Jaime Hern­don speaks with debut nov­el­ist Ben­jamin Resnick about his engross­ing book, Next Stop. The spec­u­la­tive nov­el fol­lows Jew­ish life in Amer­i­ca as events occur that chip away at nor­mal­i­ty in large and small ways for peo­ple and Jew­ry at large. Resnick shares how his back­ground as a rab­bi influ­ences his fic­tion writ­ing, the endur­ing nature of Jew­ish sto­ry­telling, and the books he’s reading. 

Jamie Hern­don: What was the inspi­ra­tion for this book? 

Ben­jamin Resnick: Inspi­ra­tion is tricky to pin down. I think this is par­tic­u­lar­ly true when it comes to things like nov­els, which are always (or almost always) writ­ten over a fair­ly pro­tract­ed peri­od of time. Not over years and years, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but over a long enough stretch of time that a lot hap­pens between the moment when you start writ­ing and the moment when the book is real­ly done. The world changes in between and you change and your inter­ests shift. In the mean­time, that ini­tial spark of inspi­ra­tion, if there was one, has been trans­formed and altered, often in sig­nif­i­cant ways. That’s how it seems to me, any­way. I sup­pose that’s a long way of say­ing that my inspi­ra­tion for Next Stop, when I reflect on it, is pret­ty over-deter­mined — a mov­ing tar­get. This feels par­tic­u­lar­ly true giv­en the tim­ing of this book, which was writ­ten well before Octo­ber 7, but which is com­ing out after. 

One thing I do keep com­ing back to is the expe­ri­ence of dis­rup­tion. A cen­tral theme in the book is that many of life’s con­sol­ing rhythms — relat­ed to career, par­ent­ing, good health, safe­ty — are real­ly very frag­ile. That has always been true, of course, but I start­ed writ­ing Next Stop at the tail end of the pan­dem­ic and I sus­pect my pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with dis­rup­tions grew out of that whole experience. 

The endur­ing pre­car­i­ty of Jew­ish being is also some­thing that I think about a lot and so I want­ed to tell a sto­ry about that. The Seder and the Hag­gadah are, in my opin­ion, two of the most extra­or­di­nary and inspir­ing things that Jews have ever cre­at­ed, and in a very real sense all of Next Stop amounts to lengthy explo­ration of what we say every spring as we tell the sto­ry of our com­pli­cat­ed free­dom: ​“This is the promise: That not only one arose to destroy us, but in every gen­er­a­tion they arise to destroy us, and the Holy One Blessed Be He saves us from their hands.” 

And then in terms of my over­all style and my sense of what fic­tion can do, there are many writ­ers whom I love and who have inspired me a lot over the years. A few that come to mind are Kazuo Ishig­uro, Mohsin Hamid, Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Ted Chi­ang, Nor­man Maclean, and Bernard Mala­mud. Most of those writ­ers work, at least some of the time, with­in the blur­ry bound­aries of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion. I also real­ly enjoy things like HBO’s The Last Of Us and AMC’s The Walk­ing Dead. Next Stop isn’t exact­ly post-apoc­a­lyp­tic zom­bie fic­tion, but that kind of sto­ry­telling appeals to me and was in my head as I was writing. 

JH: I know you’re a rab­bi, ordained at the Jew­ish The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, how did/​does that influ­ence your writ­ing, espe­cial­ly your fiction?

BR: The rela­tion­ship between my pro­fes­sion­al life as a fic­tion writer and my pro­fes­sion­al life as a rab­bi is com­plex. Some­times they seem very relat­ed to me and some­times less so. Rab­bis are sto­ry­tellers, of course, and the pow­er and impor­tance of sto­ry­telling is some­thing that is deeply woven into rab­binic Jew­ish cul­ture and into ancient Israelite cul­ture before that. I do a lot of writ­ing and sto­ry­telling in my syn­a­gogue work and after the careers of Mil­ton Stein­berg and Chaim Potok there is a very def­i­nite prece­dent for com­bin­ing nov­el writ­ing with the Con­ser­v­a­tive rabbinate!

Still, while I will prob­a­bly always write about Jew­ish char­ac­ters and Jew­ish con­cerns, I’m not real­ly drawn to writ­ing fic­tion that is specif­i­cal­ly about the reli­gious aspects of Jew­ish life, unlike Potok and Stein­berg. For exam­ple, I’m not plan­ning to write a nov­el set in a small, Con­ser­v­a­tive syn­a­gogue any time soon and I think it’s like­ly that I nev­er will. Prob­a­bly that’s because part of what attracts me to fic­tion is that it allows me to inhab­it worlds oth­er than my own. 

