Features

The Zylbermans look back on 25 years of having come to Winnipeg from Argentina

By BERNIE BELLAN While there has been a large influx of Jewish immigrants into Winnipeg over the past 25 years, perhaps one of the most interesting stories of how one family made the decision to come here is the Zylberman family’s – when one learns how much their decision to come here was totally a matter of chance.

Mauricio and Marta Zylberman, along with their three children: Ariel, Leandro, and Melina, arrived here in 1997 – during one of the worst snow storms in Winnipeg history, and just in time for what became the “flood of the century.”
But how the Zylbermans ended up in Canada – and a city about which they knew almost nothing at the time, is quite a fascinating tale. Although their decision to come here was taken somewhat arbitrarily, the Zylbermans quickly established strong roots in the community and have been deeply involved not only in Jewish life, but many other aspects of life in Winnipeg as well.

The story begins with a turbulent period in Argentina’s history, when the economy was cratering and Argentina was about to enter into a period that is now referred to as the “Argentine Great Depression,” which lasted from 1998-2002. Prior to that period Argentina’s economy had stagnated severely. Not only that, Buenos Aires, which is where the Zylbermans lived, had become a dangerous place where, as Mauricio Zylberman explains, the “corruption” and crime were terrible.
He says that every night, when he would come home from work, he “would have to drive around the block to make sure no one was waiting for me before I would get into my house.”
And yet, as Marta Zylberman describes their situation at the time, “we were very successful.” Their wanting to leave Argentina, she observes, “wasn’t about money. We were trying to get a better future for our kids,” she notes.
I asked them what they did in Argentina. Marta says she was a “stay at home mom and Mauricio was an accountant.”
The two boys were teenagers in 1997; Ariel was 16, Leandro was 14, and Melina was 11. Mauricio and Marta were themselves already in their 40s, so picking up and starting over in a new country – without even knowing where they might go, was definitely a challenge not for the faint of heart.
Their first choice was to get a green card for the United States, but “we couldn’t get it,” Marta says.
So, as she notes, in 1996 Marta decided to contact three different embassies: the Canadian, the Australian, and the New Zealand embassies and, as she puts it, “whoever is going to give us an answer, we’re going to go for it.”
“Canada and New Zealand were very welcoming,” Marta says, but “not the same situation with Australia.”
Eventually the Zylbermans were invited to an interview at the Canadian embassy.
I asked Marta and Mauricio whether they were even thinking about coming to Winnipeg at that time? “Was Winnipeg even on your map?” I asked them.
“No,” Marta answers. “We didn’t even know about Winnipeg.” (What eventually would turn into a major initiative undertaken by the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council – later to become the Winnipeg Jewish Federation, to attract Argentineans to Winnipeg had not yet begun.)
“When we put in the application and we were asked where we wanted to go, we said Toronto or Ottawa,” Marta says.
The Zylbermans could have gone anywhere they wanted in Canada because they were approved for visas but, at the end of their interview at the Canadian embassy, Marta says that the woman who was conducting the interview showed them some flyers that she thought might help them in their decision-making process.
According to Marta, that woman said, “You’re not going for an exploratory visit anywhere. But because you are Jewish and you have teenagers, and you are a family of five, why don’t you take these flyers that are related to the Jewish community in Winnipeg, so if you decide to change your mind and you want to go to Winnipeg (instead of Toronto or Ottawa), just let us know.”
The Zylbermans looked at those flyers. Marta notes that the flyers talked about how many restaurants there were in Winnipeg per capita, how many lakes were nearby – but there wasn’t anything about “the temperature” in Winnipeg, and there certainly wasn’t any mention of blizzards !

Mauricio picks up the story at that point, saying that when they got back from the embassy, he was intrigued at the notion of moving to a city with an established Jewish community, one that the individual at the embassy described in glowing terms. That very same day, he says, he sent a fax to the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council (noting that this was before the advent of the internet), expressing an interest in coming to Winnipeg.
Apparently that fax was fielded by Evelyn Hecht, who was the Community Relations Director for the WJCC at the time, and within a couple of hours Mauricio said he received a fax back from someone in the Manitoba government asking how could they help with the Zylbermans settling in Winnipeg.
Mauricio says that it was “astonishing to have an answer back within a couple of hours. I said to Marta, ‘If these people are giving an answer back in a couple of hours, that’s the place we should go’.”
Mauricio points out that the Provincial Nominee Program, which was begun by former Premier Gary Filmon, had not yet been established. It was that program, along with the concerted efforts of individuals such as Evelyn Hecht and Bob Freedman, who was executive director of the WJCC, along with the late Larry Hurtig, a Past President of the WJCC, and the aforementioned Gary Filmon – who all saw the potential benefit of trying to attract Argentinean Jews to Winnipeg that led to a largescale immigration to Winnipeg at the end of the 1990s and in the first decade of this century..

