Case Study: Next Stop by Benjamin Resnick
Testing my proposals about Jewish Storytelling ... again
Welcome back to another Case Study - where I test out my own proposals from past blog posts and poke holes and what I have not yet considered regarding my questions of what makes a story Jewish. Today we are discussing the book Next Stop by Benjamin Resnick. The official description is as follows:
When a black hole suddenly consumes Israel and as mysterious anomalies spread across the globe, suddenly the world teeters on the brink of chaos. As antisemitic paranoia and violence escalate, Jewish citizens Ethan and Ella find themselves navigating a landscape fraught with danger and uncertainty.
Ella, a dedicated photojournalist, captures the shifting dynamics of their nameless American city, documenting the resilience and struggles of its Jewish residents. Some are drawn to the anomalies, disappearing into an abandoned subway system that seems to connect the world, while others form militias in the south. Yet, Ethan, Ella, and her young son Michael choose to remain, seeking solace in small joys amidst the hostility.
But then thousands of commercial planes vanish 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, drones, and robotic dogs, they form a fragile new society.
Warning: from here on out there will be spoilers. I will also be referring to a few of my past posts. These will be 1) my post about different types of Jewish stories, 2) my post about different levels of truth - PaRDeS, and 3) my post about Jewish Magic Systems. If you want to read those articles first - please see the links here in the corresponding order. I am including the links here to simplify things and will not include the links later when each is mentioned.
In my article about PaRDeS (a tool traditionally used for understanding and finding meaning in Torah) - I talked about how to write with PaRDeS in mind. Today, I will be organizing my analysis with PaRDeS in mind. In doing so - I am not at all suggesting that Next Stop is anything approaching Torah. However, I am trying to continue the conversation about how to take the tool usually used for torah specifically and expand it into a more general way of approaching Jewish stories in general. This means I will be talking about the story on four levels - 1) Peshat - Facts - Words on Page, 2) Remez - Hint - Allegory and Metaphor 3) Drash - Inference - Structure and Logic and 4) Sod - Secret - Meaning and Message.
Additionally, in previous posts, I have discussed a four factor test originally by proposed Jewish ethnologist Dov Noy for what makes a distinctly Jewish story. The four factors are roughly what we will call Jewish Time, Jewish Place, Jewish Character, and Jewish Teaching. I use this test because I have some doubts as to whether simply having a Jewish character is enough to make a story a Jewish one. After all - there is a Jew in Shakespeare’s play Merchant of Venice - and well - we don’t claim that as a Jewish story. For those who don’t know what I am referring to - consider looking into the character Shylock. As we turn to the analysis, we will focus on approximately one of the factors for each level of text - not because I think that any of the factors are inherently associated with each level - but because that is what worked best for this particular analysis and story.
Peshat - What does it actually say?
The story itself - as previously mentioned - takes place in a city in the diaspora- in a world in which Israel has disappeared into a void, with no explanation. Everyone is scared and looking at the remaining Jews in the diaspora. The story takes place in a city which I assumed to be New York - but is never stated as such. No specific mentions that would tie this to a specific time and place in our world are included. It does seem to be clearly America and with roughly our level of technology - but the lack of clear recognizable proper nouns gives it an almost dream-like quality. This is further reinforced by the fact that, while the story is in third person and generally following our main characters for most of the book, it randomly and occasionally switches to follow other side characters that won’t be seen again for a chapter, a scene or even a single paragraph - sometimes even skipping around in time to do so. The only real major proper nouns provided are Israel - which is discussed only because it is gone, and the Pale - the neighborhood of the nameless American city in which all the Jews live. No explanation is ever provided as to why any of the strange incidents occur - and the focus is primarily on how people choose to respond.
Our main characters are primarily Ethan and Ella - though Ella’s son, Micheal, and Ella’s father, Joel, are also important. Ella already lives in the Pale when the story starts and cannot remember why it is called that - something we will return to when we discuss Remez. For now, we will accept that the Pale is understood to be a specifically Jewish neighborhood. Early on, Ethan and Ella have coffee and have a conversation about their Jewishness, how Ella keeps Kosher, how Ethan had a bar mitzvah but otherwise doesn’t really identify, and about whether they have non-Jewish friends anymore. Both Ethan and Ella grow and change as people throughout the story, and that includes their own relationship with their Judaism and their individual practices. The story - as it takes place over many years - includes the rhythm of Jewish holiday cycles, Friday night dinner, Passover seders, high holidays and more. It is not so much that these are major moments of the story - but how integrated each of these are with the character’s lives that reinforces how Jewish these characters are. This also highlights my first question regarding my own framework - these factors often overlap. I find it difficult to talk about Jewish character without also mentioning Jewish time or place. What makes a character Jewish separate from Jewish time or Jewish place? I am unclear how they could fully exist without each other.
