She Made the Earth Move: Carole King and Jewish Identity
Journalist Jane Eisner traces Carole King's Jewish Brooklyn roots, the Brill Building years, Tapestry, and her evolution into a political activist. Free.
Why we picked this
Carole King wrote some of the most recorded songs in history before anyone knew her name — then Tapestry made her a household one. Eisner's biography asks what Brooklyn, the Brill Building, and being a Jewish woman in mid-century America had to do with all of it.
Before Tapestry made her an icon, Carole King spent years in the Brill Building writing hits for other people — “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Up on the Roof,” “Natural Woman” — in an era when the music industry assumed female songwriters would stay invisible. Journalist Jane Eisner’s new biography places King’s story firmly in the context of her Jewish Brooklyn upbringing, tracing how identity, geography, and era shaped one of America’s most enduring musical careers.
Eisner, a longtime editor and cultural journalist, brings both rigorous reporting and personal resonance to her subject. The talk covers King’s four marriages, her retreat to Idaho after fame, and her later emergence as a political activist — asking throughout what it meant to be a young Jewish woman making art in mid-twentieth-century New York, and how much of that tension lives in the music itself.
YIVO, the preeminent institution for the study of Ashkenazi Jewish culture, hosts this free evening at Hebrew Union College. It’s a conversation about genius and belonging in equal measure.