When American-born Haim Watzman immigrated to Israel, he was drafted into the army and, after eighteen months of compulsory service, was assigned to Company C, the reserve infantry unit that would define the next twenty years of his life. From 1984 until 2002, for at least a month a year, Watzman, who had never aspired to military adventure, was a soldier. Watzman was a soldier as he adjusted to his new country, raised his children, and pursued a career as a writer and translator. At times he defended his adopted country’s borders; at other times he patrolled beyond them, or that gray area, the occupied territories. A religiously observant Jew who opposed Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he served in uniform in conflicts that he demonstrated against in civilian clothes. Throughout, he developed a deep and abiding bond with the diverse men of Company C--a fellowship that cemented his commitment to reserve service even as he questioned the occupation he was enforcing. In this engrossing account of the first Intifada, the period of the Oslo Accords, and Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank as lived by citizen-soldiers in the field, Watzman examines our obligations to country, friends, family, and God--and our duty to protect our institutions even as we fight to reform them.

Twenty-four stories of Israeli and Jewish life, chosen from the more than one hundred Haim Watzman has written over the last nine years in his "Necessary Stories" column in the The Jerusalem Report. Bookended by a flashback to his first weekend in Israel forty years ago and a storytelling encounter on a recent flight back home from the US, these stories--funny, meditative, and sad, set in immigrant camps, the army, and the author's own neighborhood in south Jerusalem--uniquely capture what it is like, in our age, to be an Israeli and a Jew. Praise for Haim Watzman: "His stories detail the lives of ordinary Israelis, often touching on current events ... The dialogue, though written in English, has the distinct feeling of Hebrew speech -- that unmistakable combination of impatience and warmth." --Naomi Zeveloff, Forward "Watzman knows that every encounter, no matter how fleeting--a conversation in a cemetery with a long-dead Talmudic sage; Felix Mendelssohn's great aunt scolding the young prodigy; four Jews on a plane discussing the Bible, the Zohar and Wuthering Heights--is a matter of life and death. Necessary Stories is a quietly beautiful work, haunting in places, gently funny in others, written by a graceful, thoughtful, eloquent man who understands that life itself is not enough. One must live to tell the tale." --From the Introduction by Joseph Skibell "Author Haim Watzman is a master of the tiny moment, the exact point in time that leaves an impression on the future ... If you enjoy short stories, 'Necessary Stories' is a fine collection, filled with hints and hidden meanings. It's a perfect choice for a Jewish book club whose members can discuss these stories for hours." --Rivkah Lambert Adler, Jerusalem Post, June 14, 2017 "Watzman writes with immediacy, attentiveness and empathy, whether he's describing a pregnant feral cat he names Hagar, who makes her home in the dumpster of his Jerusalem building, or the best friend of the bride at a wedding, or his late son, who was killed in a tragic accident while serving in the IDF. Watzman ... has a good ear for dialogue. The stories, layered with meaning, speak to his wide-ranging interests." --Sandee Brawarsky, The Jewish Week/Times of Israel "All but one of these stories are relatively short ... Yet anyone who sits down with this collection will come away with a sense of something much larger--a multifaceted impression of what it's like to make a life in a place where the prosaic mixes with the fantastic; history, politics, and philosophy are around every corner, and each encounter with a stranger holds the potential to show you the world from a fresh angle." --Janice Weizman, The Jerusalem Report