Regardless, the Judaism of the characters is clear and integrated in with the rest of the story. There are mentions of the local place that they occasionally go to for Friday Night Services and for a minyan - and how it is a place of community for them. It is not simply hinted at via a Jewish last name and no further mention - but fully a part of the story in a way that cannot be taken out and replaced with another identity.
Remez - What is hinted at?
In discussing Remez, we are talking about what is hinted at in the text via poetry, or metaphor, or word play. There are many ways we can take this - but for today we are going to talk about the Jewish Neighborhood that is the center of much of the story- the Pale. As previously mentioned, our main characters Ethan and Ella live in a nameless American city (which I personally pictured to be New York City) and in a neighborhood called the Pale. When the neighborhood is first mentioned, Ethan asks Ella when the neighborhood got that name, and her response is “Hasn’t it always been called that?” and no further explanation is ever provided. For some, it may seem a random name for a neighborhood known for being Jewish - but the first association that comes to my mind is The Pale of Settlement.
The Pale of Settlement was a real place, specifically it was a specific area in Russia under the czars where Jews were designated to live. To be very clear, very few Jews were given authorization to live outside of the Pale. It was part of a generally limited freedom of movement among lack of other freedoms of Jews in czarist Russia. Part of the creation of the Pale was because Russia seized land in Poland and suddenly found Jews within its borders for the first time in a few hundred years. They restricted movement of the Jews to these new lands. Even if you are not familiar with the term of “Pale of Settlement” - you are likely familiar with the (false) assumption that all Jews are Russian or Polish. In reality, Jews were never actually considered full citizens of those countries - especially Russia - and the wave of eastern European Jewish immigrants that arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1920 - were often Jews fleeing the violence and lynching that had become common in the Pale of Settlement under Russian rule. To my knowledge, there is no Jewish neighborhood in the United States that has ever been called the Pale. However, there have been neighborhoods that are known for being “Jewish neighborhoods” at some point - often because there is history of the neighborhood once being home to a large number of immigrants who were fleeing the real Pale of Settlement.
Returning to our book, the naming of the Jewish neighborhood of a Pale is clearly one of intention. This would be a Jewish place, as a Jewish neighborhood with minyans at corner stores, regardless of the name. However, the inclusion of such a name does add another layer of meaning to this place name - further deepening the story. A key part of the story is the question over whether the rising level of antisemitism will ever die down, whether these characters should stay and wait it out, or whether this really is when they have to leave. These questions are very Jewish ones, ones that were a key part of the real Pale of Settlement. Especially because in the real version of the history, most of the Jewish families who chose to stay in Europe and not flee to the United States- ended up becoming victims in the Holocaust. While the Jews in Eastern Europe were not the only ones who ever had to answer these questions - this is true of all Jewish diasporas - including but not limited to Jews in Spain during the Inquisition and throughout the Arab world after 1948 - the story of Eastern Europe is a fairly well known one due to the shadow of the Holocaust. The name casts that shadow throughout the book - without actually naming the Holocaust at all.
While the diaspora is discussed only through hints and clever names, Israel is discussed more directly. It is a story of the diaspora, in the diaspora, and reflecting questions of the diaspora - which means it is fitting that from the beginning - it is clear this is a world in which Israel does not exist and is off the table. Nowadays, many Jews of the diaspora consider Israel as “the place to go if we had to leave here” - but this is a story of diaspora in which that is no longer an option. The way this is done in the story is that Israel is simply and randomly one day - sent into a void. And that is simply that. This does lend another layer to the poetics in that the Pale casts an unspoken shadow of diaspora, but the Void casts a literal shadow of the horizon of a black hole around Israel. Once you cross that horizon there is no going back - and all of the story takes place outside of that line.
Drash - What can be inferred?
In the context of fictional stories, I am using drash as an opportunity to discuss the inferred worldbuilding that has to happen behind the scene to make the story work. We discussed briefly in the context of Peshat the Jewish holiday cycle and time that is happening throughout the story - once which shows in its casual mention the Jewish community that has to exist outside the spotlight of the page. However, the rhythm of Jewish time mostly exists in the background as a part of the world. It is an important part of the story - but also not something on which any particular moment seems to hinge. This raises to me another question as to what it means for a story to be shaped by Jewish time and the Jewish calendar. The specific factor as originally phrased was that the story is taking “place in a time defined by a Jewish calendar.” Next Stop is not limited to only during the period of a Jewish holiday - but rather - it exists in a world where the characters lived are shaped by the rhythm of the Jewish calendar - and for me that seems sufficient.