I would also say that what I’m doing when I’m prepar­ing a ser­mon, for exam­ple, feels very dif­fer­ent to me than from what I’m doing when I’m writ­ing fic­tion. With some­thing like a ser­mon I’m usu­al­ly think­ing very con­crete­ly about the point I am try­ing to make. What do I want peo­ple to leave with and how do I say it in such a way that they most like­ly will? I’m not always devel­op­ing an argu­ment because often I’m not try­ing to con­vince peo­ple of any­thing so much as I am try­ing to evoke cer­tain kinds of mood or present a vari­ety of Jew­ish ideas. But I’m still guid­ed by the fact that the ser­mon, as a lit­er­ary form, gen­er­al­ly calls for a very spe­cif­ic take­away. And, of course, I want to say some­thing that speaks urgent­ly to a very spe­cif­ic moment in the life of our community. 

It’s like­wise true that the core cur­ren­cy in ser­mon writ­ing isn’t orig­i­nal­i­ty, or at least I don’t think it is. It’s more about allow­ing the tra­di­tion to speak through you. And although it’s cer­tain­ly the case that Torah is refract­ed dif­fer­ent­ly through all of us — in the same way, maybe, that one piece of music will sound dif­fer­ent when played by dif­fer­ent vio­lin­ists — giv­ing a great drasha is about try­ing to qui­et one­self and let­ting the Torah shine. 

All of that prob­a­bly applies, on some lev­el, to fic­tion as well, but with fic­tion I sim­ply feel less bound to these kinds of con­cerns. Writ­ing fic­tion is more of an adven­ture — the can­vas is big­ger and I’m rarely try­ing to make a very spe­cif­ic point so much as I’m try­ing to invite the read­er into an expe­ri­ence and onto a journey. 

But one of the best things about being a rab­bi — and I say this all the time — is that my job, my core job, is basi­cal­ly to talk with peo­ple — with all kinds of peo­ple, in all kinds of sit­u­a­tions, at every stage of life. And I love talk­ing with peo­ple because peo­ple are fas­ci­nat­ing! So all day long, pret­ty much every day, I get to have these fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple about things that are impor­tant to them and to me and I find that end­less­ly inspir­ing and hum­bling and I’m sure it influ­ences my fic­tion in pro­found, if indi­rect, ways. 

JH: After Octo­ber 7, did that change any­thing with the book, like revi­sions, etc? I remem­ber read­ing sev­er­al pages and pas­sages and think­ing this is how it felt on Octo­ber 7 and 8. I’m think­ing espe­cial­ly of pages nine­ty-two to nine­ty-three, when Ethan and Ella are just surf­ing the inter­net and see­ing a bar­rage of news and updates and hor­ror, inter­spersed with anti­semitism from peo­ple they know and don’t know. 

BR: No, Octo­ber 7 did not affect the revi­sions in any sig­nif­i­cant way. The cen­tral plot points — the pre­car­i­ty of Jew­ish life in both Amer­i­ca and in Israel, the qua­si-myth­i­cal cen­tral­i­ty of the Jew­ish fam­i­ly, the encroach­ment of vicious tech­nolo­gies, the mys­te­ri­ous black holes, the con­sol­ing warmth of domes­tic­i­ty and its many shades of love — were all already in place.

It’s inter­est­ing that you bring up that par­tic­u­lar scene — it’s one of my favorites and I remem­ber writ­ing it fair­ly quick­ly and eas­i­ly, which doesn’t hap­pen so often. It was actu­al­ly writ­ten long before Octo­ber 7. It was based on the expe­ri­ence of doom scrolling dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, which was a ter­ri­ble way that we all spent a lot of time and still do.

JH: As a par­ent, this book was tough to read some­times, and I’m try­ing not to give any­thing away with this ques­tion here! But the book also remind­ed me of books about the Shoah — and I try to nev­er make com­par­isons, for obvi­ous rea­sons. But so many themes and sit­u­a­tions, even of today, don’t quite repeat them­selves, but rhyme, as they say. And sim­i­lar­ly, in your book, it wasn’t that they mir­rored those sto­ries, but brought them to mind in a dif­fer­ent way. Was that inten­tion­al, or is that just a facet of our sto­ries and our history? 

