As noted in recent blog posts, I proposed, in an October 2001 article, New Israel: A Win-Win-Win Proposal, relocating Israel to U.S. public lands such as Utah or the Anwar area of Alaska.
[Update: the image is missing from the original article; it is here: 
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I’ve seen similar proposals since then, including Ken Layne’s FoxNews.com piece How ‘Bout Relocating Israel to Mexico?; “Fight World War IV” – Or Let Israelis Immigrate?, by Paul Craig Roberts, VDARE; and Israel’s end-times gamble, by Gary DeMar, WorldNetDaily.com.
And now, in the April 2, 2003 issue of ReasonOnline, Brian Doherty has published the article New Exodus: Let Jews leave Europe for America. While the above commentators urge Israelis to immigrate here, Doherty makes the complementary argument that, due to “the resurgence of European anti-Semitism,” America should open our doors to any “any European Jew who fears anti-Semitic persecution”. According to Doherty, this would “pok[e] a sharp stick in the eyes of European critics of the United States,” and would further benefit us: “a cohort of highly educated European Jews would certainly be a plus for our society and our economy.”
The book you’re thinking of is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (2007).
It’s exactly the alternate-history novel you described: In this timeline, the U.S. establishes a temporary Jewish refugee settlement in Sitka, Alaska (based on the real Slattery Report idea). Israel fails to survive after 1948, so the Jewish population in Alaska grows into a Yiddish-speaking, gritty, semi-autonomous district. The story is a hard-boiled murder mystery/noir detective tale centered on a washed-up detective investigating the killing of a mysterious man (the son of a powerful rabbi) in a seedy hotel.
It won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The “Union” in the title refers to the “Yiddish Policemen’s Union” — the detective union in this fictional Sitka.
Movie/TV Adaptation Notes
- There were plans for a Coen Brothers movie (Joel and Ethan Coen attached to direct) around 2008, but it was ultimately cancelled.
- Later, there was a TV series adaptation in development (2019) by Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman, but it doesn’t appear to have gone into production.
If this is the one (it matches your description perfectly), it’s widely considered a modern classic in alternate history and Jewish literature. Highly recommended if you haven’t read it yet! Let me know if you want plot details (spoiler-free), similar book recommendations, or anything else.
