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| | Email this article • Print this article | Judaism plays major role
in short story collection
by Aaron Leibel
Arts Editor
One story deals with a newly found biblical book about King David and his run-in with a vampire. Another is centered in an alternate universe in which Karaite Judaism had triumphed over its rabbinic counterpart. A third is a 700-word "epic fantasy" about Jerusalem.
And then there is the story titled "Ahavah." Readers who know that word is Hebrew for love will get more out of the story, according to Benjamin Rosenbaum, whose collection of short stories, The Ant King and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), is to be published next month.
Rosenbaum, who grew up in Arlington, says it is no accident that Jews and Judaism play prominent roles in his writing.
"You are wasting your time if you are not writing about something you are passionate about, and Judaism is important to me," he says. "I'm also interested in history and culture ... and being Jewish is a culturally interesting place to look at the world from."
Growing up in Virginia helped to hone his pride in being Jewish, the author says. Being one of the only Jews in his classes forced him to be articulate in explaining the differences between Judaism and Christianity.
While his mother had refused to convert to Judaism before marrying his father, she did convert before he was born. She took Judaism seriously as do so many converts, he says.
"Growing up, Judaism was an important part of my life," says Rosenbaum, whose family belonged to Adas Israel Congregation in the District, where he became a bar mitzvah.
After graduating from Yorktown High School in Arlington and Brown University - he majored in computer science and religious studies - he lived on Kibbutz Ein Dor in Israel for six months.
Returning to America, he began working for software companies in California's Silicon Valley and later in Virginia and elsewhere.
In 1990, while living in Italy in a study abroad program, he met a Swiss woman who would become his wife. From that time until 2007, when their daughter entered first grade, he had alternated between living in the U.S. and Switzerland.
The author and his family now live in Basel, Switzerland, where he works three days a week for a software company and writes in his free time.
Rosenbaum had always wanted to be a writer, but was unable to meet the high standards he set for himself. As a result, he stopped writing for eight or nine years after high school.
But he started again in the late 1990s, getting his first short story published in 2001. Since then, his stories have appeared in Harper's, Nature, McSweeney's, Asimov's, Argosy and Strange Horizons, among others. The Ant King is his first full-length collection.
Why short stories and not a novel? "Delayed satisfaction is not my strength," he quips. Besides, he notes that he has had success in getting short stories published and "success became addictive."
Additionally, he had thought that novels were "terrifying" because "you could spend years on it and then have it not jell."
And he had believed that writing short stories was similar to serving an "apprenticeship" for writing longer works of fiction.
But now that he's working on his own novel, he's not so sure that's the case.
Benjamin Rosenbaum will read from his book at Stacy's Coffee Parlor in Falls Church on Aug. 1 at 7:30 p.m
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