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For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.

Homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap hotel where Landsman has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under his nose. When he begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, and Landsman finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation that are his heritage.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

Average Customer Rating:

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

Customer Rating:

Only because I hated to give up on the book I have read laborously through 28 chapters. I finally just decided in spite of not knowing the meaning to most of the words I would try to find a plot. However other than putting me quickly to sleep every time I try to read it it has become a challenge even finding a plot. If you don't know anything about Jews or Chess it is not a book that a you would enjoy reading. I think the people who say that they enjoyed it are Jewish Chess players just trying to make you think that they are intellectuals. Noone could possibly have enjoyed this terribly written book. If this is one of the best books of 2007 I would not want to get near any of the worst! A complete disappointment!

Average mystery

Customer Rating:

Peel away all the Yiddish jargon and what I found left was your average cozy mystery. I understand a lot of Yiddish and I still found myself having trouble following the dialogue. It was confusing keeping all the names straight. "Yid" this and "Yid" that - everywhere like too much salt on the meat. OY. And please, with all the Yiddish jargon to make us feet right at home in fantasy-land Jewish Alaska, and then he writes about "noodle pudding"? What?!?! Why not just say kugel? For goodness sakes. I found this book tedious to read and get through. Ultimately a somewhat satisfying mystery. But I don't get all the hype unless it's just for the sake of uniqueness. Sorry.

A mayse of the Frozen Chosen

Customer Rating:

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a delightfully fun read set in part of Alaska set aside as a refuge for the Jews after the Holocaust. The United States, after the Israelis lost their war for independence, leases the territory to the Jews for sixty years. But now the lease is up and most of the Jews will have to find another home. This sets of a series of events that starts with the death of a chess prodigy and continues through convolutions that would take the Eruv Maven to sort out. Instead of Hebrew and redemption, the they speak the Yiddish of exile. Many of the metaphors that seem odd in English work well when understood that it is meant to be understood as a literal translation of the Yiddish (translated back to Yiddish it works). Buildings and streets have names culled from the cannon of Yiddish literature. The reader familiar with Yiddish language and literature will have to stop every few pages to laugh with recognition, at least until the tragedy embedded in the plot becomes apparent. The reader unfamiliar with Yiddish will definitely miss most of the inside jokes, like a Shoyfer (Shofar-ritual horn -- Cell phone), Sholem for a gun (Shalom-Peace-Piece),and Shomer (watchman for a corpse before burial). Leo Rosten's The Joys Of Yiddish could be a helpful companion book.

MUMBOJUMBO IN SITKA

Customer Rating:

There have been enough reviews of Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen Union," that I see no advantage in summarizing the plot of his book once again. What I want to discuss is the author's confused and confusing use of two languages. In Chabon's author's note he acknowledges Reb [sic] Valadimir Nabokov. That "Reb" was completely bilingual. He understood the character of Russian as well as English; he wrote books in both languages. When it comes to being bilingual, Chabon is no Nabokov. These days, progressive editors permit authors to use foreign words or terms without italicizing them, provided readers will understand them from the context, because they are repeated often enough. Chabon's first mistake is using hundreds of Yiddish words that readers cannot understand from the context. Some reviewers suggested that Chabon should have added a Yiddish glossary at the end of the book. Chabon's readers are not college students who must struggle with obscure texts with words they need to look up. His second mistake is a complete lack of understanding of the spirit of Yiddish, even though he is familiar with the vocabulary. For instance: He refers to the personal weapons of the cops in Sitka as "sholem," which is supposed to be a translation of "peace maker." (Are there cops today who refer to their weapons as peace makers?) It borders on the ridiculous to use this Yiddish word for a weapon, because it just means peace (without "maker"). If this is supposed to be a Chabon linguistic joke, non-Yiddish-speaking readers won't get it; and most Yiddish speakers will not be amused. As Chabon tells his story, the Jews of Sitka speak mostly Yiddish. If that is so, the protagonist, not a particularly well-educated cop, would not think in terms of an "inverse satori," a Japanese Zen Buddhist concept. Readers may feel that "satori" was used solely to show the author's erudition. If Yiddish is the prevailing language of Sitka, one would assume that the inhabitants would speak it idiomatically. Why would they say, in THEIR language, "I want you should," which native-Yiddish speakers sometimes use in English? Yiddish is an earthy language, given to simple and very strong expressions, not the baroquely ornate English the author uses throughout the work. I have no quarrel with his style, but it does not fit into the language of Sitka. It is, to use a Chabonism, de trop. Foreign words in an English text are the frosting on the cake. The cake is the plot. Shakespeare wrote Hamlet without using Danish words, and Romeo and Juliet without Italian. I'll end with my own obiter dictum - I believe I have caught the Chabon linguistic bug. How can one write about a Jewish autonomous region in Alaska, established in 1948, without mentioning Birobijan? It is a remote area in Siberia, adjacent to the Chinese border that Stalin established in 1928 as an Autonomous Jewish Region - a Soviet planned competitor to the emerging Jewish homeland in Palestine. There are at least two striking similarities: The biting cold of Birobijan in wintertime (probably worse than in Alaska), and Yiddish as a semi-official language. Just as in Sitka, even under the communists, there must have been ordinary Yiddish-speaking cops on duty, to keep the new inhabitants in line.

NOT CRAZY ABOUT THIS BOOK

Customer Rating:

I'm not Jewish and I don't know Yiddish at all. Apparently, unless you have one or both of those qualifications, you may not like this book. I've gotten far in the book but I'm waiting still to like the story or for something to happen to make me understand all the good reviews. Seeing Mr. Chabon's tight smile on the book insert at the end seems to be trying to reassure that it will get better but I think it won't. I am leaving a bad review b/c I think I know at this point that I will never get into the book although I understand the basic story but can't get any enjoyment out of it since I don't understand what they're really saying.