Line #100 Literature/TheYiddishPolicemensUnion


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yiddish_policemens_union.png]]
2	->''"[[ArcWords These are strange times to be a Jew]]."''
3
4	''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' is an AlternateHistory detective novel by Creator/MichaelChabon published in 2007. It received the Hugo Award for best novel, as well as other awards.
5
6	The year is 2007 and nobody in the Federal District of Sitka knows what the future will be made of. The rain-soaked territory in the Alaska Panhandle became the last refuge of the Jews after the state of Israel was stillborn in 1948, and the United States is going to reclaim it in a few months. Meanwhile, [[HardboiledDetective hard-boiled]] and chronically depressed detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has a murder case on his hands. In the very rathole of a hotel where he has washed up, a man with a false identity has been executed, contract-style.
7
8	Teaming up with his long-time partner Berko Shemets, his cousin and half Tlingit Native American, Meyer tries to elucidate the case before the deadline of Reversion, when the entire district will cease to exist and he'll likely be out of a job. The investigation takes him into the reclusive world of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, where word had it that the murder victim might have been the Messiah of prophecy...
9
10	Creator/TheCoenBrothers were working on a [[TheFilmOfTheBook film adaptation]] of the novel, but the project seems to have been cancelled. However, in January 2019, [=CBS=] acquired the script from Chabon and his wife for a possible TV series.
11	----
12	!!''The Yiddish Policemen's Union'' contains examples of:
13
14	* AchievementsInIgnorance: Landsman spends much of the novel trying to figure out how the perp entered the victim's hotel without being seen, and ultimately concludes [[spoiler: that he entered through some underground tunnels.]] It turns out [[spoiler:that the perp simply walked through the front door and, when presented with the accusation, has no idea what Landsman's talking about.]]
15	* AllJewsAreAshkenazi: Sitka society is almost entirely based on Ashkenazi culture, to the point that Yiddish is the common language. This is because other Jewish cultures such as the Separdim, Mizrahim, Habashim, etc. remained in their home countries after Israel was crushed. Having won the war, the countries felt no need to expel the remaining Jews.
16	* AlternateHistory:
17	** Alaskan Delegate Anthony Diamond died in a car crash, thus allowing the US Congress to implement the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery_Report Slattery Report]] which opened Alaska to Jewish immigration. 4 million of the 6 million Jews who would have been killed in the Holocaust fled to Alaska, creating a vibrant and sprawling community centered around Sitka.
18	** World War II lasted until Germany was nuked in 1946, and Israel was destroyed after only 6 months during the first round of the Arab-Israeli War.
19	** Creator/OrsonWelles [[DifferentWorldDifferentMovies made his film]] of ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness''.
20	** There was a lengthy war between America and Cuba during the sixties.
21	** President John F. Kennedy appears to have married Marilyn Monroe, whom the protagonist Meyer Landsmann remembers at the First Lady Marilyn Monroe Kennedy.
22	** The Soviet Union appears to have collapsed at some point during the 1970s, with there being a Third Russian Republic by 2007.
23	* AlwaysNight: It ''is'' Alaska in November, which really is dark most of the time.
24	* AmbiguousEnding: The ending is deliberately unclear about [[spoiler:what "story" Landsman is planning to give to Dennis Brennan]]. Considering the circumstances, he could either be telling him [[spoiler:that Hertz killed Mendel Shpilman]], or that [[spoiler:Alter Litvak was the one behind {{the conspiracy}}]].
25	* AntiHero: Landsman, big time. Being a classical anti-hero, not a [[MediaNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] one: a normal person, fundamentally good, but hardly heroic and with numerous flaws.
26	* ArcWords: "Strange times to be a Jew."
27	* AuthorAppeal: Chabon usually focuses on Jews and Jewish subjects.
28	* BadAssIsraeli: Transfered onto Sitka due to Israel being crushed while still a few months old. Sitka seems to be almost entirely populated by gangster-scholars, chessmasters, retired spooks, information traffickers, cowboy cops, giants and the odd super-genius.
29	* BagOfHolding: Bina's bag contains the necessary items in any given situation.
30	* BalkanizeMe: Manchuria is independent and has its own space program.
