Features
How Elliot Rodin was inspired to create a website offering advice on when to take your Canada Pension
By BERNIE BELLAN In 2019 Elliot Rodin happened to read an article about an authoritative U.S. report that provided a detailed analysis showing that 94% of Americans pick the wrong time to begin taking Social Security benefits. Reading about that report led to a shift in Rodin’s life.
Two years after closing down the business (Central Grain) that had been in his family’s hands for over 60 years, Rodin says that he then had time to think about the implications of that US report – and how it could translate into the Canadian scene.
Now, some 15 months after reading about that U.S. report, Rodin has launched a website titled HelpYouRetire.ca.
Long an active member of the Jewish community, Rodin says his most recent involvement in the community was helping to build Oholei Torah Day School at the Jewish Learning Centre in Winnipeg. He says he’s also been on the board of the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, the Board of Jewish Education, the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council, the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, and had been a canvasser for the CJA for years, beginning under Ralph Hamovich. He was also a co-chairman of the Operation Exodus campaign.
Still, it’s a long way from running a cattle feed business and volunteering for different Jewish organizations to creating a website intended to help individuals plan their retirement dates.
Using very sophisticated analytical tools, HelpYouRetire.ca allows users to enter information about their age, the age at which they would like to retire, how much they would expect to receive in either CPP/QPP or OAS at a certain age, and how much more they could expect to receive if they were to postpone taking either CPP or OAS by just one year. This financial gain is also shown both as a percentage of future pension proceeds and as a percentage of the annual pension. For a small fee, all of this information can be shown in the “advanced analytics” for all years up to age 69. The information (which can be downloaded) is displayed in bar charts and a numeric chart together with the projected annual pensions.
This information is of great value for anyone thinking about their retirement planning. It can also be very helpful to those who have recently started taking either CPP/QPP or OAS pensions. A little publicized provision of these plans is that within six months of starting to receive one of these pensions, you can reverse your decision by paying back the monies received. In that event, you can take the related pension at a later date. The “advanced analytics” on HelpYouRetire.ca can give you information to assist in making that decision.
But, before we launch into a further exploration of how Elliot Rodin came to be involved in an endeavour that was far removed from selling cattle feed – which was the primary activity of Central Grain, we thought it might be interesting for readers to know something about Rodin’s life. During a long phone conversation we had Rodin told quite an interesting story how he ended up being involved with Central Grain for 60 years – when, had it not been for a fire there in 1966, he probably would have ended up doing something completely different.
While his recent foray into the world of retirement planning might be considered a radical departure for someone who spent so much time in the feed business, when you read about his educational background and his first entry into the business world, you’ll begin to understand how he developed the fine analytical skills that eventually lent themselves to creating HelpYouRetire.ca
Born in 1943, Rodin is the oldest of three children. His earliest years were spent living in his grandparents’ house on Bannerman Avenue, he says, along with his parents and, for a short while, his younger sister, Janis.
“My father (Maurice) was a fruit store proprietor,” Rodin says. “He would be up early in the morning to pick up the fruit. And because we were living at my grandparents’ house, he wasn’t paying any rent, so he was able to save some money. My mother (Lillian) was a university graduate who motivated all her children to work hard and succeed.”
In 1946, an opportunity arose for Rodin’s father to become, with $10,000, a one-third partner in Central Grain, in partnership with the Kanees and the Malchys. “The Malchy who was involved in the partnership died in 1951,” Rodin explains. “My dad and the Kanees bought out his interest and became half partners.
“In 1956, with the assistance of my grandfather, my dad bought out the Kanees and became the sole owner of Central Grain,” Rodin continues. “Soon after that time we moved to the south end – to 431 Queenston.” However, family connections were maintained as Sunday was the day when the whole family would go to the north end to visit relatives.
As a teenager Elliot says that his involvement in the Toppers chapter of BBYO was very important to him. He and his friends learned to organize themselves for a wide range of social, athletic, cultural and fund raising activities.
But, early on he had a taste of the world of business – both in his father’s company and in his own small scale business.
“When I was 16-17 I would go into the office and help with the bookkeeping – and other odd jobs around the place in the summertime,” he explains.
At the same time though, “I had my own business,” he adds. “I had a grass cutting business.” (At that point Rodin tells a story about how one of his customers didn’t want to pay him. Rodin says that he and his friend, Michael Nozick, proceeded to serve a small claims summons against that individual. Apparently, that was Michael Nozick’s first foray into the legal world. By the way, the customer ended up paying Rodin what he was owed.)
In the early 1960s Elliot began a period in his life that saw him acquire a solid education in finance, starting with his obtaining a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Manitoba in 1963.
Rodin continues his story: “I decided I wanted to go away for my MBA degree. I visited three different schools. I took a bus trip – about 43 hours, to Philadelphia, to the Wharton School of Finance, then to Boston, to the Harvard Business School, and then to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to the University of Michigan.
“I had also put my application into Stanford. I wasn’t accepted at Stanford, but I was accepted at Wharton and Michigan, while Harvard said basically ‘We won’t accept you this year because you’re a little young, but we’ll promise you a place in next year’s class.’
“So I decided to wait a year. I worked in the family business for a year, then I went to the Harvard Business School because that was what I thought was the top place to go. I spent two years there and while I was there I also spent one summer with the Skelly Oil Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“I was working on special projects for the treasurer (of Skelly Oil). One of them was a computerized analysis of how to make oil drilling decisions, but it never got off the ground – even though the analysis was very sophisticated, because the exploration people would not accept it because they saw it as infringement on their turf.
“Still, I learned a lot from that particular project. It was my first serious analytical job that had some relationship to the work I was doing at Harvard (and, as Rodin explains later, proved to be of great value in his recent decision to create a website that emphasizes analytical tools.)
“As it turned out, the treasurer at Skelly wanted to hire me when I graduated, but at that time I couldn’t consider working in the States because I would have been drafted. The fact that I was a Canadian wouldn’t have made any difference.
“If I had been a student I wouldn’t get drafted. I also didn’t take any other opportunities that I had in the States. I limited myself to working in Canada.
“I ended up working for six months in Edmonton for a company called the Principal Group. While I worked there I had a lot of diverse responsibilities. I chose all their stocks for a new mutual fund they set up, and designed the text and written material for their first Annual Report. I also did all sorts of analysis for their mortgage operations.
“Then I got the news that the Central Grain plant had been hit by lightning and three-quarters of it had burned down.
“Central Grain was an animal feed processing plant. During the years that my dad was building it up we were basically selling pellet feed for export to the United Kingdom, to Japan, Taiwan. We would load railway cars with pellets, ship them to Thunder Bay, for destinations in the United Kingdom, or ship it to Vancouver for export.
“When this (the fire) happened in 1966, I had to come back to Winnipeg to help my dad settle all the insurance. There were a lot of issues and we rebuilt the plant, but all the key parts of the plant were burned down.
“I decided to settle down in Winnipeg. I took a job with Investors Group, which was similar to what I had in Edmonton. For the first year I was doing special projects, including a report on tax policy. We recommended how life insurance companies should be taxed. (This was before Investors bought Great West Life.) Most of our recommendations were adopted. We were competing with life insurance companies at that time and life insurance companies weren’t paying their fair share of taxes.
“After that year I did some product analyses. Then I started working for the securities department as an analyst. Over a period of time I became a portfolio manager. I ran the Investors international mutual fund. Then I ran the Investors pension accounts. We managed the Hudson’s Bay pension account.
“I was at Investors for 12 years (from 1968-80) and became a vice-president. I left to pursue some independent activities”, but joined Central Grain when it became clear that his dad needed Elliot’s help.
When he joined Central Grain full time in 1980, Rodin began focusing on broadening the markets for the company’s feed pellets. Markets in Western Canada and the United States were cultivated, but he says that he always made sure that the needs of his regular customers were attended to.
“I never took advantage of the fact that there might be a drought in Southern California, for instance, and short my customers in Saskatchewan because I depended on my regular customers for the long haul,” Rodin says.
“I would work long hours if necessary. If a truck came in late and had to be loaded, I would load the truck myself.
Although Central Grain had become a very successful business, Rodin says that the “maximum number of employees we had at one time was no more than 15. We had one truck, but for the most part we hired other trucking companies. We had a machine shop, but the stuff we couldn’t do – we hired other machine shops to do.
