The Yiddish Policemen's Union

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a 2007

In the novel, the State of Israel is founded in 1948, but is destroyed after only three months in an alternative version of the Arab-Israeli War. Without Israel, Palestine is described as a mosaic of contending religious and secular nationalist groups locked in internecine conflict; Jerusalem is described as "a city of blood and slogans painted on the wall, severed heads on telephone poles".^[3] The United States president believes in "divine sanction" for neo-Zionism, a movement seeking for Jews to reclaim Israel once again.

Chabon describes the rest of world history only

The book opens with Meyer Landsman, an alcoholic homicide detective with the Sitka police department, investigating the murder of a man in the hotel where Landsman lives. Beside the corpse lies an open cardboard chess board with an unfinished game set up on it. Landsman calls his partner and cousin, half-Tlingit, half-Jewish Berko Shemets, to help him investigate further. 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. Landsman's only other living family member is Berko's father Hertz, a war veteran and former federal agent who performed missions on behalf of the United States government before they burned him. Landsman's chess-addicted father and cancer-stricken mother died before the events of the novel, as did his sister Naomi, a bush pilot who lost her life in a plane crash. Sitka is due to be "reverted" to the control of the state of Alaska in just a few weeks' time, leaving the status of Sitka, previously a semi-autonomous federal district governed by the Jews, in question. Berko has made plans for his family to stay legally, but Landsman has not.

After consulting with Hertz and visiting several local chess clubs, who knew the victim as "Frank", Landsman and Berko discover that the victim was Mendel Shpilman, the son of the Verbover

As Meyer continues to investigate Mendel's murder, he discovers that the supposed "chosen one" had taken a flight with Naomi. He follows Naomi's trail to a mysterious set of buildings with an unknown purpose, set up in Tlingit territory by Jews. Landsman flies there to investigate; he is knocked out and thrown in a cell, whose walls have graffiti in Naomi's handwriting. Landsman is soon woken up by Baronshteyn and a doctor who claims that they are in a legitimate rehabilitation center. Landsman attacks his captor and is able to escape.

The naked and injured Landsman is soon rescued by a local Tlingit police chief, Willie Dick, who reunites him with Berko. The duo visit Hertz, where Hertz and Berko have a confrontation over Hertz's role in a

As Landsman and Berko investigate, the News reports the Dome being bombed. American agents apprehend the detectives and offer them permission to stay in Sitka, if they agree to keep quiet about the plot they have uncovered. Landsman says that he will and is released. Landsman reunites with Bina, frustrated by his failure with the Shpilman case. Remembering the chess board, he suddenly realizes that it's not an unfinished game, but a chess problem: he had seen the same problem from the perspective of the other player in Hertz's house. Landsman and Bina visit a recovering Hertz at Berko's home, and he confesses to killing Mendel at Mendel's own request hoping to ruin the government's plans to bring upon the Messiah. Landsman contacts American journalist Brennan stating that he "has a story for him". It is left ambiguous to the reader if Landsman is planning to expose Hertz's involvement in Shpilman's murder or the complex messianic conspiracy.

Origins and writing

Chabon began working on the novel in February 2002,^[4] 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,^[5] 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."^[6] Vitriolic public response to the essay, which was seen as controversial for "prematurely announcing [Yiddish's] demise," also spurred Chabon to develop the idea.^[7]

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."^[8] In 2004, Chabon said the (retitled) book would be published in fall 2005,^[9] but then the writer decided to trash his most recent draft and start over. His publisher

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.[10] 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."^[6] 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.^[6][7]

The book's original cover art by Will Staehle

In the weeks leading up to its publication, the novel received considerable attention from the press. The front page of The New York Times' Arts & Leisure section featured a "big, splashy"^[12] profile of Chabon in which he flew to Sitka and discussed the book while walking around the city.

Reviews were generally positive. The review aggregator

Producer Scott Rudin purchased the film rights to The Yiddish Policemen's Union in 2002, based on a one-and-a-half page proposal.^[18][19] 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.^[20] The Coen brothers were to begin working on the adaptation for Columbia Pictures after they completed filming of A Serious Man.^[21] 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."^[22]

In the fall of 2012, however, Chabon told Mother Jones that "the Coen brothers wrote a draft of a script and then they seemed to move on," and that the film rights had "lapsed back to me."^[23]

TV series

In January 2019,

• Proposals for a Jewish state § Proposals for a second Jewish state
• Jewish Territorialist Organization

References