The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel

This was a miss for me. I greatly enjoyed “Kavaliere and Clay”, but I just couldn’t keep track of what was going on in this book. There is just too much time spent on gratuitous and rambling descriptions, to the point that by the time he’s finished I’ve lost track of what he was trying to describe. For that same reason, I kept getting lost regarding the plot. I finally gave up, and I very rarely don’t finish a book.

With all of that said, two important notes: first, I have a graduate degree in American Literature, so it’s not as though I just can’t handle more advanced or more complex writing styles. On the other hand, I listened to the book (a neurological disorder makes reading extremely difficult), and I do acknowledge that the narrator’s delivery contributes to the difficulty in following the narrative, and to no small degree. Regardless, I do believe that I would have trouble staying focused on this book either way.

One more quibble regarding the narration: while I generally admire Peter Riegert as a voice actor and narrator, I feel he is miss cast here. His somewhat vaguely “New York Jewish” accent is jarring in an Alaskan environment.

Lot of plot turns in an alternate world, there Alaska is a refuge for the world's jews.

Chabon has an amazing ability to fully flesh a character in just a few short paragraphs. Technically an SF novel because it is set in an alternate present, The Yiddish Policeman's Union has more in common with hard boiled detective fiction. The alcoholic protagonist is tragic in his suicidal, self-redemptive pursuit of an apparent dead-end case (which, of course, turns out to be much more complex than previously believed). This is a slow read, but a rich one.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union takes place in an alternate history when the Germans do not surrender the Second Great War for another four years past reality and President Kennedy is not assassinated from the grassy knoll. In this alternate history Kennedy ends up marrying Marilyn Monroe (of course he does). Sitka, Alaska is the site of a federally mandated safe refugee location for European Jews. The area was created at the height of World War II and sixty years later, the safe haven still exists. Only, now Alaska wants their territory back. The plot is great, but the characters of The Yiddish Policemen's Union are what makes the novel hum. Chabon's characters exude personality. To name a few: Meyer Landsman, the main protagonist, was a character I loved. This flawed policeman whose life is a mess cannot let go of one particular cold case, the murder of a drug addled chess prodigy and supposed messiah. Landsman is supervised by his ex-wife, Bina and she has ordered the force to abandon all cold cases now that the safe haven for refugees is being dismantled. Berko Shemets, his partner is half Jewish, half Tlingit and all intimidation.

Bizarre book that I thoroughly enjoyed. It makes sense that it was written partially out of spite.

It took a while for me to get into, and I do kind of feel bad saying it, but the Yiddish was an obstacle.. I just didn't feel at home. But a stretch is good, right? Once I got the characters voices established in my head, I really enjoyed the story and think it's one of the most creative books I've read in a long time.

I'm going to start out by saying that I love alternate history. I think it is so fun and so cool to look at the world and think about what could have happened differently so I was intrigued by this book. Unfortunately I didn't love this book as much as I wanted to. There were definitely parts of the book that really sucked me in and I really enjoyed reading about but there were also a lot of times that the story just completely lost me and I got very confused. I think part of the reason that happened was because this book is about a culture where I'm not super familiar with the intricacies of the lifestyle. Also Michael Chabon's writing style also just confused me a lot and it didn't work with me. I did like the characters and the unique setting but because I was kind of confused throughout this book about what exactly was happening, I couldn't love the characters as much as I wanted to. I really didn't hate this book. I still really like the idea of it and I think it was really interesting but something about this book just wasn't for me and I really wish I could have liked it a bit more.

A remarkable book; here are some remarks. Is this about a mystery, about love, or about chess? Not entirely clear but I enjoyed every page. Not to say that it was easy reading: each sentence is a workout to understand, not only the pervasive analogies but the language. Oh, yes, so much Yiddish with no pity for us goyim. I have not had so much brain exercise from a work of fiction in a long time.

In Chabon's alternate history, the Jewish country of Israel doesn't exist, and Jewish refugees escaping from the Holocaust are granted the safety and autonomy of a strip of Alaska. Now 60 years later, the Jewish land of Sitka is about to revert back to the United States. That's the background against which a Jewish policeman, living in a fleabag hotel, ends up investigating the murder of another tenant of the hotel.

Still reeling from his divorce a couple of years earlier the more recent death of his sister, and faced with an uncertain future after the reversion, Meyer Landsman is a mess, but he's a good detective, determined to find the killer, even if it means disobeying a direct order from his newly promoted ex-wife who is now his boss.

