The Yiddish Policemen's Union

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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
First edition cover
Author	Michael Chabon
Cover artist	Jacket design by Will Staehle
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel, alternate history, detective fiction
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	May 1, 2007
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	414 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 978-0-00-714982-7 (first edition, hardcover)
OCLC	73140283

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a 2007 novel by American author Michael Chabon. The novel is an alternate history detective story based on the premise that during World War II, a temporary Yiddish-speaking settlement for Jewish refugees was established in Alaska in 1941. It also incorporates the (fictional) destruction of the State of Israel in 1948 after an unsuccessful struggle for independence. It takes place in a fictionalized version of the real city of Sitka.

As of February 2008, a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union is in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen Brothers.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and has also been nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The winners will be announced at the 66th World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, Colorado.^[1][2] The novel was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. It was also shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel.

Contents 1 Setting 2 Plot summary 3 Origins and writing 4 Reception 5 Film adaptation 6 See also 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Setting

The book is an alternate history of our own, set in the present. The divergence point is revealed in the first dozen chapters to be the death of Anthony Dimond in a car accident. Congressman Dimond was responsible for preventing the United States from voting to implement the Slattery Report, which would have provided land in Alaska for the temporary refugee settlement of European Jews. As a result, the Alaska Settlement plan passes, so in this world only two million Jews are killed in the Holocaust. Due to the reduced industrial effort of the slaughter, Germany is able to crush the Soviet Union in 1942. (Chabon references the "Third Russian Republic" in the present day). World War II, as a result, continues until 1946, when Berlin is destroyed with nuclear weapons. Israel, in turn, after its 1948 founding is defeated in its Israeli War of Independence, with the author vaguely referencing the atrocities promised by the Arab governments in the real-world 1948 actually occurring. Manchuria is referred to as if it were still independent of China, which suggests that it may still be a client state of the Japanese Empire, whose fortunes following the end of the Second World War are likely substantially better. In addition, there are also references to a "Polish Free State" in 1950, which implies the absence of any hegemonic Russian sphere of influence equivalent to the Warsaw Pact in this world, and a "Cuban War" in the early sixties, which implies that something like the Bay of Pigs occurred here as well and devolved into something similar to the Vietnam War.

Without Israel, Palestine is described as a mosaic of contending religious and secular nationalist groups locked in internecine conflict. An evangelical Christian United States President, promising to go through with the 'Reversion' of the Alaska territory following the end of its sixty-year congressional authorization, believes in "divine sanction" for neo-Zionism. He may be about to broker a solution that will partially close the gap between our worlds.

[edit] Plot summary

The books opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, examining the murder of a man named Emmanuel Lasker in the Zamenhof, a fleabag hotel where Landsman also happens to live. Landsman notes how professional the murder looks; the man was shot in the back of the head execution-style, the gunshot silenced by a pillow. Landsman notices syringes, packets of heroin, an open cardboard chess board in mid-game, and a beat-up copy of Siegbert Tarrasch’s book, Three Hundred Chess Games. Landsman calls his partner, half-Tlingit, half-Jew Berko Shemets, to help him investigate further.

Landsman’s past is revealed through flashbacks. His father, Isidor Landsman, a Holocaust survivor, had once been a chess grandmaster. Isidor, along with his brother-in-law (Berko’s father) Hertz Shemets, had frequently tried to interest his son in chess, the only game allowed on Shabbat by Jewish law, to no avail. Meyer Landsman’s younger sister, Naomi, had died mysteriously in a plane crash approximately a year earlier. Meyer himself had left his wife of fifteen years, Bina Gelbfish, because he couldn’t live with the guilt of deciding to abort their unborn child Django due to a potentially devastating problem in the unborn boy’s chromosomes.

Landsman visits Berko at Berko's apartment, The Dneyper. Berko thinks that the victim's name, Emmanuel Lasker, is a false name because it’s also the name of a chess champion mentioned in Three Hundred Chess Games. Berko’s wife, Ester-Malke, reveals that she is pregnant and Berko reacts unpleasantly.

Upon filing a report on the murder at police headquarters, Landsman and Berko discover that Landsman's ex-wife, Bina Gelbfish, has been promoted to commanding officer of their unit. Furthermore, the homicide squad is now responsible for closing or trashing all unsolved murder cases within two months, after which Sitka land returns to American control – Reversion.

