6 thoughts on “Oof.”

  1. Wow. Quite a piece. He’s going further with the Alaska idea, it seems from this page:
    http://www.michaelchabon.com/current.html

    In the meantime, I’m exploring the world of my new novel, Hotzeplotz. It’s set in the Alaskan panhandle, in the present day, in the territory that was opened to the Jewish refugees of Europe, after Congress passed the King-Havenner Bill of 1940. The precarious balancing act of this Yiddish-speaking nation-within-a-nation is imperiled by the discovery of a mysterious skull in a construction site, and the novel unfolds as its protagonist, a homicide detective named Meyer Landsman, investigates. “Hotzeplotz” is the name of a real town in the Ukraine or someplace, but it’s used in the Yiddish expression “from here to Hotzeplotz,” meaning more or less the back of nowhere, Podunk, Iowa, the ends of the earth.

    It’s funny, I wondered about that when I first took a poli sci class on the Middle East. Why go straight from the frying pan into the fire–why not Canada or somewhere?
    The King-Havenner Bill is real, by the way. The Anchorage Daily News did a four part series on it in 1999, of which I can only find the last two parts:
    http://www.adn.com/adn/sanctuary/stories/T99051857.html
    http://www.adn.com/adn/sanctuary/stories/T99051994.html
    (no, I didn’t know any of that before. The magic of google.)
    As for Europe, it was seeing Hungary and the Czech Republic that got to my in-laws, even though they’re from Romania, Poland, and Russia. Because many of the people there were very much like them. Urban, overeducated, successful, high holidays and passover Jews (the equivalent of a Christmas and Easter Christian), very much assimilated, liberal, secure in their place in society….Budapest has the third largest synagogue in the world after New York City.

  3. Katherine: Yeah, a few places were considered – Uganda, for one. I suspect they settled on parts of the Palestinian Manadate because there is actual historical percedent for Jews in the Holy Land, including a certain percenteage of the population that never left, and a proportion of the population that kept growing since the 18th century.
    Marjolein: The Jewish population of Birobidjan was never more than 30% of the population. Whether Yiddish was a living language there at one point is doubtful, but it certaily won’t be one now.

  4. Obviously I understand the historical ties with the middle east and the migration that had started decades ago; and the disadvantages of a frozen wasteland, even if a beautiful one. I just thought it was remarkable that safety wasn’t the overriding concern. (Of course all of that assumes that some gov’t could be talked into it, which is probably false.)
    Uganda, huh? I guess it could always be worse….

  5. Angua; and a good thing too, that the Jews stayed a minority, seeing Stalins change in attitude towards them later on. Sad to think that some Jews actually (re)emigrated there from Palestine.
    But I only tried to think what the “what and who in Yiddish” guide that Moe referred to could be aimed at. And I can only think of this area as a possible target for a historic “travellers guide to Yiddish” kind-a-booklet.

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