Haim Watzman is a Jerusalem-based writer, journalist, and translator. His most recent book is Necessary Stories, a collection of his short fiction. His previous books are Company C: An American’s Life as a Citizen-Soldier in Israel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2005) and A Crack in the Earth: A Journey Up Israel’s Rift Valley (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2007). Haim was born in 1956 in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. After receiving a B.A. from Duke University he moved to Israel, where he has lived since 1978 and worked as a freelance translator and journalist. He has translated the work of leading Israeli writers and scholars, including Tom Segev, David Grossman, Amos Oz, Shlomo Avineri, and Yuval Noah Harari. As a journalist, he he served as Israel correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education and the British science journal Nature. Links to articles of interest can be found here. Since 2008, Haim has written more than 150 short stories under the rubric Necessary Stories, which until 2018 appeared in The Jerusalem Report, and since then inThe Times of Israel. A collection of some of the best stories was published in a Necessary Stories book in 2017. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Ilana. He has four children: Mizmor, an animator studying to be a nurse and midwife; Asor, a lawyer working at Israel’s Supreme Court; Niot, who during his service in the Golani Brigade was killed in a tragic accident in April 2011; and Misgav, who works with children in distress. He is an active member of Kehilat Yedidya, a liberal Orthodox community equally concerned about democracy in Israeli society and traditional Jewish values.
Haim can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Haim speaks and performs in Israel and overseas–information on his speaking topics and his new “Necessary Stories” performance can be found on his speaking topics page.
Contact Haim by e-mail at hwatzman@gmail.com.
Photo of Haim Watzman by Debbi Cooper