Plausibility of Yiddish Policemen’s Union

I know we’ve got the media forum, and if this is misplaced apologies and please move it. But I’m less interested in discussing media than in a plausibility check.

First, is killing Anthony Dimond enough to get the ball rolling on Alaskan resettlement of Jews? Seems a little too neat.

Second, in the wake of a failed 1948 War, is a mass relocation to Alaska plausible? This seems on firmer ground, if we take the (maybe weak) premise that bureaucratic levels of power had already been set up to direct incoming Jews there. Plus the book gives plenty of leeway for extended family to naturalize and go where they want. Still, I’d like to hear what others think.

(And if you haven’t read the book, do yourself a favor.)
 
"The Yiddish Policemen's Union" just happens to be the only book by Michael Chabon I haven't read so far. But from what I read from the reviews and blurps, Chabon was more interested in putting an idea out there and exploring it's consequences rather then making the idea plausible. So as far as I am concerned, the Sitka 'homeland' could have been made by an ASB.

Also, from what I read so far, Sitka was to be unapologetic Yiddish rather then Jewish or even (otl) Israeli: More of a homeland for Tevye the milkman them for the German educated British trained surgeon John F. Eisenstein who OTL became the cultural and political elite of the state of Israel. I doubt that in Chabon's Alaska, you will hear much Hebrew being spoken, other than in ceremonies. So my opinion is that Chabron wanted to make an alt-Israel with Kletzmer music instead of atomic self-defense doctrines.

Once I read the book, I can tell whether he succeeded
 
In 1948 a large number of Jews were still in DP camps and only the survival of Israel gave them some place to go. Where Israel is wiped out in the wars of 1948, these folks linger in the DP camps, and the issue is what to do with the Jews who were in Israel (native born and new immigrants). IMHO the first stop for most of them would be DP camps, some of the immigrants might be able to return to the countries they departed from like Golda Meir returning to the USA. OTL the USA had been highly resistant to letting Jewish refugees in before, during, and after WWII and you'd need a constitutional change to prevent Jews born in the Alaska enclave from becoming citizens and also to limit their ability to move from one bit of America (Alaska) to another - the fact Alaska was a territory and not a state does not affect that.

Given all that, allowing that mass of Jews in to the USA is highly problematic, and making the legal/constitutional changes to make it happen like Chabon suggests would be time consuming and also not seen as worth the effort. A very good book in spite of all that.
 
Yeah I think if there’d been more on the...”marketing push” so to speak, the effort to take in Jews fleeing the Nazis, we could probably connect the dots in a reasonable way to get to Sitka. Some cultural watershed creates a mood where helping them leave Europe is politically sound, but keeping them separate also sound. Start the ball rolling right away on the necessary amendment to change citizenship and by 1948 when sympathy’s highest but the numbers are really starting to tell, then it passes in the states.

But it’s not a flaw that that’s left out of the book, as you’ve both said, the book’s not about that.
 
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