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bed fellows for Assimilationists and Zionists because for both of
these groups redemption is bound to a land that is believed to have
been given to them directly by God. The fantasy of exceptionalism,
the other side of Jewish Messianism, becomes the force that prompts
Diasporic Jews to write a teleological narrative that privileges the
ends over the means while suppressing superfluous details so as to
underscore the future-changing role of the alleged Messiah. This
direction is taken to such a degree that they are willing to kill off the
alleged villains to round off a closure that validates the ideology of
exceptionalism.
The fantasy of exceptionalism assumes many different guises.
In writing
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
, Chabon singles out two
different discourses of exceptionalism, while staging a “dialogue”
between these two so as to bring to the fore the underside of both
ideologies: Jewish exceptionalism on the one hand and American
exceptionalism on the other. In other words, Zionist nationalism
and assimilation into the US. These two discourses of exceptionalism
team up at the end to force upon their joint narrative of redemption
a closure that meets the mutual expectations of their believers. For
Zionists as well as for Assimilationists, it is imperative to construct
a narrative in which Alaskan Jews play the central role. They must
find a home for themselves and refashion the order of the world, a
narrative that, because it is repeatedly told, everybody ends up
believing.
Moreover, in order to defend the coherence and creditability
of such a narrative of redemption, “tactics of sacrifice” (318), as
Landsman describes Uncle Hertz’s repeated use of blackmail and
violence, have been used so often that the sacrifice of others has
become an “addiction” not only for Uncle Hertz but also for the
Jews in general. A narrative of redemption, especially one oriented
towards a nation-building project, demands and then justifies the
deployment and employment of the “tactics of sacrifice.”