The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Every Messiah fails, writes Litvak, the moment he tries to redeem himself

“We did what seemed right at the time, Meyer. We had a few facts. We knew our limitations. And we called that a choice. But we didn’t have any choice. All we had was, I don’t know, three lousy facts and a boundary map of our own limitations.

“My point is that Jews mean bullshit. A thousand laminated layers of politics and lies buffed to a high sheen.

“Not all of them,” Bina says, her voice, like Landsman’s, caroming off the aluminum walls of the tunnel. “Some of them just got comfortable here. They started to forget a little bit. They felt at home.” “I guess that’s how it always goes,” Landsman says. “Egypt. Spain. Germany.” “They weakened. It’s human to weaken. They had their lives. Come on.”

some far-off court in Ethiopia or Yemen, a sloe-eyed rabbi in a gaudy kaftan. That impossible black rabbi with his outlandish Torah, the realm of women:

He feels that he suffers from tinnitus of the soul.

The pilot Frum believed only what his instrument panel said. He was sober, meticulous, competent, quiet, tough. When he landed a load of recruits at Peril Strait, the boys left Frum’s airplane with a sense of what kind of soldier they wanted to become.

“Huh-uh. The story, Detective Landsman, is telling us. Just like it has done from the beginning. We’re part of the story. You. Me.”

everyone around him?” “A Tzaddik Ha-Dor is always hidden. That’s a mark of his nature.