Features
Einstein’s Smile: A Tale of Two Pictures
By DAVID TOPPER In my previous story in the Jewish Post & News, “Einstein & Johanna: A True Tale of Tragic Comedy,’’ I began by saying that I first heard the name “Einstein” when I was around the age of 10.
So let me begin this story when Albert himself was about that same age, and he had his class photo taken on the steps of his school. This picture is one of the earliest pictures we have of him – and it’s one of my favourites. It shows his all-boys class of 52 students lined-up in five rows. Einstein is in the front row, the third from the right, and clearly one of the smallest in the group.
The unique and utterly fascinating thing about this picture is this simple fact: all the other boys are looking grimly at the camera, while little Albert is the only one with a smile on his face. Look closely: all 51 others, with hands at their sides, appear stern, anxious, intimidated, sulky, or scared; Einstein, with hands behind his back, has a cute, little, slightly impish smirk on his face – unquestionably, a look that any parent would love. Just compare the detailed picture of him with the boys to his immediate sides : the contrast, indeed, is at once stunning and amusing.
Right here, in this astounding image (a mere class photo) is the visual manifestation of the laid-back contrarian that he would become throughout his life. In this one picture, knowing what I know about him, his whole life almost flashes forward before me. So, here, I wish to share a piece of this story with you.
As reported by those who knew him, Einstein was modest and unpretentious, without an iota of conceit or arrogance, treating all people in the same manner, independently of class or rank. He spoke the same way to a president as to a janitor. He also had a hearty laugh, with a child-like twinkle in his eye. OK, all this may be a bit of an exaggeration (sounding more like Santa Claus), but variations of these traits are persistently repeated among those who knew him and reminisce about his personality. He really was a down-to-earth guy. For example, he refused to travel first-class. Even when sent first-class tickets, he sat in third-class, driving the fastidious ticket-takers crazy.
I have a second picture to talk about. But before that, I want to see what else there is about his life that I can read into his class picture. What do we know about his early life that might help us? Best to begin at birth.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born in a small town (Ulm) on the Danube River in south-western Germany to unobservant Jewish parents. Although the town today boasts of his birth, he was still an infant when the family moved to Munich, where he spent his formative years. His mother, Pauline, had a deep commitment to music, and she tried to instill that affection in her young son by forcing violin lessons on him. A love of music eventually sunk into his psyche around his transition to the teenage years, and Albert carried that commitment throughout his life. He exhibited his love of music by packing his violin on trips. Serious music, to him, was confined to the works of the “classical” period of what is called classical music, especially that of Mozart and Haydn, although he would happily dip back into the Baroque and J. S. Bach.
His father, Hermann, was a businessman who could have made a lot of money at the time because he was in the electrical business (motors and dynamos, for example), which was to the late-19th century what computer high-tech paraphernalia was to the late-20th century. But, just as the “dot.com” boom and bust resulted in some winners and many losers, most who made the effort in the electrical business did not achieve success. Hermann’s business went bust.
Albert’s sister, Marie (called Maja), was born when he was age two, and she was his only sibling. Maja, in a short memoir written in the early-1920s, is a crucial source of information about her brother’s childhood; this is important because there are many myths circulating through the media and beyond about Einstein’s youth. Today, many special interest groups wish to embrace Einstein as the poster boy for their various causes. Nonetheless, Einstein was not a slow learner, a vegetarian, left-handed, nor any of a range of idiosyncrasies that you will find in special-group websites on the Internet testifying that Einstein was one-of-them. Although his parents tutored him for his first year of school, he also was not “home schooled,” for he continued through the German school system until the age of 15, when he dropped out before graduating in his final year. Yes, Einstein was a high-school dropout, but I must confess that I have not yet come across a website of “High-School Dropouts” claiming Einstein as one-of-them.
Contrary to another myth, Maja reports that her brother was not a slow learner but was “a precocious young man” who had a “remarkable power of concentration,” such that he could “lose himself…completely in a problem.” Later, for Einstein the scientist, this youthful behavior was clearly repeated – like a leitmotif, throughout his scientific life.
It’s true that Albert detested the rigidity of the German way of teaching, but he still got good grades. Yet, he did not hide his feelings about the oppressive atmosphere of the classroom, so that one teacher went so far as to tell Albert’s parents that their son set a poor example for the other students by his overt hostility. This may cast some light on the special smile on his face in our photo, for it surely reveals the contrarian attitude on social mores that he displayed throughout his life. One obvious example: think of his lack of decorum in the grooming of his hair, which began in the 1930s.
An example of nonconformity of a different kind took place in his pre-teen years when he became extremely religious and admonished his anti-religious parents for not following the rules of Orthodox Judaism. This personal obsession lasted for a few years, to the consternation of Hermann and Pauline, only to disappear right before he would have been Bar Mitzvah. (It never happened.) In his very brief autobiography, written in 1947, he says that the reason for this quick change was his discovery of science and math, and for him the accompanying realization that the Bible was untrue. The result was an intellectual and emotional transformation. He viewed the religious outlook as subjective and solipsistic, whereas the scientific viewpoint was a route to objectivity and a liberation from what he called “the merely personal” – or subjectivity. He put it this way: “Beyond the self there is the vast world, which exists independently of human beings, and that stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.” This statement acted as a maxim for his scientific endeavours to the end of his life.
But this is not the full story of his transformation: he added a socio-political element that is rather startling and remarkable for someone around age 12 or 13. He said he came to realize that “youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies” and that therefore a “mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience.” These are profound and troubling views for someone at an age where most boys are more obsessed with sports and girls. Does this give us a hint at a deeper meaning of the smile in Photo 1? Maybe not, he was but 9 or 10 when the picture was taken. Nevertheless, it does give us a sense of continuity from here to the unconventional citizen we know later in life.
As we continue to pursue the question of the roots of his maverick ways, we find two episodes of interest at age 15 or 16. Both were triggered by the collapse of his father’s business, and the need for the family to move from Munich to the town of Pavia in northern Italy just south of Milan, where his father’s brother had a more successful business. Since Albert was in his last year of high school, he was placed in a boarding house in Munich while his parents and sister went on to Italy without him. Alone and feeling abandoned, he sank into a deep depression and had to leave school. But he had the wherewithal to obtain a letter from his math teacher saying that he completed that part of the curriculum. This was the first episode.
The other episode, however, might not have seemed very level-headed at the time. After crossing the German border, he applied to the government to renounce his German citizenship, making him a stateless person thereafter. Some scholars believe that in order to trigger such a desperate act, something almost elemental about German society had deeply troubled Einstein. We know he had major misgivings about the militaristic features of German society as expressed in the educational system. Or was it a reaction to his father’s loss of his livelihood, and the need to leave the country? His sister, Maja, however, had a simple answer: he was avoiding being drafted into the military.