There is a moment when Ethan, Ella, and Michael go to Friday Night Services which are held at “what had once been a bodega called the Sunshine Marketplace”. The book describes the attempts to maintain normalcy and continue it as a bodega, but how it became a place for the community to gather, and so the local prayer quorum location. The leader of the minyan is the proprietor of the store - not a Rabbi. It is mentioned that Joel, Ella’s father, regularly attends the minyan, but that Ella, Ethan, and Michael attend more sporadically. This scene and its glimpse at the usual daily and weekly life rhythms says a lot about the larger community that exists outside the realms of the page and our story. There is a greater need for minyans than number of Rabbis available. The use of a local bodega more as a community place for a minyan than the selling of convenient goods paints the picture of what daily life must be like in the neighborhood.
As Ethan is getting settled with Ella and Michael and Joel in the Pale, he joins a committee that is tasked with monitoring and trying to increase information that flows into and out of the Pale - but more often than not ends up drinking and arguing politics at the local bar - and in the description we get a glimpse of life that is happening throughout the Pale. We get a glimpse of how other people might be responding to these events - even if it is not Ethan or Ella.
There were Jewish separatists and new-Zionists; secularists who advocated for working with the city authorities; Israelis who had been abroad during the First Event and who observed Yom Ha’atzmaut as a day of mourning; militants who advocated for an uprising; orthodox rabbis who advocated quietism and acceptance, as they had centuries earlier; ba’alei teshuvah, the newly religious who preached about God’s wrath and about repentance and fasted on Monday, Thursdays, and Sundays; a group that called themselves the Rabbits and urged Jews to give in and head underground.1
It is when I read this paragraph that I really felt how Jewish a book this was - because of course there was a Jewish character who taught their children the shema, and of course there was Friday night dinners and all of that is great. That was true and obvious and given. In the end, it was when I was reading this sentence that it hit me because if Israel really did disappear, and all the Jews were trapped in a single neighborhood of a city and had to live together, this is exactly what would happen. They would go to a bar and argue and not agree on anything. Some people would be getting more religious. Some would be getting less so. I read this list and nodded at each one. I could see it. It gives me a sense of the larger Jewish community that existed inside the Pale. It isn’t just Ethan and Ella trapped in their apartment - the community around them changed and continued on as well. I can picture the chabad guys that still wait out on the street and try to get men to wrap tefillin, and the general mix of humanity that Jews are - all stuck together in a small neighborhood trying to figure things out. It tells me that somewhere in the Pale is a bunch of Rabbis arguing over whether we still pray facing towards Jerusalem if Jerusalem doesn’t exist anymore - or does it still exist but is not accessible.
It is this last point, that idea that this is a world in which there are Rabbis who are continuing to try to make halacha even when the world has gone strange, that makes me wonder if there is a touch of Jewish What-If in this story. In an earlier post, I identified Jewish What-If stories as the stories that wonder weird questions of Jewish practice or law in fictional fantastic situations. The question of whether to pray facing Jerusalem if Jerusalem has been sucked into a black hole is one such example of a what if. Another might be- how do you calculate the timing of Jewish holidays if you leave Earth and are living on a spaceship or on another planet, for example. Regardless, the story implies such questions are being asked - but does not directly ask or answer them. And so, there are hints of Jewish What-If story, but only its undertones.
Another element of drash to mention here is the “magic system” or rather the lack of logic regarding the strange incidents that continue to happen. I use the term “magic” here - not because it is magic in the story - but simply because the story displays a changed set of rules, science, and physics and so falls under an umbrella term of “magic system”. For more information on this and my definitions, please see my previous post on the topic. For today, I want to highlight how these strange incidents are discussed in the book. Here is one such example:
Meanwhile people continued to see and experience things, visions either private or shared. Some people called them miracles, but what is a miracle? There was the time that a great airship appeared in the sky, dipping briefly below the clouds, and then climbing out of sight. There was the time when all street signs changed to Yiddish. There was the time that a pack of wolves came out of the park. There was the time that three square blocks were swept up in a wedding party, though nobody knew the bride or groom. There was the time when parents panicked because a beggar who slept by the river came to a meeting of the newly formed neighborhood council to say that he saw twenty children playing by the water and that they all became fish and swam away. There was the time that mountain goats appeared on rooftops across the Pale. There was the time when the cantor at a synagogue wore a white miter hat that vanished and reappeared through the service. There was the time when winged creatures appeared in the sky. There was the time when all the trees bled. They did not last long, the miracles, and many assumed they had something to do with the anomaly in the park, though no one could say what.2
What is being described here is what I would call unknown and irrational. Within the context of the story - no one knows or understands what is happening or why (unknown) and there is no clear logic to how it is happening in a way that would allow us to predict how the story will unfold (irrational). In my post about magic systems, I argued that a magic system was a Jewish one if it was inspired by Judaism. I argued that in my personal opinion, as I couldn’t imagine any magic system in which there are not layers of commentaries and opinions, of all the options, an unknown and irrational system would seem to be least Jewish of the options. However, one thing this story reminds me is that the Jewish community will react in an authentically Jewish way - even if the incidents themselves don’t fit within a particularly Jewish framework. My discussion of Jewish magic systems focused on how to design a system in which the strange events and powers of a fictional story fits well within a Jewish worldview. However, this book reminds me that you can have a Jewish story about the characters reaction to the world when it doesn’t make sense - because sometimes the world doesn’t make sense - and that can still be very Jewish.