BR: Most­ly the lat­ter. The lega­cy of the Shoah is, obvi­ous­ly, part of how I think about the world as a Jew and def­i­nite­ly as a father. I have to believe that’s true for all Jews. And there are books and sto­ries about the Holo­caust that I think about all the time — Art Spiegelman’s Maus, for exam­ple, and Jane Yolen​’s mar­velous The Devil’s Arith­metic. But I wasn’t specif­i­cal­ly focused on Holo­caust sto­ries while I was work­ing. I was more inter­est­ed in the cycli­cal nature of anti­semitism itself, which has always seemed to me like a mon­ster liv­ing in the clos­et. Some­times it sleeps, but even­tu­al­ly it wakes up and when it does it wakes up it’s hun­gry. In Next Stop I am try­ing to imag­ine what it will look like when the mon­ster, inevitably, wakes up here in America. 

JH: What books are on your nightstand/​in your tote bag right now? 

BR: I’m final­ly read­ing Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. It’s amaz­ing and vast, as adver­tised. I also have Lavie Tid­har​’s Cen­tral Sta­tion on my night­stand, which I can’t wait to start. I’m plan­ning to teach a course lat­er in the fall about Jew­ish sci­ence fic­tion, and I’m sure I’ll talk about his work. Over the sum­mer I read After Birth by Elisa Albert, which is an incred­i­ble book about moth­er­hood that I can’t get out of my head. And I also recent­ly revis­it­ed Isaac Bashe­vis Singer​’s Satan In Goray, which I do peri­od­i­cal­ly. It’s a true mas­ter­piece — so ele­men­tal and immer­sive and more than a lit­tle frightening. 

And I have lots of High Hol­i­day-relat­ed things because I’m work­ing on sermons!

JH: What do you think about the future of Jew­ish authors and Jew­ish books in the lit­er­ary world, giv­en the ram­pant anti­semitism we’re see­ing now? 

BR: I don’t fol­low the busi­ness of pub­lish­ing all that close­ly, so I’m not sure I have an expert opin­ion here. On the one hand there is the fear that pub­lish­ing hous­es and edi­tors and book­stores won’t be as will­ing to ele­vate Jew­ish sto­ries. On the oth­er hand, there are still a lot of Jew­ish sto­ries being told and Jew­ish books com­ing out, Next Stop among them. I would say the near-term out­look is tur­bid. It’s just hard to pre­dict what’s around the corner. 

I will say this: Jews are some of the most ancient and endur­ing sto­ry­tellers in the world. There have been Jews telling Jew­ish sto­ries for mil­len­nia — both to Jew­ish audi­ences and to the wider world — and there will still be Jews telling sto­ries and writ­ing Jew­ish books in a thou­sand years. I can’t prove it but I believe it with per­fect faith and I also believe that his­to­ry sug­gests it’ll be true. 

When we think about the tra­jec­to­ry of Jew­ish writ­ing today and about pos­ter­i­ty, I do think that Jew­ish writ­ers — and this is a point that the great Cyn­thia Ozick makes in an extra­or­di­nary and under-read essay called ​“Toward A New Yid­dish” — should try to focus on telling robust­ly Jew­ish sto­ries. That can and should and will mean many dif­fer­ent things because Judaism, as a lived real­i­ty, is very far from mono­lith­ic. When­ev­er any­one asks me (and as a rab­bi they ask me a lot!), ​“What does Judaism say about X?” my some­what glib (though deeply felt) response is, ​“Well, Jews say a lot about a lot.” But I do believe there are some unique­ly Jew­ish ways of see­ing the world and some unique­ly Jew­ish ways of using lan­guage to tell sto­ries about our lives. And, regard­less of what hap­pens near-term in the pub­lish­ing world, I sus­pect that Jew­ish writ­ers who are specif­i­cal­ly atten­tive to our unique­ness in their work have a brighter future than Jew­ish writ­ers who are not.

JH: What do you hope read­ers get from your novel?

BR: I’ll try to answer this, in part, in light of what I said in answer­ing the pre­vi­ous question. 

For Jew­ish read­ers, I want them to feel, on every page of Next Stop, the vital, undy­ing pulse of our peo­ple. It is a fright­en­ing book in many ways, but I don’t think it’s a grim one. I hope that it can play some role in the nev­er-end­ing Jew­ish con­ver­sa­tion about who we’ve been and where we’re headed.

To non-Jew­ish read­ers, I hope that the book offers an invi­ta­tion into an inti­mate encounter with a cul­ture and way of see­ing that is dif­fer­ent from their own. And of course I hope that they rec­og­nize some­thing of them­selves and their own fam­i­lies in the sto­ry as it unfolds — an irre­ducible imprint of the extra­or­di­nary and per­ish­able world that we all share.

JH: What are you work­ing on currently? 

BR: I’ve just start­ed a new nov­el that I’m very excit­ed about. I won’t share too much, but it’s set in the near-ish future and includes a Hebrew school teacher who is an AI ver­sion of Gol­da Meir. 

And I’m get­ting ready for the holidays!