Accordingly, as a high school dropout, Albert arrived at his parents’ residence in Italy, much to their surprise and surely their chagrin. We have no documentation about the inevitable confrontation between him and his parents, but we can be sure that there was a dispute around the question of what he was going to do with the rest of his life. We, of course, know the answer, in the long run. But even in the short run, there was some hope.
Let’s return to that letter in Albert’s pocket when he left Munich, and back up a few years to the non-Bar Mitzvah around age 12 or 13. The unperformed religious transformative rite was replaced by a different revelation – as mentioned, he developed a zeal for science and in particular the logical rigor of mathematical reasoning. Specifically, he was given a primer on geometry, and he devoured it – even trying to prove some theorems before he read the proofs in the book. The logical way that mathematical reasoning produced eternal proofs had a deep psychological impact on this young man, so much so that even when writing his autobiography around the age of 68, he referred to this early textbook as the “holy geometry book.” How revealing this metaphor is: especially when we realize that he was reading Euclid, instead of Torah, the original “holy” book. He went on to teach himself calculus and other higher mathematics, so that by the time he dropped out of school, he was well-grounded in the mathematics required for graduation and beyond. Hence, the letter in his pocket, mentioned above.
Albert’s father had plans for his son to be an engineer. This is no surprise, since he was in the electrical business, which he (correctly) believed was the wave of the future. In particular, he wanted his son to enroll in the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in Zürich, one of the best schools in Europe. As luck (fate?) would have it, a completed high school diploma was not necessarily required for enrollment in the Poly; instead, there were a series of rigorous exams administered by the Institute. It seems that the letter from the math teacher was a factor in placing him in the special category.
So, in the fall of 1895 he took the entrance exams – but flunked them. There was, however, a silver lining to this incident. He did so well on the science and math parts (no shock here) that the Institute’s director recommended that he spend a year doing some remedial studying. After all, he was applying to the Institute a year or two early for his age, since the regular age of admission was about 18 years old.
Einstein spent the next year at the Kanton Schule in the town of Aarau, just west of Zürich. The curriculum was based on the ideas of the great Swiss educator, J. H. Pestalozzi, who (among other things) emphasized using visual materials as well as written texts as educational tools, and especially stressed direct student-teacher interaction. For Einstein, it was a delightful and memorable year: he enjoyed learning in a formal setting for the first time in his life.
Indeed, it was sometime during that year of motivated learning that he came up with what would be his first great experiment in his head, what we call a “thought experiment.” This idea involved moving in space at the speed of light; essentially it was based on this question: What would the world look like if we rode on a beam of light? Perhaps the Pestalozzi emphasis on visualizing played a role here? Listen to the following remark about the school in Aarau that Einstein wrote 60 years later: “It made an unforgettable impression on me, thanks to its liberal spirit and the simple earnestness of the teachers who based themselves on no external authority.”
Ah ha, “no external authority”: such progressive and open-minded thinking was guaranteed to have an impact on Einstein who, as quoted, believed that “youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies” and that therefore a “mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience.” This Swiss Kanton Schule was obviously nothing like the German schooling he had previously experienced. No wonder he graduated in the fall of 1896 with good grades.
The year at Aarau proved fruitful. Einstein’s admittance to the Swiss Polytechnic was based on his grades at Aarau, and although his father wanted him to study to become an engineer, he enrolled in physics and mathematics – and we know where it went from there.
One more thing about the Aarau year. There is a class photo of that small graduating class of 10 students. It’s not reproduced here, for no one is smiling. They all look relaxed, but serious too as they ponder their future. Einstein may be a bit more relaxed than the others, and he may be staring off into space much further than his fellow students – but I hesitate in reading anything more into it. Nonetheless, I do know this: once, when reminiscing about that key year in his life, he said that, while the other students at Aarau filled their spare-time by swigging copious quantities of beer, he drank from a different trough – diligently reading The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant. And that surely was nothing to smile about. (Incidentally, Einstein was a teetotaller all his life.)
My key argument here is essentially about the role of pictures and what we can (or cannot) read into them. And this brings me to Photo 2 from 1931, over four decades later. Here Einstein, now the celebrity, is at a reception in the German Chancellery in Berlin. From the left they are: Max Planck (the famous physicist), Ramsay MacDonald (British Prime Minister), Einstein, Hermann Schmitz (on Einstein’s immediate left), and Hermann Dietrich (German Finance Minister).
I have no idea why these five men were seated together or what they were talking about. There are several extant pictures of this table-talk scene, which were taken by the pioneering photojournalist, Erich Salomon. I have chosen this one because it captures an animated Einstein speaking to the British Prime Minister. Notice the gesture with his cupped right-hand. It is a captivating image clearly displaying Einstein’s alert and smiling face, all in stark contrast to the serious, stern, and solemn visages of the other four. “Come on, guys – lighten up!” – I want to say with Einstein. Or, put differently: what’s there not to like about this Einstein fellow trying to cheer-up a much too formal table? Is it not clear why I am juxtaposing this 1931 picture with the smiling boy in school? And so, it seems that a story that began with a smile appears to end with a smile.
But not so fast.
The second picture is from 1931, and two years later Hitler will control the country. Serious looking Hermann Schmitz was from I.G. Farben, the chemical company that would become notorious for its role in developing Zyklon B used in the gas chambers in the Extermination Camps, and for this Herr Schmitz spent time in prison after World War II for Nazi war crimes.
Planck’s son, Erwin – who was also present at this formal affair but is not in this picture – was later executed by the Nazis as part of the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.
And then there’s the photographer Erich Salomon (b.1886). He died in 1944 in Auschwitz, which was supplied with chemicals from I.G. Farben.
The result is that Photo 2 is deeply laden with painful meaning, and I can never again see this picture with that initial innocence I had the first time I smiled along with Einstein as he made a point to the British Prime Minister. Such is the nature of images and the interaction and interdependence of our eyes and minds. To use an analogy: pictures are as much read they are as seen. And so, knowing what we know about Photo 2, there is nothing
Features
The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Marie Winteler, his First Love
By DAVID R. TOPPER As I recall, in the TV series, Genius – which began with a series on Albert Einstein, this one by Ron Howard – the opening sequence showed a middle-aged Albert and his secretary having sex in his office.
I was disappointed, but not surprised. I knew that Albert liked sex and had several partners (in addition to his two wives) over his lifetime. But, for me, it portended the wrong obsession in his life. The true passion throughout Einstein’s life was another “s–word”: namely, science.