In prose full of metaphors and similies, Chabon takes Meyer and the reader into the part of Sitka where the Black Hats -- ultra Orthodox Jews -- live and oversee life in the district. The simple murder of a former chess prodigy/current drug addict is anything but simple. This is a fascinating look at what could have been, as well as a compelling story about a murder, grief, and a community determined to keep surviving all the obstacles put in their way.

one of last books read with Wordies before I moved back North

I still did not enjoy this re-read of Michael Chabon's “The Yiddish Policemen's Union”. This time around the only redeeming feature was still the clever premise which I had forgotten by now. But that's about it.

In the early 1900s, the Zionist Movement did consider a British colonial proposal to make parts of British East Africa (in today's Uganda and Kenya) a Jewish settlement. The Nazi leaders did consider a plan to deport European Jews to Madagascar. Odd as those locations now seem, used as we are to what did actually happen (oh, let's not get into the reality of the reality here), I really applauded Mr. Chabon's inspired, witty leap of thought in making Alaska the location for a Jewish homeland. Not long after reading that book, I happened to read Victor Klemperer's incomparable diaries. Jewish by birth; a converted Christian for marriage; in practice an atheist (if memory serves), Mr. Klemperer's diaries are a rare, searing, intelligently pedantic contemporaneous account of daily life in Nazi Germany.

To my surprise, among the whispered rumours he recorded in passing was the rumour that Jews would be deported to Alaska.

Incidentally, I am getting used to the fact that a lot of people are eroding the distinction between "alternate" and "alternative" and don't get heat up about it anymore (although I do regret it); even Garner's Modern American Usage (2009) states "Alternate is often misused for alternative", rating it "3" the book's "language change index" (scale 1 to 5), which is glossed as "Widespread but ...". In other words it is not considered really acceptable in careful style even on that side of the Atlantic.

Hello, it's over. Dystopian story about the exodus of part of the Hebrew people, instead of ending up in Palestine, they end up in Alaska, adding a police plot for flavor. To be honest, I didn't like it; it was slow and boring in its central part, overly focused on the description of the characters, their clothing, etc., with the added use of Hebrew words and expressions continuously. In the end, there is a glossary translating them. I expected more, to be honest. (Translated from Spanish)

Probably my favourite book of all the fiction I read that year.

I enjoy a good film noir detective story and this starts out just like so many of the best: our protagonist (Is he a hero? He's the best we'll get) wakes hung-over and miserable in his room at the fleapit hotel, to find his neighbour is dead and now that's his problem to solve. So much, so Sam Spade. But now we find this West Coast isn't LA, it's Alaska - or rather the Federal District of Sitka, in an alternate timeline where this became a Jewish homeland and refuge from Europe. This isn't the Promised Land, it's the Land Grudgingly Loaned and now Uncle Sam wants it back.

It's the observed details that make this. Hebrew is a oddity kept for shul and the language of the streets is Yiddish, His partner is one of the few gentiles in town, being from the First Nations. And when there's no food, at least there's chess. Chabon never makes do with one word when he can fit a dozen in there. As much a mensch as his bedraggled and trampled hero.

I loved this. Unusually for fiction I'll probably read it again.

I've had a hardback copy of this book on my shelf for some time, but kept shying away from it. What a mistake.

Part detective story, part alternative history, part romance, part discussion of religious dogma, this enchanting book held my attention like the best suspenseful mystery, so that I read it almost in one sitting. What would have happened if Israel had never taken hold in 1948? What would happen if you gave a whole people a 20 year lease on which to lick their wounds? And what would happen when one kind of hope collides with another? Some of the Jews in the borrowed land of Alaska want to try to win back Palestine, some want to stay, some are fearful of eviction, again, as has happened for millenia. And in the midst of this, a chess wizard is found dead in a seedy hotel, in which a guilt-ridden police detective spends his non-working hours drinking his sorrows. The classic Chandler-esque noir plot melds perfectly with the deeper discussions to produce a book that is very hard to put down.

Has it's moments.
Well-written, gives us a peek into the Jewish culture in Sitka while keeping us interested in chess, Jewish rabbinical hierarchy, and a sad drunk policeman...

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it kept me going through 5months of reading, on the other hand, it took me five months to read it. Especially the first half feels more like an investment to get at the better second part and the female characters felt more off to me than the noirish tropes and biased POV-character would explain, but then I really like Chabon's way with words and language.

