Frozen chosen

>>The Yiddish Policemen’s Union relocates
Jews from Israel to the polar bear
habitat of Sitka, Alaska

by JULIET WATERS

“Man makes plans and God laughs,” or so the old Yiddish saying goes. These days, “God, that controlling motherfucker,” so called by the hero of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, must have an especially hard time keeping a straight face. For the humans who find it harder to laugh, there’s Michael Chabon’s brilliantly weird “what if” take on the world.

What if the plan for Jews to live in Israel had fallen apart early in the game, let’s say as early as 1948, and as compensation, they were given the island of Sitka, just off Alaska? Russian Jews would have a somewhat sharper edge, and Yiddish might very well have become the official language. But what if part of the package was that Sitka would revert back to Alaskan control after 60 years?

These would, indeed, be “strange times to be a Jew,” as Chabon’s hero, Meyer Landsman, is fond of pointing out. Landsman is a cop. Recently divorced, chronically cynical and seethingly secular, he’s like a barely resurrected Jerry Orbach negotiating life amongst Hasidic gangsters, chess sharks and the occasional polar bear. Add the fact that his ambitious, attractive ex-wife Bina Gelbfish has recently been made his boss. The only thing propping Landsman up these days is his competent and trusted partner Berko. Half aboriginal, half Jew, Berko is infinitely patient, but no fool. “Gray hair makes Berko look wiser and kinder, an effect that, though his is relatively wise and fairly kind, he will not hesitate to abuse.”

The only thing getting Landsman out of bed these days is a body colder than his own. This one shows up, true to the rules of old-school noir, in the opening paragraph. “Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.”

Lasker, it turns out, had quite the brain to sink a bullet into. According to the Hasids who populate the seediest chess halls in Sitka, Lasker was a prodigy. Unfortunately, by the time of his death, he was clearly a fallen child star, a junkie, chess sharking to feed his habit.

Unfortunately, also, Landsman has serious chess issues. His father, the stereotypical chess dad, committed suicide the day after Landsman sent him a letter explaining why he was quitting chess. Though it turns out that his father’s suicide was in no way related to Landsman’s decision to quit chess, it’s still hard to summarize this novel without making it sound like an adult installment of the Lemony Snicket Series. The series of unfortunate events that has landed our hero in a flophouse and the Jews in the Northern Atlantic is too authentically tragic to be merely ridiculous. In Landsman’s case, he and Bina divorced over a decision to abort a fetus with potential genetic defects. In the Jews’ case, there was the Holocaust.

Just when it feels like things are getting too serious, or not serious enough, Chabon hits you in the heart with a breathtaking sentence. “Fat streamers of fog twist along the streets, smearing headlights and neon, blotting out the harbor, leaving a track of oily silver beads on the lapels of coats and the crowns of hats.” And just when you’re feeling the same affection for this world that Chabon clearly does, you get pie in the face that reminds you where you are, deep in a parody unafraid of broad beats like “Fuck you, the yid meant nothing to me.”

And just when it’s getting a little too quirky and you’re wondering how it’s all going to come together, this religious-political sad sack satire, it becomes a love story. “How many times, he wonders, can she have enough of him, already, and still have not quite enough.”

Funny, I was thinking something just like that, about Chabon and his novel, pretty much from page one to the end.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by
Michael Chabon, Harper Collins,
hc, 414pp, $33.95.