But this was TV for a general audience and … well, you can fill in the rest. Plus, what am I being petulant about? After all, here am I, doing the same thing!
We’ll come back to Howard’s portrayal of Einstein’s life at the end; for now I need to put all this in context. For this essay is the second (and last) part of my story of Einstein’s “dark side.”
As shown in the first part, on this website at: The Dark Side of Albert: Einstein and Mileva Marić, his First Wife, which was first published in The Academy of the Heart and Mind, February 7, 2025– Einstein’s loathsome treatment of his first wife often bordered on abuse, or at least very malicious behavior, that diminishes his image as a saintly man; even though many photos of him – especially late in life and with the halo of hair – herald that impression. The other reality, the focus of my first part, was how his maltreatment impacted Mileva and fostered the depression that haunted her all her life. In a sense, and as will be seen here, all this was foreshadowed by Albert’s previous relationship with Marie Winteler, which also had lasting consequences. (As an aside – while I’m in a disagreeable mood about TV portrayals – and since, in part one, I never commented on the TV series: I found Ron Howard’s treatment of Mileva downright offensive. He was obsessed with her orthopedic foot, ever focusing with close-ups of her gait, as she limped into a room. His camera was repeating the shameful behavior of Mileva’s childhood schoolyard chums, who taunted her.)
Now, back to Albert and Marie: we begin with how they met.
In 1895 Albert spent a year enrolled in the cantonal school in the town of Aarau, near Zurich. He had previously taken the rigorous entrance exams for the Polytechnic in Zurich (which Mileva later passed) and had flunked the non-science and non-math parts. But since he did so well with science and math, it was recommended that he do a year of make-up in Aarau; plus, he was applying at age 16, a year early. In Aarau he boarded with the family of Jost Winteler, a teacher at the school (although Albert never took a course from him). Jost and Pauline had three daughters and four sons; the youngest and prettiest daughter was Marie. The family had very progressive social and political views, which Albert admired. They were freethinking, liberal pacifists, and he quickly was comfortable and at ease in this household. Soon he called the parents Papa and Mama.
Marie was two years older than Albert, and was finishing courses toward becoming an elementary school teacher. She was an accomplished pianist, and so she played duets with him on his violin. Albert quickly fell for her, and she for him. We know about this relationship because there are letters exchanged between them when one or the other was out of town, such as Albert visiting his family during a holiday. The relationship eventually was taken seriously by both sets of parents, as seen in a surviving correspondence between the mothers. They gladly anticipated that a marriage was forthcoming. (Incidentally, both mother’s names were Pauline, and so Albert sometimes called them Mama-1 and Mama-2.) While I’m on a tangent here, it will be fitting to mention other connections that later came about. After Albert left Aarau, his sister, Maja, took courses in the city and also boarded with the Winteler family. She fell in love with and married their son, Paul, in 1910. Also Albert’s best friend, Michele Besso, married daughter, Anna, in 1898. In short, these were other ways in which Albert remained linked with the family over his life.
For a glimpse into their relationship, let me quote from letters between Albert and Marie. Listen to the turns of phrase; later I want to contrast this with Albert’s love letters to Mileva. Here are some of his salutations: “My dear little Marie,” “Dearest Sweetheart,” “Sweet Darling,” “Beloved Marie.” Some short phrases: he calls her “my child,” “you delicate little soul,” “you little rascal,” “my comforting angel.” And some sentences. “I love you with all the powers of my beleaguered soul.” “Music has so wonderfully united our souls.” The latter, of course, shows how significant their musical duets were.
Here is a longer piece dated 21 April 1896, where he is replying to a letter from her: “It is so wonderful to be able to press to one’s heart such a bit of paper which [your] two so dear little eyes have lovingly beheld and on which the dainty little hands have charmingly glided back and forth. I was now made to realize to the fullest extent, my little angel, the meaning of homesickness and pining. But love brings much happiness – much more so than pining brings pain. Only now do I realize how indispensable my dear little sunshine has become to my happiness.”
Receiving love letters like this, Marie was smitten by Albert and hence believed that marriage was in the offing. In fact, Albert even corresponded with her mother, saying, for example, “I have thought about you a great deal” and then calling himself her “stepson.” This was in August of 1896, so I’m inclined to believe that he too was thinking of marriage. But inevitably, he was to leave Aarau after passing all his courses, and in October of that year he moved to Zurich to study at the Polytechnic. We know that at the Polytechnic Albert met Mileva, the only woman in his small Physics classes, who was ignored by the other students.
Nonetheless, his correspondence with Marie continued. She was teaching elementary school, writing of her struggles in the classroom, and clearly expecting some talk of marriage. But a hint that something was amiss in their relationship emerges in the opening lines of this letter from Marie, written sometime in November of 1896. To put this into context, you need to know that Albert was sending her his dirty laundry, which she would wash and send back. (Believe me: I’m not making this up.) It goes to show how domestic the relationship was, which reinforces for me Marie’s continued belief in a forthcoming wedding.
She writes: “Beloved sweetheart! Your little basket arrived today and in vain did I strain my eyes looking for a little note, even though the mere sight of your dear handwriting in the address was enough to make me happy.” Nothing but the dirty laundry! Was Albert just taking Marie for granted? We need to keep this in context. We don’t know the extent of his relationship with Mileva this early in the school term. Maybe he still was thinking of marrying Marie. So, at the least it was insensitive. What we do know is that Marie made it clear that this laundry business was no small task; for, later in the letter, she writes. “Last Sunday I was crossing the woods in pouring rain to take your little basket to the post office, did it arrive soon?”
In the same letter she also makes reference to a previous letter from Albert. “My love, I do not quite understand a passage in your letter. You write that you do not want to correspond with me any longer, but why not, sweetheart?” Yes, why not? Perhaps he was involved in some way with Mileva by now and was distancing himself from Marie. She ends the letter with: “I love you for all eternity, sweetheart, and may God preserve and protect you. With deepest love yours, Little Marie.”
Albert wrote to her again. We know this from a letter to him of November 30, 1896 where Marie mentions that she had sent him a gift of a teapot. Apparently he wrote back, calling it “stupid,” which would be downright nasty – but not surprising, since we know how erratic Albert can be. At least, that’s how I interpret this sentence: “My dear sweetheart, the ‘matter’ of my sending you the stupid little teapot does not have to please you as long as you are going to brew some good tea in it.” Quite clearly, Marie doesn’t have it in her to reprimand him for his sometimes nasty behavior.
Later in her letter, Marie talks of her teaching duties, and how much she enjoys the task. Interestingly, she tells him of a “little boy in the first grade who shares with you a facial feature and, imagine that, whose name is also Albert.” She goes on to say how she gives this boy extra help.