This book, apart from assuaging my fears that a madness would overtake Mr. Chabon (see also Summerland then the Final Solution), put together two of my favorite speech styles that I may not be fully able to separate again: slangy Yiddish and hardboiled. Throw in chess, Indians, hope, sad and alone, a pie shop... Strange times to be a Jew. 775/1000

A detective novel that explores the curious alternative story of a crime within the closed society of Jews in Alaska. A police inspector uncovers the entire web behind the murder of his hotel colleague. It is a novel filled with details, featuring many Yiddish terms, which makes it quite colorful. (Translated from Spanish)

This is such a great book, I pick it up every so often to read it again and every time I am completly drawn into the story.
It is especially the little details for describing situations which lets you dive into this universe of alternate reality.

Book 5 of Life's Library (John Green's online communal book club). Chabon is one of my favorite authors so I can't really review his work (not that I really review anything), cause its very biased. Its a slightly alternative history/noir crime novel, that the book summary says; "In a world in which Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, Detective Meyer Landsman and his half-Tlingit partner Berko investigate the death of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy." What's not to love. Here's some quotes that say it better than I ever could.
...he plays goalkeeper as a squad of unprofitable regrets mounts a steady attack on his ability to get through a day without feeling anything.

...Landsman has to wonder how he ever could have seen anything in the rebbe's eyes but ten thousand miles of frozen sea. Landsman is shocked, knocked overboard into that cold water. To keep himself afloat, he clings to the ballast of his cynicism.

The knot of his gold-and-green rep necktie presses its thumb against his larynx like a scruple pressing against a guilty conscience, a reminder that he is alive.

Every generation loses the messiah it has failed to deserve.

(About Judaism) "Every damn day of my life, I get up in the morning and put this shit on and pretend to be something I'm not. Something I'll never be. For you." "I never asked you to observe the religion," the old man says, not looking up. "I don't think I ever put any kind of --" "It has nothing to do with religion," Berko says. "It has everything to do, God damn it, with fathers."
9/10

S: 6/11/19 - 6/30/19 (20 Days)

Chabon knowingly violates the norms of Noir to suggest larger ideas on Israel and the West.

What if the messiah comes, but he doesn’t want to stick around? This question underlies a completely engrossing, brilliantly told detective noir story set in an alternative reality Jewish homeland in Alaska. As a detective story, it’s well done, with a mystery that leads to numerous other crimes and conspiracies, all of which seem plausible in the context of a corrupted, criminal underworld at the edge of the world and the end of time.
The situation is a murder in a Jewish homeland imposed on a piece of the world that no-one wants except the Tlingit people living there (a nice parallel for the State of Israel in Palestine). The setting, with its ever-present fog, rain, snow and cold, hemmed in by forests and water, has the same foreboding character that Raymond Chandler would call up if his Los Angeles were 1,500 miles farther north. Also like Chandler, Chabon uses a colourful, hard-boiled style to evoke a tough, cynical and bleak view of the world. His language brings in yiddish slang and similes that fit naturally in the world he has created. It doesn’t feel like a forced pastiche of Chandler to find out that a sholem is slang for a gun (or “peacemaker” in western American slang); or that a latke is a street cop (or “flatfoot”). An artful homage, I would say.
Another departure from Chandler, or at least the Chandler novels I’ve read, is that the past of the protagonist Landsman is not hidden. It is revealed slowly, but Chabon does explain how he came to his bleak outlook and self-destructive life. And while the story centres on male protagonists, the women in the story are strong capable individuals who contribute to the plot and the characters. Ultimately, Landsman finds that salvation is not in the messiah, but in his relationship to the woman he loves.
The messiah figure is an interesting one, too. He has a genuine gift for bringing contentment into people’s lives, but he can’t bring the same satisfaction into his own life. The contradictions with his ultra-orthodox sect make him miserable and he wants out. His mother wants to protect him, but he flees before she can help him, if that’s even possible in her world. A self-sacrificing messiah this is not, which makes an interesting reflection on the Christian messiah.
From the start, though, I wondered what the title referred to, and about page 230, we find that the Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a fake: after losing his badge, Landsman uses a union card to pretend to be an active policeman. So I take it that the Yiddish Policemen’s Union is a cover for looking at something else. What Michael Chabon is really looking at seems to be a multi-layered view of Jewish-American and Israeli politics, society and personal relations.
A key theme in the novel is the expiration of the lease on the Jewish homeland in Alaska, which the Americans won’t renew it, leaving the few million Jewish settlers either searching for a new homeland or in a suspended animation – the existential challenge of Israel and the renewed diaspora of unwelcome Jewish people.
To resolve the challenge, a group of Zionists finds a messiah and concocts a scheme to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem and return to Israel. Their willingness to stop at nothing, including genocide, and with the probably ignorant support of wealthy American Jewish sponsors, leads to a scheme that would stir the imagination of anti-semitic conspiracy theorists. Chabon keeps the story from descending to such fantasies, mainly by making the imagined setting so much a part of the novel that the storyline cannot be separated from the city of Sitka and its seedy inhabitants. That and the fundamentalist Christian allies who back the plot.
Chabon uses the noir genre conventions to explore literature and society in complex ways, as Chabon’s Cavalier and Clay used comic book conventions to explore twentieth century Jewish life. I like the chess theme, for example, which returns frequently to provide clues to the mystery story, is also a reflection on order and disorder in society, father-son relationships and the ultimate puzzle of life, what to do when you have no good moves. This is a literary novel that is entertaining and a great read.