“We bought basically the ‘clean-outs’ from grain – all the leftover product. It was all categorized and separated out and properly blended to make different qualities of feed pellets. There was no plant in North America that shipped product as far as we did. We used to ship up to 2,000 miles. Most feed companies ship up to 200 miles.
“The business ran until about three and a half years ago. We were gradually losing customers for reasons that I can’t quite figure out. I needed additional volumes because the company had substantial overhead – for repairs and maintenance.
“So we started to do fuel pellets. We became the second largest manufacturer of fuel pellets in Manitoba – as a substitute for coal, using the same screenings – but the lower quality screenings. The top quality screenings were turned into top quality feed for cattle and bison.
“I was reasonably successful at doing this, but at the end of the day the plant was an old plant. Remember, it was rebuilt in 1966. What was new in 1966 was not new 50 years later. The costs of maintaining the plant to the standards we had to maintain were going up and up.
“Finally, I made the decision that I’m going to have to close it down. I thought: ‘If I can’t make a living at this, then nobody can.’ I decided I’d have to tear the whole place down – and that’s what I did.
“I realized I was getting older and if I didn’t do it I didn’t want to have my children to have the burden of doing it. So, everything that I had built up over 50 years was torn down. I sold whatever equipment that I could, but the rest all went for scrap.
To return to the initial reason for doing this article, Rodin explains his motivation in wanting to create HelpYouRetire.ca. As we already noted, the catalyst was reading about that U.S. report about social security and “that 90% of people in the United States take their pensions at the wrong time.”
He adds though, that “an additional underlying factor in my motivation is that I missed the daily rewards (not the aggravation) that I got from my job running Central Grain. I loved selling and enjoyed my interactions with customers. At the end of the day when I had loaded four big trucks I came home with a feeling of accomplishment. So, I was primed for another challenge where I could get these feelings back. With this website, I am now focusing on marketing where I have to sell myself and the site.”
I asked Rodin whether there was anything in particular in his background that lent itself to the kind of analytical exercise upon which he was to embark.
He answers that “a course that I took at Harvard Business School and the work that I did at Skelly Oil were very relevant to this process.”
I said though “that it sounds like you would need the same background as an actuary” in order to undertake the project into which Rodin has entered.
Rodin agreed, saying “you’re hitting upon a very key point when you say that, but there are a lot actuaries around. Nobody thought of doing what I’m doing.
“I guess part of the answer is most actuaries are fully employed. There aren’t a lot sitting around thinking about what they can do to help Canadians.
“You have to remember that I spent 13 years as a securities analyst and a portfolio manager, so my mind works in a certain way. Nothing that I did at Central Grain though related to this project.”
I asked what were the first steps that Rodin took in developing his website.
He says: “The first steps were that I needed to see whether I could develop the necessary mathematical models to do what I had in mind. Once I had the mathematical models I began working on the structure of a website that would put these mathematical models into practice.
“I was told by various people that setting up a website is not all that difficult.” (Boy, were they ever wrong when it came to this website!)
After an initial contact with someone who was working on their PhD and thought they might be able to produce the kind of website Rodin was looking to create didn’t pan out, a company in Ottawa that had built a similar kind of website agreed to take on the project.
“The idea was that it was going to take a few months” to create the website, Rodin explains.
“But from the time we started up toward the end of February (just before the pandemic hit Canada in full force) it took until the end of August” to finalize the site.
“Every aspect along the way had to be just right – from the mathematics to the functionality. It had to be there so that even people who don’t know much about computers or websites would be able to use this website. Finally, we reached the point where I’m extremely happy with the site.”
So, having read this far, you might ask yourself: “Why should I go to HelpYouRetire.ca?”
It’s quite an easy site to navigate. As has already been explained, simply enter some basic information and the site will provide you with some quick results about how postponing your decision to begin taking either CPP/QPP or OAS by one year will benefit you – or might have benefitted you if you’re already taking your pension.
Then, as Rodin explained, if you’re wanting to know more about how much more your pension would be affected if you decide to wait even longer to begin taking your pension, for a fee you can obtain access to even more comprehensive analytical tools that will show that. The results might surprise you – and it may end up being one of the most important decisions you might ever make with regard to retirement planning.
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
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