As Mauricio points out, however, when the Zylbermans arrived in Winnipeg that fateful day in April 1997, “there were only three other Jewish Argentinean families that had moved within recent years to Winnipeg.” (Eventually the number of Jewish families or individuals to arrive here from Argentina grew substantially, to the point where the figure of 400 individuals was bandied about as the number of Argentinean Jews who had immigrated to Winnipeg. However, as Mauricio acknowledged during our conversation, many of those individuals used Winnipeg as a stepping stone to eventually relocating elsewhere in Canada. It’s difficult to know exactly how many Argentinean Jews have remained in Winnipeg, but according to the 2016 Census there were only 475 individuals of Argentinean descent living in Manitoba that year. It’s possible that the majority were Jewish, but the fact is that, like most questions revolving around how many Jews actually live in Winnipeg, we really don’t know the answer.)
As I already noted, the Zylbermans didn’t have a clue what was in store for them as far as Winnipeg weather was concerned. For anyone reading this who was here at the time, memories of the blizzard that began on April 5 of that year, and which saw a total of 48 centimetres of snow fall in a 24-hour period are probably still quite vivid (along with the memories of a good part of southern Manitoba turning into one vast lake).
Yet, even before that blizzard began to hit, Winnipeg was already under a heavy blanket of snow. As their plane began its descent into Winnipeg, Marta says “all they could see was white.” She turned to Mauricio and said, “Omigod – what are we doing here?”
But, when the Zylbermans saw the large troupe that had turned out to greet them upon their arrival here, including Evelyn Hecht, along with Roberta Hurtig (who, along with husband Larry, Marta described as their “Winnipeg family”), as well as a representative from Toronto for JIAS (the Jewish Immigration Aid Service), they felt quite relieved.
Another individual who provided invaluable help to the Zylbermans was Gustavo Rymberg, who was a graphic designer working for the YMHA at the time, and who had arrived in Winnipeg just a few months prior to the Zylbermans’ arrival. Gustavo has gone on to forge a successful career working for other Jewish federations in Canada, first in Ottawa, and more recently in Hamilton, where he is now executive director of the Hamilton Jewish Federation.

Marta acknowledges how hospitable members of the Jewish community were when the family first arrived in Winnipeg. “We were invited to so many houses, but it was exhausting,” she says.
“We had to translate in our minds what they were saying – and then put into English what to answer.” (I remarked though that both Marta’s and Mauricio’s English is now quite good.)
It wasn’t only members of the Jewish community who rolled out the welcome mat, Marta adds. She recalls how friendly and helpful many individuals were to her when the Zylbermans first arrived here and she was shopping for such things as winter boots – even for a car.
And, despite the snowstorm that greeted the Zylbermans soon after their arrival, according to Marta, their biggest problem wasn’t getting used to the snow, “the fateful moment was when Mauricio realized that he wasn’t recognized as a CGA here,” which is what he was in Argentina.
I asked the Zylbermans whether they didn’t know that Mauricio would not be able to practice as an accountant before they got here?
“No, we didn’t know anything,” Marta answers.
As Mauricio adds, when they visited the Canadian embassy in Buenos Aires, they were told “the number one thing we need in Canada is accountants.”
Unfortunately, despite Mauricio being fully credentialed as an accountant in Argentina, and having had years of experience practicing the profession there, upon their arrival here he was told “you’re not certified here. Become certified – and you’re good to go.”
Mauricio explains that prior to coming to Canada he had contacted the California body responsible for certifying accountants in that state (and remember – the Zylbermans’ first choice was to emigrate to the US, preferably California) and was told that all he needed to do was take the qualifying exam in that state in order to be licensed as a Certified Accountant. Mauricio assumed that the same rule would apply in Canada, hence his surprise and disappointment at finding out that wasn’t the case here.
As a result, Mauricio says he spent almost four years taking the courses required to be certified as an accountant in Manitoba. He did find work related to his training, he says, but for four years Mauricio explains that he would work from 9-5, then head to Red River College to take accountancy courses in the evening. Eventually he completed the required courses and was certified again as a Certified General Accountant.

As things turned out, the relocation of the Zylberman family to Winnipeg proved fruitful for every member of the family. Ariel, Leandro and Melina went on to spend many years dancing with the Chai Folk Ensemble. Marta and Mauricio became part of the Chai family as a result and made many lifelong friends.
Both Marta and Mauricio have also been heavily involved with the Israeli pavilion at Folklorama. It was there that they met Richard Swyston, Mauricio notes, who has also been a longtime volunteer at the Israeli pavilion. The Zylbermans now count Richard and Gemma Swyston among their friends.
Ariel and Leandro attended Kelvin High School upon their arrival in Winnipeg, and both went on to university here. Ariel was actually a Rhodes Scholar and ended up obtaining a PhD in Philosophy. (I noted that he’s a Doctor of Philosophy who is a real “Doctor of Philosophy”.)
Marta recalls how impressive an achievement Ariel’s becoming a Rhodes Scholar was: “Here he was, not only an immigrant, but a Jewish guy,” she remarks.
Marta says though that unfortunately, Ariel was unable to find work in Winnipeg and, as a result, he is now teaching in the US.
Leandro and Melina, however, have remained in Winnipeg, where Leandro works as a lawyer and Melina as a doctor (psychiatrist).
Marta has also gone on to forge a career in real estate, but she waited until she felt comfortable enough with her English to pursue that career, she says.
At the end of our conversation, I said to Marta and Mauricio what a nice gesture it is for them to thank the Jewish community for welcoming them here. (As a matter of fact, the Zylbermans also thanked the community within the pages of this paper 15 years ago, upon the 10th anniversary of their having arrived here.) I noted though that, considering the Zylbermans’ arrival in Winnipeg coincided with what became the “flood of the century” and, with all the snow we’ve had this winter, I hoped that reminding readers of what we went through 25 years ago wasn’t going to cast some sort of jinx on us – and lead to yet another weather catastrophe.
The Zylbermans, however, insist that for all the harping that people do on the weather here, this is one fabulous city – and despite how arbitrary their decision to come here may have been, it is one that they and their children will always think of as the best decision they could ever have made.

Post Views: 1,285

Features

Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

The Schwooper family — including everyone’s spouses — over a tense dinner. Photo by Netflix

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.

olivia@forward.com

Post Views: 59

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

Post Views: 120