I’m a Michael Chabon fan—“Wonder Boys,” “Final Solution,” “Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” and, oh yeah, that Pulitzer-Prize winner I haven’t yet read. It was a treat, then, to see last week that the Jewish weekly in San Francisco, j., had a cover story on Chabon and his wife, best-selling author Ayelet Waldman.
Being a Jewish author âis a great tradition to be part of, stretching back to â¦â She pauses.
âMoses?â suggests Chabon.
âMoses,â states Waldman definitively, adding Cynthia Ozick, Saul Bellow and Mordecai Richler for good measure.
Bintel Blogger Daniel Treiman, though, notes a glaring gap in the j.’s story, which doesn’t touch the controversy surrounding “Yiddish Policemen’s”:
Critics â some more sober than others â have argued that the book is hostile to Israel. Itâs a disappointing omission, given that some have already started casually referring (perhaps unfairly) to Chabon as an anti-Zionist. It would have been good to hear what Chabon has to say on this issue.
You know what I would also consider unfortunate? That an author is branded an anti-Zionist—which has become a synonym for anti-Semite—because they write a fictional account of the efforts to create Zion in a parallel reality.