Then there is this letter from Albert in March 1897. “Beloved little Marie, I love you with all the powers of my beleaguered soul. … To see you saddened because of me is the greatest pain to me. … How inhuman I must have become for my darling to perceive it as coldness. … What am I to you, what can I offer you! I’m nothing but a schoolboy & have nothing. … And yet you ask whether I love you so much out of pity! … Alas, you so misunderstand the empathy of ideal love.” Remember that phrase “ideal love”; we’ll come back to it at the end.
This brings me to an important letter from Albert to Pauline Winteler, sometime later in 1897, perhaps May. “I am writing you … in order to cut short an inner struggle whose outcome is, in fact, already settled in my mind.” He goes on to speak of the pain he has caused “the dear child through my fault. It fills me with a peculiar kind of satisfaction that now I myself have to taste some of the pain that I brought upon the dear girl through my thoughtlessness and ignorance of her delicate nature. Strenuous intellectual work and looking at God’s Nature are the reconciling, fortifying, yet relentlessly strict angels that shall lead me through all of life’s troubles. If only I were able to give some of this to the good child! … I appear to myself as an ostrich who buries his head in the desert sand so as not to perceive the danger. … But why denigrate oneself, others take care of that when necessary, therefore let’s stop.”
Unmistakably, we know now that, in Albert’s mind, the relationship with Marie is over and he is making a Mea Culpa – of sorts – to her mother. He is repeating what he wrote to Marie, that he is in pain because he has caused her pain – a rather egocentric idea, to say the least. And his excuse? He was too busy with his physics – probing into the mechanism of God’s creation – to deal with the triviality of human interaction. Of course, all this indeed is true, since this is Einstein. But at this stage of his life, it’s really only a young student’s fantasy. More importantly, it exposes what I’ve said above: science was the overriding infatuation in his life. And, God forbid, if someone would try to get in his way.
Indeed, let me repeat this phrase: “if only I were able to give some of this to [Marie].” I read this in light of the fact that in Zurich, Mileva was a fellow student, who knows the physics. It’s now a year into their studies and we know that they were at some stage of a relationship. So, indeed, Mileva could do what Marie could not; namely, converse with Albert about his beloved physics.
This brings me to the first item that proves that Albert and Mileva were in a relationship. It is a letter from Mileva to Albert in 1897, sometime in late October. She is in Germany taking physics courses. The language is formal; like intellectual friends exchanging ideas and experiences. Interestingly, it begins by her thanking him for a four-page-letter to her – which, sadly, we don’t have. But, importantly, she refers to “the joy you provided me through our trip together.” So we know that by now they are a couple. In fact, she mentions that her father gave her some tobacco to give to Albert; so, clearly their relationship is also known to her parents.
It’s also obvious how Mileva has filled in the hole left by Marie’s departure from Albert’s world. Listen to this musing from Mileva. “Man is very capable of imagining infinite happiness, and he should be able to grasp the infinity of space. I think that should be much easier.” Right up Albert’s alley, one might say. And this: “Oh, it was really neat at the lecture … yesterday … on the kinetic theory of heat of gases … [where the professor calculated that the colliding molecules] travel a distance of only 1/100 of a hairbreadth.” Surely, Marie wouldn’t have found this to be “neat” – no, not at all.
Despite Albert and Mileva now being a couple, he was still communicating with the Winteler family, possibly since his sister, Maja, was living with them. Thus, during a visit to his sister, we have this letter from him dated Aarau, 6 September 1899. At the time Marie was no longer living at home. “Dear little Marie, Little Mama relayed to me the friendly greeting that you sent me & the permission to write you. … Until now, the fear of upsetting your delicate heart has always kept me from doing so. … I know, dear girl, what pain I have caused you, and have already experienced grave suffering myself as a result.” Notice how Albert always turns the argument around, excusing himself. It’s like saying: “Oh, I hit you so hard, now my hand hurts. Pity me too.” Pathetic, I say.
He continues: “But if you look forward innocently to communicating with me & are able to replace old unfounded pain with new joy, write to me again.” His phrase “unfounded pain” tells it all. For Marie, the shabby way he treated her, and just dumped her, was real and hurtful. Calling it “unfounded” is an insult. Nonetheless, like Mileva, Marie remained love-struck by the charm of Albert and was ever eager to forgive him.
The story of Albert’s subsequent abusive relationship with Mileva was told in the first Part of the “dark side” of Albert. For now, we need to recall a few milestones in this story, since there is more to tell of Marie – as we follow her through the rest of her life, despite the meagre information we have about this.
Early in 1902 Mileva gave birth to Lieserl, whom she had to give up, after raising her with her Serbian parents for several months. As seen, Albert never saw his only daughter, and Mileva never forgot her. As I argued in part one: giving up Lieserl was probably a major source of the episodically occurring depression throughout her life. In January 1903, Albert and Mileva were married in a small civil ceremony. Neither set of parents attended. Their married life initially went smoothly, settling in Bern, where Albert got a job in the patent office. In his spare time, he was writing landmark papers on physics, while Mileva was the dutiful housewife. Two sons, Hans Albert (1904) and Eduard (1910), were born.
At this point, I sadly need to interject that back in Aarau in 1906, in the Winteler household, their son, Julius – after returning from a trip to America as a cook on a merchant ship – shot and killed his mother along with his sister Rosa’s husband, then himself. I believe this is important for, among other things, the impact it surely had on Marie; although, as far as I know, we have no documented record of this. But we do have the letter that Albert wrote to Jost. Referring to him as “Highly esteemed Professor Winteler,” he offers his “deepest condolences” despite knowing how “feeble words are in the face of such pain.” He also talks of the “kindness” that Pauline bestowed upon him, “while I caused her only sorrow and pain”– clearly referring to his relationship with Marie.
Meanwhile, by around 1909, Einstein was being seen as an important physicist within the European Physics community. In a letter to a close friend, Mileva says that Albert “lives only for his work” and the family is “unimportant to him.” That there was a strain on the marriage is further seen in the fact that Albert sends a letter to “Dearest Marie,” seemingly, of all things, to rekindle their relationship. He tells her that his “life is as wretched as possible regarding the personal aspect. I escape the eternal longing for you only through strenuous work & rumination. My only happiness would be to see you again.”
We don’t have Marie’s immediate reaction to this from Albert, but we can surmise that it would have been quite a shock – or what my late therapist wife would call, using her vernacular, “for crazy making.” Apparently Marie did reply to this letter of September 1909, because we have another letter from Albert in March 1910 in which he speaks of her having “trusted” him last year, but that she regrets it now; and he refers to a meeting between them, naming specific places where they walked in and around Bern. (Marie, at this time, had a teaching job not far from Bern.) And he reiterates: “I think of you with heartfelt love every free minute and am as unhappy as one can be.” Apparently she never replied to this letter, for we have this postcard from him to her on 15 July 1910: “Warm regards to the eternally silent one from your A. E.”
