Michael Kirschenbaum

Michael Kirschenbaum was born in Munich Germany in January of 1950, the son of two Polish Jews, holocaust survivors. He came to the United States as a toddler and grew up on a chicken farm near Lakewood, New Jersey.

After studying history at the University of Pennsylvania and computer science at MIT, he worked on systems software used by NASA including some bits that recently crashed into Jupiter onboard Galileo and some that left the solar system on Voyager. In the nineties, he shifted to marketing at the Lotus Development Company and then management consulting as a partner in The Jacobson Group.

In 2001, Ronnie, his wife and soul mate for thirty years, died of lung cancer. Struggling with his grief he found comfort in his family and developed a new relationship with his parents. He started writing a memoir to explore what it meant to be the child of survivors growing up in one of the few Jewish farming communities outside the state of Israel.

Not to Believe is his memoir of a Yeshiva boy, an ex-hippie, a new age pilgrim, a high flyer in the high tech boom. It is the story of finding love and losing loved ones. Exploring the chasm between Holocaust survivors and their children, it celebrates the quiet miracle of reconnection between a father and son. It is the story of overcoming loss and grief to find love and make peace with history.