31	** Ultimately subverted with Sitka. Rather than a permanent Jewish homeland, it's a provisional land agreement only meant to last for sixty years and its administered as a federal district, similar to Puerto Rico. With the lease near its end, the land is set to revert back to full American control.
32	* BeardOfEvil: [[spoiler: Aryeh Baronshteyn's long Orthodox beard with a fake skunk streak to give the impression he's OlderAndWiser than he is]]
33	* BigBadDuumvirate: [[spoiler:Alter Litvak and Heskel Shpilman are collaborating to blow up the Dome of the Rock and restore the Temple of Jerusalem.]]
34	* BilingualBonus: You'll get a lot more out of the puns and subtext if you understand Yiddish.
35	* BittersweetEnding: Hoo boy. [[spoiler:Alter Litvak and Heskel Shpilman escape Landsman [[KarmaHoudini with no comeuppance whatsoever]], the District of Sitka returns to American control, and the plot to destroy the Dome of the Rock goes forward--leaving the Middle East in utter chaos.]] But in spite of it all, [[spoiler:Landsman and Bina rekindle their relationship, Landsman appears to be on the way to kicking his alcoholism, the BigBadDuumvirate's ''real'' goal (installing Mendel as Messiah) fails, and our heroes are prepared to face an uncertain future]].
36	* BuryYourGays:
37	** The victim of the first murder is Mendel Shpilman, a gay mafia prince and avid chess player.
38	** [[AmbiguouslyGay Possibly also]] [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman, who appears butch but is ostensibly straight.]]
39	* ByTheBookCop: Bina Gelbfish. She even has a conversation about it with Meyer, adding, "I believe in the book."
40	* AmbiguouslyGay: GenderInverted. The tomboyish Naomi Landsman is often mistaken for a butch lesbian, but claims that she's lesbian "in every way but sexual preference."
41	* CampStraight: GenderInverted with the tomboyish Naomi Landsman, who could be called "Butch Straight." She is often mistaken for a butch lesbian, but claims that she's lesbian "in every way but sexual preference."
42	* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler:TabletopGame/{{Chess}} in general, to the extent that Caissa the goddess of chess is name-checked. Landsman's troubled relationship with the game comes up frequently, and he finally solves the central mystery when he thinks critically about the position of the pieces on the chessboard at the crime scene.]]
43	%% ** [[spoiler:the Tunnels, the Red Heifer.]]
44	* TheChessmaster: Itzik Zimbalist and Hertz Shemets (literally and figuratively). They carry out a complex plot to [[spoiler: end the Jewish control of Alaska and return the Jews to Israel]] and also literally enjoy playing chess.
45	* ChessMotifs: The opening murder takes place with an unfinished chess board next to the victim's body. Analyzing the board state allows Landsman to discover that [[spoiler: Herts Shemets]] murdered Mendel.
46	* TheConsigliere: Baronshteyn to Rebbe Shpilman. He's even a lawyer.
47	* CowboyCop: Landsman is a foul-tempered alcoholic who roughs up suspects and fights with his partners. Gelbfish often calls him out on this.
48	* CrapsackWorld: Maybe not for everyone, but for Jews specifically, a lot has gone wrong. Israel lost the 1948 war, resulting in Alaska becoming the Jewish homeland. However, after sixty years, the US government is forcing most of the Jewish population out, leaving them with nowhere to go. An overall air of despair hangs over most of the Jewish characters. The bleakness of Alaska doesn't help, either.
49	* DaChief: To make matters even worse for Landsman, his superior happens to be his ex-wife.
50	* DeadManWriting / KilroyWasHere: Landsman is thrown into a cell, [[spoiler:and chillingly finds a snarky comment written by his dead sister carved on the wall.]]
51	* DeadpanSnarker: Landsman. In his case, it's a coping mechanism.
52	* DefectiveDetective: Landsman is an alcoholic mess with massive issues about family, guilt, religion, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking chess]].
53	* {{Determinator}}: Landsman is shot, gets the crap beaten out of him multiple times, chased through the snow in his underpants, and faces a lot of emotional and political turmoil on a case he shouldn't even be investigating.
54	%%* TheDon: Reb Shpilman, the patriarch of the Verbover crime syndicate/religious sect.