But she did reply to this; we have a letter of 7 August 1910 to her from Albert that begins: “As I was reading your letter, …” However, the message was not what Albert was waiting for, since he continues thusly, “it seemed to me as if I were watching my grave being dug.” I am quite sure I know what is happening here: Marie became engaged around this time, which eventually led to a marriage. So she has obviously told Albert of this, and this letter is his response. He thus goes on: “The little leftover joy that I still had has been destroyed. … However, I thank you … for giving me … the few hours of pure joy … 15 years ago [1895] and last year. Now you are a different person. … Farewell … and think of me [as] the unhappy one, rather than … with hatred and bitterness. … Your, Albert.” Knowing how Marie, like Mileva, was ever-forgiving, she probably harboured no animosity.
On 16 November 1911, Marie married Albert [!] Müller, a watch factory manager, 10 years younger that her. (So, again, another “Albert” has come into her life.) At the time, the Einsteins were in Prague, where Albert accepted an appointment in the German University. Besso told him of the marriage. In his reply, 26 December 1911, Albert writes: “I am sincerely pleased about Marie’s getting married. Thus wanes a dark stain in my life. Now everything is as it should be. Whom is she marrying?” (Incidentally, while mentioning Besso, it’s worthwhile to point out that there is an extensive correspondence between them that continued until Besso died in 1955, just a month before Einstein. For me, one of the riveting highlights of their relationship is the clear resentment of Albert by Besso’s wife, who openly reprimands Einstein for the dreadful way he treated her sister, as well as Mileva – and Anna harps on this, over and over, until she dies in 1944.)
Sometime around the spring of 1912, Besso informs Albert that Marie is pregnant. We know this because in a long letter to Besso of 26 March, near the end, Albert says, “I am happy that you are doing so well, and also that Marie is expecting a little boy (?), to whom I will be a kind of uncle, as a matter of fact.” The reference here is due to the fact that his sister Maja was married to Marie’s brother, Paul. On 8 August 1912 Marie gave birth to a son, they named Paul Albert. She later had a second boy, but I don’t have any further information on this.
While on this topic around Albert and Marie, let me add this. Albert also continued in contact with Marie’s sister Rosa. In a letter to her in January of 1914 he ends it this way (note the sly reference to Marie’s husband, also Albert): “With kindest regards to you and the kids, to Marie and to my namesake and general representative Albert, whose acquaintance I still hope to make one of these days.” As far as I know, Einstein never met Marie’s husband, nor saw Marie ever again.
Her subsequent life, it seems, was not a happy one – although we only have an outline of it, unlike the detailed agonizing life of Mileva that we saw in Part one. Marie and her Albert were divorced in 1927. As seen, she was an elementary school teacher, although records show that she missed a lot of classes due to sickness. She gave piano and organ lessons, possibly to supplement her income; she may have been dismissed from jobs later in life.
We also know that she tried to reach the first Albert in 1940; there exist two letters in June and September to him in Princeton, N.J. (Albert and his second wife, Elsa Löwenthal, had moved to the USA in 1933.) Similar to Mileva pleading for help to get their son Eduard out of Nazi-surrounded Switzerland, Marie wants to immigrate with a son to the USA and is asking for money and help. However, there is no record of him having read these letters. Most probably, his secretary, Helen Dukas – who was known to censor his mail – never showed it to him. But she did save it, along with the rest of the many items she sorted in his daily mailbox.
Marie was often plagued with depression, and in the end she died in a mental institution on 24 September, 1957, over two years after Einstein died. She was 80 years old, having been born on 24 April, 1877.
I will end this story where I began – the TV series by Ron Howard. Not surpassingly, in the episode involving Albert and Marie, he portrays them having an intimate relationship, which I’m quite sure never happened.
My aim here is not about moral values or judgements, but historical accuracy. Somewhere into the third or fourth episodes of Howard’s “Einstein,” I gave up keeping a list of the historical errors – and just sat back and watched it. Nonetheless, it perturbs me how the popular media often play fast and loose with the facts of history. I could harp on and on about how much work and effort goes into the writing of serious history by serious historians – but I’ll leave it there.
Albert and Marie met in the late 19th century, not the late 20th. They were living in a house with two parents and usually six siblings. There was little to no space available for privacy. Recall the salutations of Albert to Marie, and compare them with the following to Mileva: “sweet little witch,” “wild little rascal,” “my little beast,” “my street urchin,” “you wild witch,” “my little brat.” Of course, we know that their relationship eventually was intimate.
To me, the evidence of history suggests that the relationship between Albert and Marie was Platonic. Recall the quote above by Albert about “ideal love” in 1897. Sometime later in her life, Marie succinctly summarized her friendship with Einstein this way:
“Wir haben uns innig geliebt, aber es war eine durchaus ideale Liebe.”
“We loved each other deeply, but it was a completely ideal love.”
* * *
Readings:
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 1-16 (1879-1927), by multiple editors (Princeton University Press, 1987–2021), a work in progress.
The Life and Letters of Mileva Marić, Einstein’s First Wife, edited by Milan Popovic (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
A Solitary Smile: A Novel on Einstein, by David R. Topper(Bee Line Press, 2019).
#
David R. Topper writes in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Poetry Pacific,Academy of theHeart & Mind, Altered Reality Mag., and elsewhere. His poem Seascape with Gulls: My Father’s Last Painting won first prize in the annual poetry contest of CommuterLit Mag. May 12, 2025
Features
Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?
Nearly every episode in ‘Long Story Short,’ from the creator of ‘BoJack Horseman,’ revolves around a very Jewish moment
By Mira Fox, PJ Grisar, Olivia Haynie and Nora Berman August 22, 2025
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
The following contains light spoilers for the Netflix show Long Story Short.
The Schwooper family, the central figures in the new animated Netflix series Long Story Short, are diverse and unique — religious and atheist, gay and straight, farmers and businesswomen. Simultaneously, they are basically like every Jewish family you’ve ever met.
Naomi (Lisa Edelstein), the family’s domineering matriarch, is constantly nagging her kids to do better — her youngest son Yoshi (Max Greenfield) should be more professional; Shira (Abbi Jacobson), the middle child, should wear more dresses; her oldest, Avi (Ben Feldman) should be more observant. Her kids are constantly rolling their eyes and responding with sarcastic jabs. You’ve certainly seen this family. Maybe you’ve lived it.
