2 of 3
Naturally the book begins with a murder, and with a twist: the victim lived in the same rundown hotel where Landsman has been dwelling since his divorce (his wife Bina, whom he still loves, is also a cop). Indeed, he was killed in his room—shot in the back of the head, with a pillow to silence the explosion. And—to add another genre or subgenre to the mix—there is a chessboard in the room with what appears to be a game in progress, an endgame (chess will run through the book).
Naturally, too, Landsman's investigation of this murder leads him to the heart of a vile conspiracy. The powers-that-be try to get him off the case, but—even when stripped of his badge and gun—he persists. As in many hard-boiled tales, there is a love story in counterpoint to the detective's hunt, but this is a love story with a difference: the object of Landsman's affections is his estranged wife, and their reconciliation has a blessed dailiness that sets it apart from the usual noirish fare. Moreover, both the murder investigation and the love story (which turns in part on an abortion) are framed as reflections on fate and choice.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is also—along with everything else—Chabon's contribution to two overlapping subgenres: the post-9/11 novel, and the Bush Regime novel. The conspiracy that Landsman eventually uncovers is an unholy alliance between a group of Orthodox Jews determined to reclaim Israel and an evangelical cabal that reaches all the way to the president of the United States. Near the end of the book, Jewish terrorists blow up the Muslim shrine on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In the ensuing confusion, with rival Muslim groups unsure who perpetrated the outrage, the U.S. government will come in on the pretext of restoring order. The evangelicals behind the plan believe that this will hasten the Second Coming of Christ.
Did I mention that the principal evangelical is named Cashdollar? Chabon doesn't care for the Orthodox, the "black hats," but his evocation of them has a certain thickness, an imaginative vitality. The evangelicals, who are trundled on near the end, are so thin they're see-through.
In a conversation with Landsman, Cashdollar concedes that "Jesus wasn't keen on killing, on hurting people," but he adds that the "man could be fairly harsh when he needed to be." Landsman leads the evangelical on—"He was kick-ass"—and Cashdollar takes the bait: "Yes, he was. Now you might not credit the fact, but the end times are coming." And so on. (Evangelicals are at once deviously cunning and painfully naïve.)
Landsman can stand only so much of this—"the infinite gangster weight of God"—and finally he has to tell Cashdollar what he really thinks:
"'F___ you,' Landsman concludes. 'And f___ Jesus, too, he was a pussy.'"
Well, the words that Chabon puts in his character's mouth are just another way of saying that Jesus isn't who he said he was, isn't who those of us who follow him think he is. We're wrong, we're deluded, we're dangerous.
But if Chabon rejects the faith of Orthodox Jews and Christians alike, he nevertheless sees where a proud refusal of all faith leads, and so the whole novel builds to this insight:
Landsman taps the wheel, considering his promises and their worth. He was never unfaithful to Bina. But there is no doubt that what broke the marriage was Landsman's lack of faith. A faith not in God, nor in Bina and her character, but in the fundamental precept that everything befalling them from the moment they met, good and bad, was meant to be. The foolish coyote faith that could keep you flying as long as you kept kidding yourself that you could fly.
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