55	%%* DisappearedDad: Meyer Landsman's dad.
56	* DoubleMeaningTitle: The "Yiddish Policemen's Union" (i.e. the police union whose card Landsman carries) is largely irrelevant to the plot of the book, which is at least partially about the union (or more accurately ''reunion'') between Landsman and his ex-wife, both Yiddish police officers.
57	* DrowningMySorrows: What Landsman's doing at the beginning of the novel.
58	* DysfunctionJunction: By the time the events of the novel, a considerable percentage of the remaining inhabitants of Sitka appear to be alcoholics or drug-addicts, criminals, religious fanatics, lunatics, messed-up loners and losers, suicidal death-seekers, the poor and desperate or some combination thereof. Possibly justified, as the novel takes place mere months before Sitka will no longer exist in its current form and those who could probably made arrangements to be elsewhere long before it happened, which would presumably include most of the sane, well-adjusted people. And those who couldn't, even if they weren't particularly dysfunctional before, certainly have reason to be now.
59	* EnterStageWindow: Landsman and his ex-wife Bina end up recreating their childhood courting via this trope--however they're not as young as they used to be, so after he's scaled the wall to her house, foreplay begins with her cleaning his bloody shins.
60	* EvilPlan: [[spoiler:The US president enacts the Reversion of Sitka to force the Jews to go back to Israel to bring about the coming of the Messiah. This includes the bombing of the Dome of the Rock so the Temple can be rebuilt in its place.]]
61	* FantasticSlur: The Jewish residents of Alaska are often called "Yids" by opponents of the resettlement plan. It's sometimes an AppropriatedAppellation, too. Sitka also sometimes is called "Jewlaska."
62	* FatBastard: Rabbi Shpilman is a huge criminal in both senses of the term.
63	* FoodPorn: Chabon's description of Filipino-style Chinese donuts (which Sitka is apparently famous for) comes off like this.
64	* ForWantOfANail: The early death of Anthony Dimond, the Alaska Territory delegate to Congress and the one who blocked the Slattery Report in [=OTL=], is what allowed the establishment of the Sitka refuge in the first place.
65	* TheFundamentalist: The unnamed American president has shades of this, as his goal for the Reversion of Sitka is [[spoiler: having the Jews reclaim Israel, as a precursor to the Second Coming of Christ.]]
66	* FutureSlang: AlternateHistory slang, more accurately. Chabon invents a few terms and creates new idiomatic meanings for several Yiddish words/phrases:
67	** "Sholem," literally meaning ''peace'', is Sitka slang for a gun, derived from the slang "piece" for gun in English as well as the name "peacemaker."
68	** Also, mobile phones are called "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shofar shofars]]," after the traditional ram horns used to announce holidays.
69	** Beat cops are called "latkes" because their flat-topped caps resemble pancakes.
70	** Sitka Jews are slangily called "Icebergers" by American Jews, referencing the icy climate of Alaska and the "-berg" suffix common in Ashkenazi Jewish names.
71	** Sitka Jews call American Jews "Mexicans" because they live South of the border (the ''Canadian'' border, that is).
72	* GentleGiant: Berko is a large and imposing Tlngit man, but he's a sweetheart and a converted ReligiousBruiser who wants a peaceful solution to the conflict.
73	* GodwinsLawOfTimeTravel: A rare [[InvertedTrope inversion]]. In this world's alternate timeline, Hitler got his ass kicked even ''harder'' that he did in our world. Among other changes, Germany was nuked in 1946 and the Holocaust killed only a third as many Jews as it did in RealLife. The book explores how these events (coupled with the collapse of Israel) complicate the lives of surviving Jews.
74	* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Averted; although Bina doesn't appear to be psychologically damaged by the difficult decision she and Landsman made, it was the impetus for their divorce. In fact, Landsman feels far more guilty about it than Bina.
75	* GoodScarsEvilScars: Alter Litvak's body is a horrorshow of scars from his many decades as a brutal spook.
76	* GreaterScopeVillain: The United States has apparently fallen under the sway of a Fundamentalist Christian government that's involved in military operations to [[spoiler:force Muslims out of Jerusalem]]. But although they're covertly supporting [[spoiler:Litvak and Shpilman]] in their plans, they're kept in the background, and the story never takes place in America proper.