The show, from animated hit BoJack Horseman’s creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, isn’t linear; it jumps across the decades to show us snapshots of the young Schwoopers circa day school as well as their own parenting during the COVID pandemic and its aftermath. (Season 1 ends in 2022.)
Though the Schwoopers face crises that could befall any family — like Yoshi signing up for a multi-level marketing scheme involving spring-loaded mattresses — many of the show’s plotlines grapple deeply with Jewish identity.
Avi wonders if being Jewish simply means staying insular, eating fish that looks like a brain and being constantly afraid; Yoshi has a bar mitzvah crisis, struggling with what the rite means if you don’t believe in God; Shira is desperate to get her kids into day school, and is convinced it is only through making her mother’s knishes that she can win the administration’s approval.
The show takes a thoughtful, specific approach to Jewishness. But it also feels no pressure to explain itself, leaving plenty of Jewish moments that might not land, or even make sense, if they don’t reflect your experience.
Which left the Forward’s culture team with a lot to chew on. Who is Long Story Short for, and what is it saying? Read on for our discussion.
Jewish representation and Jewish clichés
Mira: I really liked that this show was not heavy-handed with its depictions of actual Jewish practice and identity. And I loved that we had a lot of really realistic different depictions. We have the oldest brother, Avi, who has sort of rejected Judaism, and resents it; he married a non-Jew and isn’t raising his daughter Jewish. Then there’s Shira, the middle child, who is gay — but even though her family looks different, she has pretty much stayed true to the Conservative Judaism she was raised with, and is sending her kids to Jewish day school. And then there’s Yoshi, the youngest, who ends up forging a totally different Judaism from his family, after a winding and experimental journey. I know lots of Yoshis and Avis and at least a few Shiras.
That being said, some characters’ sort of Jewy affect did rankle me a little. My mom and particularly my maternal grandmother absolutely do fit the show’s depiction of an overbearing Jewish mom. But as accurate as that feels to me, it also feels a little overdone; haven’t we told the jokes about the nagging Jewish mother enough times? It felt like a little bit of a cop-out because it’s such a trope. It’s an easy way to make a show feel really Jewish, but not an interesting one.
Nora: At first, I felt like the show was building up to be a deeper revelation about who Naomi was. There’s a really moving moment in an episode that flashes back to when she was a kid, and she cuts herself with a brooch to get her chaotic family’s attention. I thought, OK, we’re finally getting into it, this will be the episode where we learn who Naomi is. But it didn’t get explored.
Similarly, with Avi, I wanted to know what the roots of his Jewish disaffection were. He just comes off as a grump that Shira makes fun of for being a self-hating Jew. There were moments where I thought we’d get a deeper character study, and it didn’t fulfill that promise.
PJ: I think part of what it’s trying to do, with this fractured storytelling, is reflect the flow of when you’re with family and you’re remembering things. The conversation is discursive, it goes back and forth in time. We don’t talk about these things in a linear way.
The show feels like a blank check for Raphael Bob-Waksberg to make whatever he wanted after this huge success with BoJack Horseman, which was a weird and funky show, basically about Scott Baio as a horse (and a Democrat). What is interesting about Long Story Short was that it is living in this real place of specificity and isn’t afraid to do that.
Based on my conversation with Bob-Waksberg, he didn’t want to be boxed in. So it’s a Jewish show that’s not about antisemitism. And it doesn’t want to touch Israel because it’s just not interested in that. These people have rich Jewish lives and through these three siblings we have this dialectic with different ways to engage with being Jewish. I found it refreshing.
On the show’s approach to diversity
PJ: I want to talk more about the Nicole Byer character, Shira’s wife, Kendra. When we first meet her, it is clear she’s Jewish. And I think we were all hoping that it wouldn’t be explained, because why would we have to; Black Jews exist. But then it’s revealed that she’s a convert, and we have this moment with her in the Vidui prayer on Yom Kippur. And the story we’re given about how she ends up finding Judaism feels a little contrived.
Olivia: That’s something I thought a lot about. Black Jews are still treated as an anomaly, as something that needs explaining. When they meet at the grocery store while shopping for Rosh Hashanah dinner, the show seems to make fun of Shira for being so presumptuous when she tells Kendra that it’s nice she got invited to a Rosh Hashanah dinner. Kendra asks, “Why are you assuming, how do you know I’m not hosting?”
But then in the next episode, it sort of seems like she was right to assume that. We find out that Kendra became interested in Judaism as a way to explain a sudden absence from work without getting in trouble. It was very Black Cindy from Orange is the New Black — she’s converting to get something out of it. They turn it into a genuine moment, but why did she need to be swindling her way out of something?
I also think the show oversimplified how accepting Naomi would be of a Black daughter-in-law. She can’t stand Avi’s “shiksa” girlfriend, but Kendra is perfect? From what I know about interracial relationships, I wouldn’t say that is likely.
Mira: I think the smoothing of how diversity is received in general was interesting. Not just with Kendra’s conversion moment, but also with her and Shira being queer. It’s not really touched on if that would be an issue for them at all in the synagogue or day school or with any of the family, and I think it almost certainly would be, at some point.
The audience for the show
Mira: I wonder what the sell for this show is. I know that I am overwhelmed every time I open a streaming app by the sheer volume of new shows I’ve never heard of. And if there’s not some big monocultural show like Succession that everyone is watching, or nothing that I go in searching for, I have trouble choosing. While “cartoon about Jewish family” obviously will appeal to a certain set of Jewish families, who else is going to watch that? I’m sure some BoJack fans will watch, of course, but I wonder if they will stay.
Nora: What is Raphael Bob-Waksberg saying about Judaism? We think he got a blank check to make this show, and he does present this diversity of American Judaism. But I’m still curious about which parts he chooses to tease out more and which he doesn’t and why.
Olivia: It feels like the show is really for Jews. I really couldn’t imagine non-Jews watching this. I was thinking it will be a word-of-mouth show, like they read about it in the Forward or hear about it from their kids.
I think there’s things you just can’t understand if they’re not explained to you. Like when Naomi explains their observance level.
PJ: The way Naomi describes their practice is “progressive, Conservative, ritual over faith and blind practice. That’s literally the only way it makes sense.”
Olivia: That makes perfect sense to me because it’s like my grandparents. My grandmother would cook bacon, and they didn’t believe in God, but it was super important to them that their grandkids were raised Jewish in a synagogue. But when my mom stopped eating shellfish and pork, her parents never knew because they’d make fun of her — that’s too observant. Even though they were huge members of their congregation.
That said, I did think that some of the references that would have been inside jokes will make sense because of how much Jewish organizations have been in the news, like a bit about a bar mitzvah check that’s a donation to the ADL.
