For worse, bet­ter, or both, who has not imag­ined what the world might look like with­out Israel? (If you are old­er than sev­en­ty-six, you may not need to imag­ine.) Ben­jamin Resnick­’s genre-bust­ing debut nov­el, Next Stop, takes this ques­tion one step fur­ther: What would hap­pen if, say, Israel col­lapsed into a black hole, trig­ger­ing a glob­al cat­a­clysm that mag­net­i­cal­ly beck­oned every Jew­ish per­son in the world? And what if the result­ing anti­se­mit­ic back­lash trig­gered their destruc­tion whole­sale? Such a sto­ry might feel eerie, com­pli­cat­ed, and uncom­fort­able. It might even seem hys­ter­i­cal. And yet it might also be famil­iar, as if its events, in one form or anoth­er, have already hap­pened — or are hap­pen­ing right now. 

The sto­ry begins a few decades into the future, when Ethan, a writer, cross­es paths with Ella, a pho­to­jour­nal­ist with a young son, Michael. Ethan grew up in a sec­u­lar Jew­ish fam­i­ly, while Ella’s fam­i­ly is obser­vant. In this near future, the Unit­ed States has splin­tered. Chaos reigns; anti­semitism pre­vails. The world is lit­er­al­ly falling apart at the seams. No, real­ly. Israel is now ​“the hole in the Mid­dle East,” and the fab­ric of real­i­ty is implod­ing in the form of ​“Jew­holes,” or ​“anom­alies,” which have popped up world­wide. Jews are inex­plic­a­bly com­pelled to jump into them, dis­ap­pear­ing into nobody-knows-quite-what. Amid mass pan­ic, the world’s remain­ing Jews are col­lec­tive­ly pun­ished, forced into the kind of pales, ghet­tos, and trains that will have many read­ers hear­ing a chilly wind rustling the leaves of their fam­i­ly tree. Despite base­line lev­els of anti­semitism wor­thy of the Third Reich, Ethan believes that ​“the sit­u­a­tion would resolve itself … and things would be fine because they were always fine.” 

Things do not become fine. As con­di­tions dete­ri­o­rate, the three char­ac­ters are forced into a sort of pro­vi­sion­al fam­i­ly that even­tu­al­ly turns into a real fam­i­ly. Con­di­tions wors­en to the point that the three must make extra­or­di­nary choic­es about their fates — des­per­ate choic­es that are not real­ly choic­es at all. Rec­og­nize any of this? Again and again, the sto­ry pro­vokes enough ques­tions about Jew­ish self-deter­mi­na­tion to make one’s head spin. 

Next Stop com­bines heavy dos­es of mag­i­cal real­ism, sci-fi, and apoc­a­lyp­tic may­hem. Resnick­’s prose is lucid and moves at a steady clip, nev­er dwelling any­where too long, avoid­ing the kind of teeth-gnash­ing mis­ery one might expect in a nov­el about per­se­cu­tion and eth­nic cleans­ing. For all its futur­is­tic ter­rors, this is real­ly a sto­ry about a fam­i­ly. Even as the world melts down, Ella and Ethan bick­er about par­ent­ing and gro­ceries. And chil­dren are still being born. ​“It was a strange fea­ture of life in their city,” Resnick writes, ​“that babies came home in cabs, on bus­es, on sub­ways, as though they were peo­ple and not small gods.” These kinds of insights coun­ter­bal­ance Resnick­’s steady polit­i­cal ham­mer­ing. (This sto­ry appears to be set in New York, though the city is nev­er named. For that rea­son, some read­ers may have trou­ble get­ting their bear­ings at times.)

Many may bris­tle at Resnick­’s sug­ges­tion that the fate of Israel would be so explic­it­ly con­nect­ed to the entire Jew­ish expe­ri­ence. But because Resnick­’s char­ac­ters are con­tend­ing with bewil­der­ing, fun­da­men­tal strug­gles, Next Stop feels big­ger than a polit­i­cal stance. 

Is it even pos­si­ble, Resnick seems to be ask­ing, for Jews to be tru­ly at home any­where? Home in the sense of hav­ing a safe place to flour­ish, to build lives, fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties? Next Stop asks more ques­tions than it answers, and Resnick, a rab­bi, cap­tures both the joy and pain of pro­cess­ing our world and its intri­cate mysteries.