Vanity Fair Editor Who Pretended To Be Jewish Steps Down
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter announced that he will step down after 25 years at the helm of one of the world’s best-known magazines.
Carter, 68, said on Thursday that it was “simply time” for him to move on and enjoy some time off before deciding on a “third act.”
In 2000, the New York Magazine revealed that Carter for years had pretended to be Jewish during the 1970s.
A friend of Carter’s, Craig Walls, recalled one time when Carter told other journalists and writers at a party that his mother “would kill” him for eating pork. Asked why, he said: “Because I’m Jewish,” Walls recalled. Carter confirmed to the New York Magazine that he had pretended to be Jewish.
“I was reading a lot of Kerouac and a lot of Ginsberg,” Carter told New York Magazine. ”And I thought, If you’re going to be an intellectual in New York, you’ve got to be Jewish. It wasn’t some experiment, like Gentleman’s Agreement, or anything like that. It was just … I thought … I just found it… I don’t know. It was so much more exotic than what I really was.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