Mira: I agree that a lot of stuff is going to fly over some non-Jews’ heads, or even some Jews’ heads. But I also think that is what makes this show good, and not annoying or didactic. I’ve written so many reviews of Hallmark Hanukkah movies complaining about how they feel the need to put in these awkward, forced explanations. A character will say something like: “Hey, do you want to come spin the dreidel? It’s my favorite traditional Hanukkah game! Gee, I just love those chocolate gelt coins.”
If I don’t want a show to explain every little Jewish thing, I think it looks like Long Story Short. Maybe not everyone gets every joke. But that means it is going to be a richer text for Jews. Even in places where I maybe wanted more development, I didn’t need it. I know so many people who have, for example, converted or are in an interfaith relationship, so I have a depth of references that I extrapolate from to enhance or enrich my understanding of the characters.
What does the show say to Jews?
PJ: I think that it’s not meant to be prescriptive or say anything definitive. When I spoke to him, he said he had a lot of ideas and he didn’t feel the need to decide anything. He could just let the characters talk through things. Which I think is not a cop-out, actually, it’s a very Jewish approach.
Nora: It’s refreshing that it’s not about what it’s like to be a Jew after Oct. 7. It’s not that it doesn’t deal with deep themes, but it’s just a family of Jews existing, and we don’t need to explain anything about it. They deal with maybe internalized antisemitism, or grief, or wrestling with how they want to be Jewish in the world. But it’s not so angsty.
Mira: Because Abbi Jacobson from Broad City plays Shira, I was thinking a lot about Broad City while I watched, and where Long Story Short fits into the canon of Jewish media.
I felt like Broad City offered a new model of Judaism for our generation, where some of these old tropes about nagging Jewish mothers or Jewish American Princesses or Jewish guilt were present, but the characters didn’t feel weighed down by them. The show offered this very empowered version of Jewish femininity that wasn’t about competing against shiksas or being scolds. Abbi and Ilana got to be fun and irreverent in their Jewishness, like when they made a huge deal about fasting for Yom Kippur and then broke it with bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches and didn’t feel bad about it at all.
I think Long Story Short is very much about the younger generation trying to figure out their relationship with Judaism, but it doesn’t offer as clear of an idea of how they do so as Broad City did. But it’s clear that all the children feel some need to reinvent their Jewishness.
Olivia: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of the shows that comes to mind for me, and the mother in that has so few redeeming qualities. There’s that whole song, “Remember How We Suffered,” that’s talking about how the only thing Jews do is talk about the Holocaust. There’s really no representation of Judaism outside of it being a chore. And Broad City was refreshing in that way — the mother in it was a stereotype, but she and her daughter have a great relationship.
I think Long Story Short was refreshing in the sense that Judaism isn’t only a burden, there’s a value and a richness to it.
PJ: I think this show is continuing in a longer tradition, maybe starting with Philip Roth and Portnoy’s Complaint, of Jews writing without their own institutional PR in mind. Not to make us look noble or good, but to present us as openly flawed. That continues on through the Coen brothers and A Serious Man, where it’s incredibly Jewish but not particularly flattering. Now we’re at this point where we don’t have to care so much about making a political statement or to dig so hard to critique our own community. It’s more tender, it’s coming from less of an angry place, but it still feels part of that tradition. We can approach with love but with an awareness that some stereotypes exist for a reason.
Like there’s this shyster-y lawyer character, the uncle, played by Danny Burstein. We go back and we see the family has a running joke about him. It is acknowledging that this uncle guy is a type of person who exists, but it’s also the type of person we make fun of — they’re a source of humor. We’re all in on the joke.
Nora: I kept thinking about the show Transparent; I think it is just sort of nice to see a family with a lot of tenderness going through these evolutions and challenges without having to justify it. It doesn’t shy away from stereotypes, but lovingly engages with them.
I also really appreciated the way it was talking about what it’s like to be marginalized as a Jew in America without it being didactic or political. I’m thinking of the episode where they go to school for a Christmas show, and the songs — one of them has the lyrics “Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa too — we tolerate them all, but there’s nothing like Christmas!” That is exactly what it’s like to be a Jew in America at Christmas, where everyone is goading you to just participate because everyone loves Christmas. It’s just such a specific experience that I’d never seen represented.
Mira: Long Story Short might not give a lot of factual information about what it means to keep kosher or anything like that, but I think it does a good job at presenting Jews of all levels of observance as normal people who are also a relatable American family.
What do we want to see in the second season?
Mira: I’d love to see Shira’s coming out, and the first time she brought Kendra home, to know how her family came around to loving her wife so easily. I also want to see more of Yoshi’s Jewish journey, which is clearly winding; I feel like he definitely took a Buddhism pit stop at some point, maybe while he worked on the goat farm and smoked a lot of weed.
And I think I want to see the grandparents’ generation, and with it, more about how Naomi and Elliot — but particularly Naomi — grew up. I want to see a bit more of her tenderness; we get glimpses, but that’s it.
Nora: I want to see how Naomi and Elliot met. I also would love a bris episode for Shira’s kids, Walter and Benjamin — I think that would be hilarious. I also want to know what happened with Avi and his ex-wife’s marriage; I have the impression it has something to do with his relationship with Judaism.
Olivia: There’s a scene in the opening episode where Avi makes a joke in the car and it relieves some tension and he and Naomi make eye contact in the rearview mirror and smile. It shows they have this deep, sweet, special relationship that kind of falls apart by the time he’s an adult. I want to know more about him.
I’d be curious to know more about Kendra’s family; we get a bit of them in that one episode on her conversion, but I’d love to see where her family is now after she has converted. I’d like to know more about ָָAvi’s teenage daughter and how she sees her family. And maybe more about their lives outside the family, like with friends — I have no idea what Shira does for work.
PJ: I imagine Shira is an academic who wrote her dissertation on Walter Benjamin, and that’s why her two kids are named Walter and Benjamin.
Mira Fox is a reporter at the Forward. Get in touch at fox@forward.com or on Twitter @miraefox.
PJ Grisar is a Forward culture reporter. He can be reached at grisar@forward.com and @pjgrisar on Twitter.
Olivia Haynie is an editorial fellow at the Forward.
Features
New biography of Carole King explores the musical genius of America’s most successful female singer-songwriter
Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN
Carole King (born Carol Klein in 1941) is arguably the most successful female singer-songwriter of all time. With over 75 million record albums sold and with 118 songs that she either wrote or co-wrote, King’s prolific and fabulously successful career has been the subject of several books and numerous articles, including her own memoir, published in 2012, which was titled “Carole King: A Memoir.”