Landsman guesses that, as a chess player, their victim would have visited Sitka's notorious chess hangout: a function room at the Hotel Einstein, where he and Berko conduct interviews with players about the homicide victim. The players volunteer that the victim called himself Frank, and that he played chess games for money, sometimes five or six games at once, to pay for his heroin habit. Landsman also meets with the mute Alter Litvak, a former Sitka chess champion, who recognizes the victim as a Verbover, a group of Hasidic Jews who run an organized crime ring from their community the islands of Jacoby and Verbov.

Landsman and Berko drive to Verbov Island and visit Itzik Zimbalist, the Verbovers' boundary maven (who helps the Verbovers get around the Talmudic law barring carrying things outside one’s home on Shabbat, by constructing real and symbolic virtual walls and fences around the community).

Zimbalist recognizes the victim’s face: Mendel Shpilman, the son of the Verbover rebbe, Sitka’s most powerful organized crime boss. He also says that Mendel was believed by many to be the Tzaddik-ha Dor: the messiah, born once in every generation, who will help bring back Elijah and restore Israel to its glory days. Mendel was known for performing small but powerful miracles, and many believed that this only confirmed his position. Landsman and Berko visit the rebbe to inform him of his son’s death. The rebbe tells them that he disowned Mendel after learning a terrible secret about him on his wedding night. Mendel was never heard of again.

Landsman and Berko head back to Sitka but see an article announcing Mendel’s funeral, and that his family will attend. Landsman wants to talk to Mendel’s mother, distant from her husband, known only as Mrs. Shpilman. He sneaks into her limousine and is caught, but instead of turning him over, Mrs. Shpilman says that she felt his arrival inevitable in solving Mendel’s murder, and allows him to ask her any questions he wants.

Landsman finds out what happened to Mendel the night before his wedding, an arranged marriage. Mendel felt burdened by the constant attention and demand that he performed miracles. Mendel was also gay, and felt that he could not face the truth anymore. He fled, but came back in disguise to speak to his mother one last time to say that he was abandoning his life as a Messiah and a straight man. He then left for good but remained in touch with his mother for financial support.

Meyer was once a member of the Sitka workers union, Yiddish Policemen’s Union. After a confrontation at Verbov Island while leaving the funeral, the Union suspends his badge for unnecessary force. Desperate, Meyer heads for the airport and buys a pie from a small but famous pie shop. He flashes his worthless membership card and the cashier becomes interested in him. She sends her daughter out to speak to Landsman, who shows her Mendel’s picture and says she knew him; she had helped Mendel find a room in the Hotel Zamenhof after being flown in from Sitka two years ago by Naomi Landsman.

Shocked, Meyer realizes that he could potentially solve the mystery of his sister’s death. The flight records for that day were erased from the police files, and Landsman smells a cover-up. He visits one of Naomi’s friends, who mentions that Naomi often flew to Peril Strait; a mysterious set of buildings with an unknown purpose were set up there by the Verbovers. Landsman gets a lift to Peril Strait, where he finds what appears to be a rehab center. However, when he tries to look around, he is knocked out and thrown in a cell, with graffiti that looks to be written by Naomi.

Landsman, after a crazed attempt at escape is rescued by a local police chief, Willie Dick, who reunites him with Berko. Dick says that aside from the rehab center, the Verbovers appear to be running a farm. Landsman, Dick and Berko head there and find a group of cows; one cow is red with painted-on white spots. Berko has a revelation: the red cow is an extremely rare red heifer, and sprinkling a red heifer’s ashes is a prerequisite for rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. Berko says they should meet his father, Hertz Shemets, who knew more about the prophecy, who is living as a virtual hermit, having since been disgraced.

Landsman and Berko see Shemets. They tell him about the red heifer, and he says that now that the Verbovers have the heifer, there is only one thing standing in their way: the Dome of the Rock, built on the foundations of the old Temple. Alter Litvak, a Verbover and a demolitions expert, has apparently set up a plan to destroy the Rock and bring back the Messiah.

Landsman turns on the TV, and a breaking news report informs them that the Dome has just been destroyed. The Verbover extremists celebrate and Landsman and Berko, disgraced, try to leave. They are met with heavy armed resistance. The US army intervenes and offers to compensate Berko and Landsman if they agree to keep quiet about their adventures. Landsman lies, saying that he will, and is released.