77	* HalfBreedDiscrimination: Berko has a Tlingit-Indian mother and Jewish father, and the fact that he looks pure Tlingit but identifies more with his Jewish heritage (to the extent that he is never seen without his kippah on) does not help things given the longstanding antipathy between Jews and the native inhabitants.
78	* JustBeforeTheEnd: Not in the apocalyptic sense typical for the setting (being a non-lethal and highly localized variant), but in an emotional sense for (almost) every Jewish character. The upcoming Reversion means the end of the Jewish district and most (if not almost all) residents will not be able to stay in the US once the territory is under their control, but neither do they have any emigration alternatives. Thus, many Jews don't know what exactly they are supposed to do and what will happen in a few months at all, and the book portrays the resulting feeling of all-pervasive uncertainty, emotional collapse and resignation very effectively. The most striking examples of this come up within the police force (it may be that these are merely the cases we see a lot of, seeing as the novel centers on a policeman and nearly all his close contacts are on the force): in the opening scene of the book, the coroner/forensics expert called in to look at the crime scene tells Landsman that he's leaving for permanent residence in Canada the ''very next day'', barely and haphazardly completing his report at the end of this last shift, while the chief of Sitka police simply disappears ''without'' announcing it, leading to his replacement ([[spoiler:Landsman's ex-wife]], of all things) outright instructing the detectives to drop most open cases. No one besides Landsman actually cares about solving the mystery of [[spoiler: Shpilman's]] murder, with most policemen believing it makes absolutely no difference. Given that only a minuscule fraction of Jews will receive US citizenship, and of those few lucky ones on the force, only ''one'' character is mentioned to have some chance of transitioning to the Alaskan Police after reversion, the feeling is understandable: after all, the police itself, the citizens they are supposed to protect ''and'' the criminals they are supposed to fight will all equally be made essentially homeless and irrelevant in a few months from the timeline of the book.
79	* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Alter Litvak slips through Bina and Landsman's hands before they can bring him in, and his ultimate fate is uncertain]].
80	* KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman]] was murdered to cover up the plot to [[spoiler: move the Alaskan Jews to Israel.]]
81	* KnightInSourArmor: Landsman is well aware that most of the Jews will soon be expelled from Alaska and that his work will be pointless when that happens. Despite this, he's determined to do a good job and solve Mendel's murder before this happens.
82	%%* KnowledgeBroker: Landsman meets one to get some info.
83	* LargeAndInCharge: Rabbi Shpilman, the leader of the Verbover crime syndicate/sect, is grotesquely overweight, apparently due to a health disorder rather than overeating.
84	* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: [[spoiler: Naomi Landsman's plane crash]] was actually a deliberate murder by [[spoiler: a Christian Zionist organization.]]
85	* MaleGaze: Done textually. When Meyer is crawling down a tunnel behind Bina, Chabon spends a good-sized paragraph describing his reactions upon gazing at her ass for the first time in years. With Chabon's characteristic PurpleProse, it comes of sounding like a religious experience.
86	* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: [[spoiler: Mendel Shpilman]] may indeed be the coming of the Messiah, born with wondrous abilities to lead the Jewish people back to their promised land and bring in the new era. Or he may simply be a very charismatic and insightful individual about whom has arisen a lot of coincidences and exaggerated stories by very desperate and very religious people eager to believe in any sign of salvation.
87	* MeaningfulName: So many. Landsman himself, as the central character in a novel obsessed with the question of the Jews having a land of their own. Melekh Gaystik, the former chess champion, has a name meaning 'intellectual king'. The American agent Mr. Cashdollar. And many, many more (most of them disguised by being in Yiddish, although there is also a Tlingit cop named Willie Dick, whose love-hate relationship with Landsmann and especially Berko indicates at least some of the other characters take this as a nomen omen).
88	* TheMenInBlack: Cashdollar and his men fit the trope, but they're not BadassInANiceSuit, they wear thick sweaters, occasionally with a tacky penguin motif.
