Planet of the Jews: Eruvim, Geography, and Jewish Identity in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

This paper argues that Michael Chabon's novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, participates in a long and contentious conversation about the role of Israel in Jewish identity. By examining the role that eruvim play in creating and contesting Jewishness in Chabon's 2007 postmodern detective novel, the paper suggests that Chabon crafts a world in which geographic space complicates, rather than simplifies, Jewish identity in diaspora and postmodernity. The Jewish Alaska of Chabon's imagination therefore has a profound connection to his controversial statements about the modern geopolitical state of Israel.