Now, in a soon-to-be-released book, titled “Carole King: She Made the Earth Move,” journalist Jane Eisner takes a fresh look at King’s life, including her two most recent marriages (which King tends to gloss over in her own memoir, according to Eisner) to two men who were abusive to King, both physically and mentally.
Eisner herself has had a very successful career, having worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years in various positions, including as a reporter, editor, and executive. Later, she spent 10 years as editor of The Forward, a leading American Jewish newspaper (which has now transitioned to an online version only and can be read for free at forward.com.)
The book is the latest addition to a series of books produced by Yale University Press titled “Jewish Lives.” According to the Jewish Lives website, “Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity.
“Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences.
“Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.”
In Carole King’s case, however, King has given very few interviews over the years and Eisner was not able to speak to King directly. In explaining how she approached this book, Eisner writes: ” I’ve taken on the challenge to write an interpretive biography of a musical icon who is brilliant, accomplished, and complicated.
“This book was quite a journey. Though I’ve admired her music since Tapestry was released, I wanted to understand it from the inside out. To do that, I studied piano for two years, which enabled me to dissect her musicality and describe what musicians call the ‘Carole King chord.’
“Carole King was her own kind of trailblazer — she often led recording sessions in a studio full of men as she defied expectations of what a woman can and should do. I can relate. Often being the only woman in the room deeply shaped my outlook, too. It made me aware of the stories we weren’t telling and the perspectives that escaped our attention; it also made me try hard to pay it forward, and to help younger women achieve their own professional dreams.
“Ambition and anxiety, accomplishment and regret – all those conflicting emotions have laced through my personal and professional lives. That’s one reason I was drawn to write about Carole King. She faced that juggling act from the highest levels in her field. ‘My baby’s in one hand, I’ve a pen in the other,’ as she memorably wrote.”
I hadn’t realized that Eisner did not have a background in music until after I finished reading her biography of King. That makes what she has produced all the more admirable, as a great many parts of the book dissect the song writing experience in great detail. In fact, if you don’t know how to read music (which, I admit, I myself don’t), you will probably be at a loss trying to understand many parts of this book. Eisner aims to do her best to explain the genius that lay behind KIng’s best works – and how incredibly varied her style was.
Anyone who has seen the Broadway musical about King, titled “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” would have an appreciation for just how gifted King was. As Eisner explains, King’s musical talent was on clear display from a very early age. Her mother, Eugenia (née Cammer) discovered that young Carol (who added an “e” to her name when she left home when she only 17 to try to forge a career in songwriting, and changed her name from Klein to King) was very gifted musically already by the age three. Eugenia taught Carol piano herself, including music notation and proper note timing.
In Eisner’s account of King’s childhood, her early years come across as very happy. The book’s introductory chapter delves into both Carole’s mother’s and father’s family histories, going all the way back to Europe in the 1800s. King’s father, Sidney, was a firefighter in Brooklyn, where the family lived but, along with several other Jewish firefighters, Sidney purchased land on a lake in Connecticut called Lake Waubeeka. Young Carol loved her summers spent in what were very rustic conditions – and Eisner suggests that early childhood experience played a pivotal role later in King’s life when, after having achieved fabulous success – beginning with the release of her seminal album, Tapestry, in 1971 – soon to be followed by a prodigious number of other albums, King threw it all away and went to live in the Idaho wilderness – with two different husbands in succession, as mentioned, who both treated her cruelly.
Since King has remained largely silent about what led her to take such a major shift in her life – when she was still only in her 30s, moving away from the vibrant music scene of Los Angeles, where King had produced her greatest work, only to virtually cut herself (and three of her four children) from the world, Eisner uses her reportorial skills to pore through previous accounts of King’s life (including, of course, King’s own memoir), along with first hand interviews of many of the individuals who played key roles in King’s life, to try to understand how King could have changed gears so dramatically.
Eisner also refers to King’s younger brother, Richard, who was intellectually disabled and shunted off to live in an institution when he was only three. Since King rarely referred to him, Eisner speculates that King was somewhat traumatized by that experience – and that it might have played a role in the trauma that surfaced later in her life when she entered into marriages to two different – and abusive men – along with the trauma she endured when she found out her first husband, Gerry Goffin, had been unfaithful to her.
Since this book is part of a series called “Jewish Lives,” Eisner spends a fair bit of time examining how much being Jewish meant to Carole King – when, in her early years, for instance, she met Gerry Goffin, who was her first husband and first songwriting partner – and whom she married in a typically Jewish ceremony. After she was finally able to put the disastrous marriages to her last two husbands behind her, King once again returned to her Jewish roots, albeit in a spiritual form, but not with any particular involvement in the Jewish community, per se.
As Eisner writes toward the end of her book, “Throughout her very long career, King has displayed an anguished and conflicted attitude toward the public celebrity expected of her as an iconic musician. The yearning for privacy and the consequent fear of exposure, gripped her early on. Even though she had performed as a child, and sought the spotlight as a teenager, she often recoiled from it as an adult, especially as a mother. She complained about being so far away from her family when she was touring – indeed, wrote the definite song about just that experience – and yet grew to relish live performance with the same zeal and affection as she did when recording in a closed studio.”
The Broadway musical about King ends with the dissolution of her marriage to Goffin. Anyone who would have seen that show and might have been curious about what happened next in King’s life would find the answers in “Carole King: She Made the Earth Move.” Eisner notes that King’s second husband, Charles Larkey, was also Jewish and, like Goffin, was introduced to King through music, as Larkey was an accomplished musician who collaborated with King on many of her albums. But Larkey was five years younger than King, and Eisner speculates that the age difference played a major factor in their growing apart.
As talented as King was, she was also very much a devoted mother who was determined to stay at home with her children – two born while she was with Goffin, and two with Larkey. Eisner describes King’s initial reticence about playing her music in public – and the gradual ease she felt playing in front of larger and larger crowds, culminating in a concert in Central Park in 1973 with over 100,000 people in attendance.
“Carole King: She Made the Earth Move” is not meant to be an exposé of any sort. It’s written in a very professional, reportorial style. Eisner’s years of newspaper experience shine through, as she tells a very compelling story of genius punctuated by frequent heartbreak. Of course, anyone who has listened to Tapestry or some other of King’s albums of that era would be well aware that she fully used music to express her emotion. But Eisner also analyzes some of King and Goffin’s early – and greatest songs, such as “Up on the Roof,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” and “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, ” to show that King was a musical genius from the very beginning – and that she knew exactly how to elicit an emotional response to her most heartfelt songs.
“Carole King: She Made the Earth Move” is set to be released September 16, according to information available online, but you can pre-order the book from a number of different sources.
“Carole King: She Made the Earth Move”
By Jane Eisner
Yale University Press
Set to be released Sept. 16, 2025