89	* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: Murder is about the uppermost possible limit of a "minor" crime, but compared to [[spoiler:blowing up the al-Aqsa mosque, aka the current third-holiest site in Islam on the site of the former Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, as the first step of a plot to overthrow alternate-history Palestine]], it's not so bad after all. [[spoiler:It turns out it wasn't even the perpetrators of the plot who actually shot him, either; it was the victim (who was publicly thought to be a candidate for this generation's Messiah) trying to duck out of it via assisted suicide.]]
90	* MundaneWish: [[spoiler:Rather than kill Landsman and his friends because YouKnowTooMuch, Cashdollar offers to buy their silence instead. All Landsman wants is his gun and badge back. When he's duly reinstated as a detective he says: "I should have asked for a million dollars. They'd have given it to me!"]]
91	%%* MysteriousInformant
92	* TheNapoleon: Willie Dick, the 4'7" tall Tlingit cop, [[BadassBiker rides a 2/3 scale motorcycle]] and is generally described in terms that qualify him as a badass of tall-tale proportions. Berko even {{Lampshades}} this, calling Dick "the emperor of the French."
93	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Unusually for an AlternateHistory story, the incumbent President of the United States is not named, nor is any description given. The reader is left to make up their own mind which conservative politician or Christian fundamentalist religious figure has risen to the top in this reality, if indeed it is someone we would recognise.
94	* NobleBigotWithABadge: Willie Dick is a Tlingit cop with anti-Semitic views, but he claims to hate everyone equally.
95	* NoodleIncident: A lot of the details of the AlternateHistory the novel is set in are alluded to, but not actually described. Some of the little tidbits that can be pieced together from hints that appear:
96	** The Soviet Union collapsed after a successful Nazi invasion, leading (eventually) to a Third Russian Republic.
97	** A major war was fought between the United States and Cuba, and appears to have been this world's equivalent to UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar.
98	** Creator/MarilynMonroe married President Kennedy (presumably [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy John]], although it's never actually stated) and became First Lady.
99	* NukeEm: The dropping of an atomic bomb still ended World War II, although it was a year later and it fell on Berlin instead of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
100	* OddCouple: Meyer and Berko. One is an [[DeadpanSnarker eternally sarcastic]] alcoholic wreck whose marriage fell apart, and the other is a pious family man and a devoted husband. In spite of their obvious differences in personality, they get along surprisingly well, and they have each other's backs through thick and thin. They're also cousins.
101	* OminousFog: Alaska in November is constantly foggy, lending the novel a suitable moody noir atmosphere.
102	* OnlySaneMan: Naomi was this for the Landsman family; Bina also qualifies.
103	* ParentalAbandonment: A lot of Landsman's issues with guilt, religion, cynicism and even chess can be traced back to the suicide of his father, a chess prodigy and Holocaust survivor. Since Landsman's father took his life the day after Landsman wrote him a letter begging him not to force Landsman to play chess, a game which Landsman hated but which was one of the few ways his father tried to connect with him, Landsman blamed himself as a child with numerous psychological issues resulting. [[spoiler: Ironically, as an adult Landsman would later find that letter unopened in his father's possessions, meaning his father never actually read it and Landsman actually had nothing to do with it.]]
104	* PillowSilencer: [[spoiler:Hertz Shemets]] shot [[spoiler:Mendel Shpilman]] through a pillow to muffle the sound. When Meyer is shown the body, kicking off the plot of the novel, he notices that the pillow is missing.
105	* PresentTenseNarrative: Used.
106	--> "Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign across Max Nordau Street." (from the first page)
107	* {{Reconstruction}}: Reconstructs traditional FilmNoir and HardboiledDetective stories by giving it a fresh setting -- an AlternateHistory version of America where a thriving Yiddish culture exists on the Alaskan frontier.
108	* RummageFail: Bina's purse full of random stuff.
109	%%* RunawayBride: [[spoiler:Mendel Shpilman is a male example.]]
110	* SacredLanguage: Landsman thinks that Yiddish is for talking to people, and that Hebrew is for talking to God.
111	* ShoutOut:
112	** In one scene, Berko's son watches an unnamed Yiddish-dubbed cartoon that's clearly meant to be ''WesternAnimation/DragonTales''.
