Israel the Improbable Miracle

Even considering the extraordinary vicissitudes of Jewish history, the founding of Israel as a modern state stands out as highly improbable. Describing the unlikely contingencies that enabled its creation (with both U.S. and Soviet support, defeating a legion of Arab would-be conquerors), historian Paul Johnson in his magisterial work Modern Times writes that “Israel slipped into existence through a crack in the time continuum.”

So what if Israel hadn’t slipped through that crack? That is the intriguing premise of Michael Chabon’s 2007 novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Chabon, seizing on an abandoned World War II resettlement proposal of the U.S. government, imagines not Israel but a portion of Alaska as the main home of the world’s Jews. Taking the form of a potboiler murder mystery, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is richly imagined. But it also displays an impishness, even a callousness, about the counterfactual scenario it imagines that helps lay bare certain prejudices against Jews and against Israel that have sadly resurged in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack.

About the Author

Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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Even considering the extraordinary vicissitudes of Jewish history, the founding of Israel as a modern state stands out as highly improbable. Describing the unlikely contingencies that enabled its creation (with both U.S. and Soviet support, defeating a legion of Arab would-be conquerors), historian Paul Johnson in his magisterial work Modern Times writes that “Israel slipped into existence through a crack in the time continuum.”

So what if Israel hadn’t slipped through that crack? That is the intriguing premise of Michael Chabon’s 2007 novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Chabon, seizing on an abandoned World War II resettlement proposal of the U.S. government, imagines not Israel but a portion of Alaska as the main home of the world’s Jews. Taking the form of a potboiler murder mystery, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is richly imagined. But it also displays an impishness, even a callousness, about the counterfactual scenario it imagines that helps lay bare certain prejudices against Jews and against Israel that have sadly resurged in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack.