Next stop resnick
Disruption and Deliberation: A Conversation with Benjamin Resnick | Jewish Book Council
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 befo
Next Stop - by Benjamin Resnick
About the Book
"When a black hole suddenly consumes Israel and as similar anomalies spread across the globe, a conspiracy takes hold: will the holes swallow the Jews, or will they swallow the earth? Against a backdrop of antisemitic paranoia, restrictions on Jewish life, and spasms of violence, Ethan and Ella, Jewish citizens of a nameless American city, meet and fall in love. Ella, a photojournalist, documents the changes in daily life, particularly among the city's Jewish residents. Some Jews, feeling inexplicably drawn to the unusual events, go underground to an abandoned subway system that seems to connect the entire world. Others leave for the south, forming militias and stockpiling weapons. But most, like Ethan, Ella, and her young son Michael, stay and try to make their way amid the hostility and small joys of the ever-changing landscape. But then thousands of commercial planes are sucked from the sky. Air travel stops. Borders close. Refugees pour into the capital. Eventually all Jews in the city are forced to relocate to the Pale, an area sandwiched between a park and a river. There, under the watchful eye of border guards, drone
Scribblers on the Roof: Benjamin Resnick, Next Stop
Join us at our popular literary program to hear emerging and established Jewish writers read from their recent work, all on our breezy and beautiful rooftop space. Snacks, beverages and books available for purchase.
See our full Scribblers lineup and learn more about our authors.
This Week:
Benjamin Resnick
Next Stop
BENJAMIN RESNICK on his forthcoming novel Next Stop (2024), in which a black hole swallows Israel and an outbreak of antisemitism ensues. “Uncanny, riveting, and strangely prescient” –Elisa Albert. In addition to being a novelist, Resnick is the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center in Westchester.
In conversation with Lauren Wein.
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Next Stop | Jewish Guide Council
For worse, better, or both, who has not imagined what the world might glare 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 experience 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 neighboring future, the United States has splintered. Chaos reigns; antisemitism prevails. The world is