113	** Another character refers to a cartoon "about the wolf who's always chasing the blue rooster"; the character is presumably misidentifying the exact species of WesternAnimation/WileECoyoteAndTheRoadrunner.
114	* SinisterMinister: The Verbover crime syndicate is also an Orthodox religious sect, lead by the powerful Rebbe Shpilman.
115	%%* SmartPeoplePlayChess: a DiscussedTrope.
116	* StealthPun: Plus BilingualBonus. When Batsheva Shpilman realizes that her son [[spoiler:is gay, the text uses metaphors comparing him to a bird. This is because ''feygele'', the Yinglish slang word for 'gay', literally means 'birdie' in Yiddish; but the word ''feygele'' is never used.]]
117	* StylisticSuck:
118	** Alter Litvak's written messages are light on punctuation and feature the occasional grammatical error, because they're hastily jotted down while in conversation.
119	** Journalist Dennis Brennan's spoken dialogue verges on overly florid PurpleProse in places, because he's an American journalist who's learned to speak Yiddish in a way that makes him sound as if he had swollowed a dictionary but never actually heard two native speakers talk together.
120	* SuicideNotMurder: [[spoiler:It never occurs to anyone that Mendel's death was (assisted) suicide until the very end.]]
121	%%* TitleDrop
122	* TourGuideDetective: An investigation of a murder case is used to explore the alternate history setting.
123	* TranslationConvention: Most characters are actually speaking Yiddish, which is translated into English. For this reason, certain word choices sound odd, such as referring to perfect strangers as "darling" and "sweetness." [[note]]Translated from the common Yiddish word "bubeleh"[[/note]] Slang Yiddish words, however, are presented untranslated. When a character swears, it's usually noted as spoken in "American."
124	* TurnInYourBadge: Landsman, as a predictable consequence of his being a CowboyCop.
125	* VitriolicBestBuds:
126	** Landsman and Berko Shemets share plenty of snark but are clearly each other's best friend beyond being cousins. Played with regarding Berko and Willie Dick, who are described in terms of being mortal enemies who hate each other so much that they weirdly seem closer than most ''actual'' best friends.
127	** Seen when Willie Dick, Berko Shemets and Meyer Landsman are in the same room together. There's a lot of antagonism due to personal and historical reasons, but it's obvious their work as policemen gives them a stronger bond than anyone.
128	* TheVoiceless: Alter Litvak, whose voice box was crushed in an auto accident, and must communicate by written messages.
129	* WellDoneSonGuy: Played for drama with Berko Shemets [[spoiler:after he discovers his father Hertz was behind the bombing that incited the riot that caused his mother's death. He rips off the tallit he's wearing under his clothes and forces it over his father's head. Moments later [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Hertz tries to shoot himself]], so his son rushes him to the hospital despite loudly proclaiming that he doesn't care if his father dies.]]
130	-->“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--”\
131	“It has nothing to do with ''religion'',” Berko says. “It has everything to do, God damn it, with fathers.”
132	* WildHair: Bina's hair is always getting in her face; all efforts to restrain it fail miserably.
133	* WorkingWithTheEx: DaChief that Landsman reports to is his ex-wife.
134	* YiddishAsASecondLanguage: Although the characters are all supposed to be speaking Yiddish, there are a number of Yiddish and Hebrew words that are used as slang that appear untranslated, such as "sholem" for "gun." Ironically, the text sometimes states that Sitka residents use "[[ForeignCurseWord American" (i.e. English language) curse words]].
135	* YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe: Berko gives Landsman an incredulous look when he realises that his apathetic partner hasn't made even the slightest effort to line up another job.
136	* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: A non-lethal version with Hertz Shemets. [[spoiler:After working for forty years with the FBI to sabotage every Zionist organisation, he fails to foresee his own organisation backstabbing him under orders of the US President, who wants the Jews to go back to Israel for religious reasons. Dennis Brennan is also ReassignedToAntarctica (or Alaska in this case) after his expose on Shemets.]]
137	* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: No actual Zeppelins appear, but early in the novel Landsman finds "a windup zeppelin" amongst other junk in a basement, in keeping with the AlternateHistory setting. It should be noted that such toys really did exist.

Context Literature / TheYiddishPolicemensUnion