroch and was originally the work of a previous Russian writer named Rami Yudovin.
As hoaxes go, this one seemed credible at first glance. It’s hard not to read it in Allen’s nasal voice. It has his cadence, his references to philosophers and the inclusion of an intrusive female relative that are his hallmarks, leading many who didn’t believe this to be genuine to conclude a prompt was fed through an AI mimic. (It’s not the first time something like this has happened.)
But there are tells for those looking. See the fourth paragraph, in which Allen encounters protesters outside a synagogue: “I was walking through Brooklyn thinking about death.”
From a ripe young age, Allen has perseverated on the end, but walking through Brooklyn? Now? That far from the Upper East Side? I’m skeptical.
This could all, of course, be a rhetorical flourish. The types of woke stereotypes the author plays with, i.e.: “someone with a scarf [presumably a keffiyah], who looks like he writes poems about his own beard, explains to you — with help from Heidegger and Nietzsche — why the existence of Jews is a form of aggression and a threat to humanity,” have a home in his native borough.
The thrust of this argument, that pro-Palestinian protesters use the language of the academy to justify the oldest hatred is hardly novel. They are in fact facile to the point of tracking with Allen’s own “witch hunt” comments about #MeToo (for which he said he should be the poster boy; he achieved this in a sense, but not in the way he meant.)
But if this is any type of Allen, it’s one of his characters, not the man himself.
“My grandmother, by the way, lived through actual Nazis,” the author writes, of hearing a protester indulging in Holocaust inversion. “She hid in a basement in Poland with a man who coughed so hard the Germans could have found them just from the bronchial racket.”
Allen’s grandparents were in the U.S. during World War II, but nice line.
John Podhoretz slammed this forgery, remarking how the real auteur has been “shamefully silent since October 7.”
This is an odd kind of indictment, aside from not being strictly true.
Who, exactly, would Allen reach in his activism for Jews? Should he shift to advocacy, he would likely find the exact same audience that shared the fake and found themselves nodding reverently along.
Perhaps this bodes well for Allen’s continued influence on the segment of the population still dying to hear his insights. Woody Allen may be 90, cancelled and taking a break from making movies, but Woody A.I.len can live forever.
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U.S. launches attacks on Iran as negotiations over a peace deal drag out
(JTA) — The United States announced it had launched defensive strikes on Monday in Southern Iran, targeting Iranian missile sites and boats it believed were placing mines.
The move threatens to derail an already fragile ceasefire between the United States, Iran and Israel aimed at giving the U.S. and Iran space to hammer out a deal to end the hostilities. It also comes as U.S. President Donald Trump told several Muslim allies participating in consultations over a deal that they should normalize relations with Israel in exchange for the U.S. inking the agreement.
U.S. Central Command Spokesperson Navy Capt. Tim Hawkin said in a statement issued Monday that strike targets “included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines.”
He added that U.S. forces “conducted self-defense strikes … to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” and that CENTCOM “continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”
The attacks were conducted in the port city of Bandar Abbas around the strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as cited by CNN.
The strikes came just 24 hours after President Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he had instructed his representatives to “not rush into a deal,” stressing that “time is on our side.” Trump emphasized in the message that Iran “cannot develop or procure a Nuclear Weapon,” a key aim of the American military effort but one the president had not referred to in comments over the weekend that a deal was close.
Trump noted in another post Sunday that the deal was not yet “fully negotiated,” but that if he makes a deal with Iran it “will be a good and proper one,” and that he does not “make bad deals.”
Trump’s comments came as several GOP voices have expressed concerns about a deal he said Saturday was “largely negotiated.” Trump’s posts Sunday came after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) posted on X that the reported terms of the agreement would be a “disastrous mistake.”
Trump also stated on Truth Social Monday that Muslim countries should “mandatorily” sign on to the Abraham Accords as part of any agreement to end the war between Iran and Israel.
He named Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, though he said it might be possible for a couple to be exempted.
Following the U.S. strikes on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in India Tuesday that the Strait of Hormuz has to be open, “one way or the other,” and that negotiations with Iran could “take a few days.”
Meanwhile, several media outlets reported that Iran announced Tuesday that it had executed Gholamreza Khani Shekerab for alleged espionage and intelligence cooperation with Israel.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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