Sod - What secrets does it share?
This is where we really get into spoilers - last warning. Sod is when we discuss the secret teachings and meanings of a story. This is when we discuss what we learned from the story - and whether it is a particularly Jewish Teaching.
As the story progresses, a man calling himself the Messiah arrives in the Pale and starts collecting followers as he insists that he will show everyone the way forward. In the final stretch, after Ethan, Ella, and Michael have left Joel and the Pale behind to go underground and cross through the Void, Ethan, Ella, Michael and the rest of the Jews who have fled the world are waiting underground in a series of tunnels for a train to come - but it never seems to. Many people have miraculous MetroCard tickets which they presume will let them on the train - but no one knows if it will ever come or when. The man calling himself the Messiah starts telling his followers that they need to burn their tickets, and people join the fervor and start doing so. The man calling himself the Messiah seems to have a strange effect on people when he speaks and, one day, Ethan and Ella, along with the rest of the adults, go to hear him speak and Ella finds herself burning both of their MetroCards - and it is at that point that the train comes. As all the adults went to the meeting in which MetroCards were burned, this leaves the children as the only ones with MetroCards, and Michael is left to go onto the train alone - with only the fellow children - and leave his parents behind. Worse even still, Ethan gets injured and presumably dies in the chaos, and he is likely not the only one. This means that Ella is left in the aftermath with nothing - but we don’t follow Ella - we follow Michael. The last chapter of the book follows Michael now living on an ever moving train with children who have gotten on from a variety of other stops, and no adults - as they all wait for what comes next and move towards the next stop.
To be honest, I am still not quite clear what the message of the story is. It is not clear cut- and I presume it was not intended to be - and that no secret at this level ever is. It does seem to be a commentary about how children are the future and must go on where adults cannot follow. The whole story is one of diaspora, of how to decide when one needs to move on. First, Ethan and Ella feel they need to leave, but Joel is unable to come with due to previous injury and so must be left behind in the apartment by himself. They all know that without Ethan and Ella to help - Joel is not likely to do well - but the adults agree it is what is best - especially considering Michael. Then, through the twist of events, it seems as though the train wouldn’t have even arrived until all of the adults let go of their need to leave. After all, there are no adults on the train - from any stops. Michael is only let onto the train to move forward after Ella lets go of him.
In this lens - the message becomes one about generations and moving on. This focus on moving on seems counter to one traditional understanding of Jewish focus on tradition - or remembering where we came from. However, the story does regularly mention Joel’s view of Judaism as one which focuses on children. Ella remembers her childhood when her father would teach her and her sister the shema because one has to teach it to one’s children. Joel talks to Ethan and Ella multiple times about how Michael is the priority. There is clearly a thread of Judaism that is one that is future focused, that does focus on moving forward and continuing on. It feels strange to have a story ending with the children going on somewhere and not knowing where, especially when it is in a world in which Israel is no more, but maybe the kids are going to where Israel now is in the story. Maybe they are going to the new promised land. But the story ends before they get there, and that does feel like a very Jewish ending.
So, what was the secret the story was trying to share? I would propose that it was something about there always being a next stop, how nowhere is safe, and how in the end, our children will have to go on without us. The question for us today is whether we feel that that was a particularly Jewish teaching. I am not sure I am the right person to answer that question. Personally, it feels like one that I am sure other people in the community agree with and share. The focus on movement and when to move and where to go does feel grounded in the experience of Jewish diasporas. The hope that the next place will be the final one, that it will be next year in Jerusalem, is a very Jewish one. I think to me - it did feel quite Jewish.
Conclusion
And there we go, my analysis of a Jewish story while also testing out my own theories. In this case, I did feel the story was quite grounded in Jewish experience on many levels. I think my organization of PaRDeS did help that analysis for me personally. I continued to test the four-factor test - but continue to have questions about what it means to have a “Jewish Character” and who gets to decide when a teaching is a particularly Jewish one. Further, while I still stand by my comments re Jewish Magic Systems - this was a good reminder to me that a story can be Jewish based on how characters react to magic - rather than because the magic itself is a particularly Jewish kind of magic. And I think I really appreciated that reminder.
As always, I welcome disagreement, pushback, commentary, correction, etc. I am not a scholar. I do not write this from on-high to declare and prescribe the answers. But rather I want to talk about what I have found interesting, make a proposal, and hopefully enable others to make it their own. I do not write alone, but in conversation and as part of a community and I look forward to hearing from you.
page 139
page 130-131