Interesting starting idea, but gets really boring very fast. And way too much Yiddish words in the text actually makes it hard to read. Could not finish this one.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is an alternate-history novel in which the Jewish people have been removed from Israel and relocated to a small portion of Alaska on a temporary lease. The story revolves around a police detective, Landsman, and his dogged determination in unraveling his latest murder case, despite the fact that it's no more important than any of the other unsolved murder cases in his file, he's officially been told to drop the case, and he keeps ending up in harm's way for annoying the wrong people. Of course, the case ends up being related to an international conspiracy. What's remarkable about the book is the atmosphere--the entire Jewish district seems like kind of a slum, complete with Rabbi leaders that are no better than mob bosses, which is added to the looming inevitability of the Americans taking over when the lease is up in several months. The characters themselves are mostly abrasive and irrational--I found it very difficult to identify or sympathize with them at all. While the murder case is resolved by the end, the reader never gets the sense that the overwhelming glumness of the world will ever cease. This one was a bit too depressing for me.

Long ago, but not all that far away, I converted to Judaism. I eventually divorced by Jewish husband, and stopped practicing. But I have always been fond of the religion and the culture. For a lot of reasons, I miss being Jewish. I point this out, because it probably explains why I have a bit of a crush on Michael Chabon right now. I just finished reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union. The first page had me craving the roll and lilt of sung Hebrew, and the rich smells of a Jewish kitchen. Mr. Chabon's Jewish community is deliciously believable.

Mr. Chabon's writing is very rich, possibly a bit too rich in places. His phrasing is so full at times it can be hard to follow. The Jewish/Yiddish references hit you like an avalanche from the first paragraph, which I loved but may be a bit hard to follow, at least at first, for someone not familiar with Ashkenazic Jewish culture. That being said, this book drew me in and kept me attention to the end. The plot is good, the characters are excellent, and the mystery is believable, and very character driven. The end smacks just a little of deus ex machina, but there's been just enough of a whiff of the miraculous in the course of the novel, that its easy to accept.

I can easily understand why this was nominated for a Hugo this year. It's a good read, but brings up some very deep issues in the course of the wild ride of the plot, from what motivates people to what it means to have faith. Oddly enough, it never actually addresses where, if anywhere, miracles come from, or even if they exist. Things happen; it's up the the reader if it's coincidence, the hand of G-D, or something else entirely. In the book, some things just happen.

I highly recommend this book, and not just because I have a crush on the author :)

Loved this book once I let myself fall into its world where the world's Jews had all been segregated to Sitka, Alaska. Once you accept that premise, the consequences are marvelously complex. The pretext for the novel is the solving of a mystery but the details are what matters.. Many memorable characters. Highly recommend this one.

One surprise after another. A book with "incorrect" themes. Originality is its main virtue. Excellent!!! (Translated from Spanish)

Well... this book is unexpectedly different. I am not sure if it would be considered good or not by most readers, but I did enjoy it.

It is kinda a noir police procedural, but set in an alternate future. Well, the future is exactly like the present, except for the social situation where Jews were relocated to Alaska post world war 2.

There is not very much action, occasional swearing and no graphic sex or violence.

I loved the premise of this book, the characters, the language, the humor. But the ending happened so fast, I was a bit confused by it. Otherwise I would have given in a 5star rating.

One thing is sure, Chabon is a genius writer. After that the things are not so we'll defined. What we are reading? An alternative history story? A detective story? A Jewish messiah story? All of it in one great book thanks to Chabon's extraordinary fantasy and storytelling ability.