Landsman reunites with Bina, frustrated by his failure with the Shpilman case. He keeps going over the chess board in his head. He suddenly realizes that one of Mendel’s knights was substituted with a Vicks inhaler – the same one Hertz Shemets was using.

Landsman and Bina track down Hertz. He confesses that Mendel asked him to come to the Zamenhof. Mendel, desperate and broke, told Hertz everything and asked him to end it all. Hertz waited until Mendel was in a stupor before shooting him in the back of the head. Landsman contacts a friendly American newspaper with the story. The book ends with Bina and Landsman deciding to date again and planning for their future in America.

[edit] Origins and writing

Chabon began working on the novel in February 2002,^[3] inspired by an essay he had published in Harper's in October 1997. Entitled "Guidebook to a Land of Ghosts", the essay discussed a travel book Chabon had found, Say It in Yiddish, and the dearth of Yiddish-speaking countries in which the book would be useful. While researching hypothetical Yiddish-speaking countries, Chabon learned of "this proposal once that Jewish refugees be allowed to settle in Alaska during World War II… I made a passing reference to it in the essay, but the idea stuck."^[4] Vitriolic public response to the essay, which was seen as controversial for "prematurely announcing [Yiddish's] demise," also spurred Chabon to develop the idea.^[5]

In late 2003, Chabon mentioned the novel on his web site, saying that it was titled Hotzeplotz in a reference to the "Yiddish expression 'from here to Hotzeplotz,' meaning more or less the back of nowhere, Podunk, Iowa, the ends of the earth."^[6] In 2004, Chabon said the (retitled) book would be published in fall 2005,^[7] but then the writer decided to trash his most recent draft and start over. His publisher HarperCollins pushed the publication date back to April 11, 2006. Chabon's rejected 600-page draft featured the same characters as the novel he eventually published but "a completely different story," and was also written in the first person.^[5]

In December 2005, Chabon announced a second delay to the novel's release, claiming that the manuscript was complete but that he felt that HarperCollins was rushing the novel into publication.^[8] An excerpt from the book appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the novel itself was released on May 1, 2007. Chabon has said that the novel was difficult to write, calling it "an exercise in restraint all around… The sentences are much shorter than my typical sentences; my paragraphs are shorter than my typical paragraphs."^[4] He also described the novel as an homage to the writing of mystery writers Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ross Macdonald, along with Russian writer Isaac Babel.^[4][5]

[edit] Reception

In the weeks leading up to its publication, Chabon's first full-length novel since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay received a good deal of attention from the press. The front page of The New York Times' Arts & Leisure section featured a "big, splashy"^[9] profile of Chabon in which he flew to Sitka and discussed the book while walking around the city. The novel also received preemptive criticism, with The New York Post publishing an article headlined "Novelist's Ugly View of Jews." The Post alleged that Chabon's depiction of "Jews as constantly in conflict with one another [is] bound to set off a firestorm of controversy."^[10]

Initial critical reviews were positive. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 75 out of 100, based on 17 reviews.^[11] Library Journal called it "bloody brilliant"^[12] and Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times that the novel "builds upon the achievement of Kavalier & Clay… a gripping murder mystery [with] one of the most appealing detective heroes to come along since Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe."^[13] The novel debuted at #2 on the New York Times Best Seller list on May 20, 2007,^[14] remaining on the list for 6 weeks.^[15]

[edit] Film adaptation

Producer Scott Rudin purchased the film rights to The Yiddish Policemen's Union in 2002, based on a one-and-a-half page proposal.^[16] In February 2008, Rudin told The Guardian that a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union was in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen Brothers.^[17] The Coen Brothers will begin working on the adaptation for Columbia Pictures after they complete filming of A Serious Man.^[18] Chabon stated that the Coens are "among [his] favorite living moviemakers[...]What's more, I think they are perfectly suited to this material in every way, from its genre(s) to its tone to its content."^[19]

[edit] See also

• Territorialism

Preceded by Seeker by Jack McDevitt

Nebula Award for Best Novel 2007

Succeeded by Most recent award winner

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Dissent magazine's interview with Chabon about The Yiddish Policemen's Union
• An Open Letters review of Chabon's career
• Hard-Boiled, Yiddish Style a review by Marc Alan Coen [1]