離散借貸的生命出口：麥可•謝朋的《猶太警察工會》

The Unlikely Blessings of Living on Borrowed Time in a Leased Land —Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

謝朋於2007年出版的虛構歷史小說《猶太警察工會》提出一個假設的歷史命題：以色列於1948年以阿戰爭中慘敗滅國，上百萬之猶大難民暫居於阿拉斯加特區。60年後，美國即將收回特區，猶太人又該何去何從：再次離散，還是不計代價而獨立建國。小說主人翁為特區猶太刑警，在調查一宗謀殺案件時，意外發現一樁政治陰謀：美國政府擬藉猶太復國主義者之手，毀滅阿拉伯世界，而焦躁的猶太人亦藉此重建故國。謝朋的小說由猶太人千年流亡主題切入猶太救贖議題，提出與其借道國族主義，來終結由猶太離散，不如回歸日常生活，藉由觀點的流動而落實猶太神學虛實相應的恩典。

The culture of violence committed in the name of faith, a malady which plagues our world today, is the subject matter of Michael Chabon’s 2007 speculative fiction, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, which is based on the historical premise that Israel, in losing the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, was destroyed, and millions of Jewish refugees given temporary shelter in Alaska, on a 60-year lease with the United States of America. The novel opens in 2007, when the Reversion is to take effect, and Diasporic Jews once again face homelessness. Against this counterfactual background of collective anxiety, Chabon has his detective-protagonist follow a murder case only to unravel a conspiracy to “basically force [the] Messiah to come.” Recognized as one of the most important Jewish American writers of the present time, Chabon posits in his novel a provocative question by placing Jews in the awkward position presently occupied by the Palestinians: having to live on borrowed time, on land not their own, with Diaspora an everyday reality. How are peace and redemption possible under such circumstances, given that contingencies tend to divert history from rationally calculated paths onto unintentional detours? Chabon’s counterfactual fiction proffers a strident critique of religious fundamentalism in all its forms, especially fundamentalisms bound up with nationalism. Neither Diaspora nor Zionism guarantees Jews their long-awaited redemption; however, small-scale redemption is readily available when the redemptive fantasy is placed in suspension, thus opening up space for “the blessings of more life.”