hopeless life. They live in a freezing ghetto. The Jews of Alaska in Michael Chabon`s book are trash in the eyes of the American administration and do not exist at all in the eyes of the world at large.
The attempt to set up a "Land of Zion in Alaska" failed. The Jews do not flock there and the Americans refuse to grant its residents permanent status; the presence of Jews there only intensifies the hatred towards them. The Jews, on their part, do not give up the idea of Eretz Israel: A handful of these Jews continue to dream of the return to Zion, the Temple, the Temple Mount and of an "airlift to Jerusalem," even at the cost of terror and bloodshed. The author ultimately focuses on these people`s aspirations.
Michael Chabon is 43 and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. He has written finer books than "The Yiddish Policeman`s Union," yet this is his deep-set Zionist proclamation. In one of his interviews he admitted that he had always been attracted to the question of what the world would look like without the State of Israel. He provides a resolved answer in his book: Without the State of Israel the fate of the Jewish people would be bad and bitter. Without the State of Israel there is no future for the Jewish People, neither in Alaska nor anywhere else. |
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