Islands in the Sun
Privateislandsonline.com is a mortal danger to anyone with a Utopian streak. Listings of private islands are listings of fantasies. Escape. Quiet. Endless summer. Endless autumn. $339,000 will buy you a cottage on a private island on freshwater lake in Maine and a life of fishing and duck boots and wood-burning stoves. Life would be like a John Irving novel — though hopefully without the layers of sadness.
Even though I’m extremely pale and burn easily, the most dangerous, most tempting islands and fantasies are tropical. Life in Maine or any place too far to the north would be a constant struggle against the climate. The world is warming rapidly, but despite that and because of that, life in the north would be a never ending attempt to make sense of the changing world, to adapt to it, and to force it to adapt to everything we’ve wrought. But south, in the Caribbean, or in the South Pacific, none of that matters. On these imaginary islands, there’s no need to work and no fear that the water level will ever reach higher than the property line. On my imaginary island, life is a parade of fresh fruits and well-made tiki drinks and there’s a steady, cooling breeze. Paradise — Eden — comes with a limitless supply of free sunscreen.
My people, Eastern European Jews, were not tropical people. Yet somehow one of the themes of Jewish life in the twentieth century is the story of Ashkenazi Jews encountering hot weather. Zionism and the creation of a Jewish state. Los Angeles and the creation of the Hollywood dreamland. Miami Beach and Las Vegas and the creation of the American middle class vacation. Walt Disney saw empty land in Florida and dreamed about recreating Main Street, USA. Jewish businessmen saw a barrier island off the coast of Miami and dreamed neon dreams of massive, comfortably modernist resorts with lobbies like film sets. Other Jewish businessmen saw a corrupt legislature and dreamed about legalized gambling. Others went directly to Cuba. They turned from fedoras and heavy wools to straw hats and breathable fabrics.
To an unusual extent, Jews are still shadowed by the hot climates they never settled. Suriname was once a possible Jewish homeland. There had been a well-organized, wealthy Jewish community in Suriname with a degree of autonomy during the 18th century but it only became a Jewish utopia after World War II. The Frayland-Lige (Freeland League), a Jewish territorialist movement, wrote voluminous reports and proposals about Suriname. In 1947, it seemed as if the Dutch government would grant 30,000 Jewish refugees the right to establish a colony on 250,000 hectares. Zionist leaders around the world did what they could to scuttle the proposal. There were probably other, internal Dutch-colonial reasons for the collapse of the Suriname plan. Regardless, the dream of territory in Suriname was dead by the early 1950s.
The name “Suriname” lodged comfortably in the far back of my memory until I took a trip to Aruba with my wife. At the airport I watched Surinam Airways’ planes arrive and depart. That was enough to make the idea of a Jewish territory in Suriname click in my mind — or at least enough info for me to fixate on the most minor, incidental logistical aspects of territorialist air travel. If this counter-Zion had been established, what airlines would the Jews have flown? Would the pilots and flight attendants of Surinam Airways make their announcements in Dutch and Yiddish? What would the flight attendants sound like when they made the announcements? What tone of voice would they use? Would they speak Yiddish proudly and naturally like the flight attendants on El Al speak Hebrew? Or would they be kind of embarrassed and sheepish about the whole thing like the flight attendants on Aer Lingus?
As a Utopian, I’m pragmatic. Instead of fixating on the past that wasn’t, I began to spend an inordinate amount of time on privateislandsonline.com looking for the right island to house my new quasi-territorialist project: a Yiddish-speaking resort.
Imagine a boutique hotel somewhere off the coast of Florida — one of the minor keys, perhaps. The gulf coast is cheaper, but you need to capture the proximity effect from Miami, Miami Beach, and Aventura. Nothing too fancy, not to start anyway. Some guest bungalows. A bar. An appetizing counter. If I used the phrase “mid-century Kosher style” would you understand what I had in mind for the vibe and decor and the food? The staff would speak Yiddish while the guests would bask in the fact that there were young people who spoke Yiddish. Like most of my plans, it required only the right eccentric millionaire(s) to get off the ground.
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Privateislandsonline.com no longer offers as much escapism. What good is a private island if it still falls under the jurisdiction of the United States? If it is still ruled by King Trump? What good is a private island if it doesn’t come with citizenship by investment — or at least permanent residency in exchange for a boatload of cash?
Today my private fantasy islands are tax shelters: St. Kitts, Saint Lucia, and Ireland — places that make entry available to a global elite looking to hoard monies. In my fantasy, I can liquidate my assets and buy my way in if the bottom falls out of America. $300,000 buys a home in a new, approved development and citizenship in Saint Lucia. For a €400,000 donation to charity, I can move to Ireland and start over. Until recently, Canada had a permanent residency by investment program, but it seems to have been largely discontinued. Canada isn’t an Island. It is sometimes forced to obey the ordinary rules of geopolitical gravity.
Fantasy islands provide a refuge from our biggest fears — but only if we’re pragmatic and smart about our choice of fantasy. When the nuclear bombs start to fall, my fantasy Islands will be safe and standing because point-one percenters and corporations will still need places to shield their money from the new world order. My private fantasy islands will shelter me from the rising tides of anti-Semitism. There aren’t enough Jews in St. Kitts or Saint Lucia for it to be an issue — and Ireland? Anti-Jewish prejudice and political anti-Semitism are not the same beast. If forced to choose, I will always choose the former.
In the immediate aftermath of the election there were the usual articles about moving to Canada — and far more serious calls by liberals rousing us to stay and fight for our country. My initial response was certainly more flight than fight. It’s a response cultivated by centuries of trauma passed down to ensure the survival of the next generation. I had the thought after reading those articles, “write an intellectual defense of leaving.”
There is a cool logic underlying much of my thinking: if you are a Jew in America, you are here because someone in your family left. Whether they left because of Nazism, persecution, violence, or simply in search of new economic opportunity, they left. They saw that life in their home country was no longer tenable and they left. If/when you feel the same way, you have to leave.
But I don’t actually believe that an intellectual defense of leaving is entirely possible. Leave too early and you’re only succumbing to your basest fears. Leave too late and the surfeit of your emotional attachment to America could be your undoing. Too much of the decision is emotional: love of country, friends, family, all of which compete with our fears, both real and imaginary. Sometimes staying is the logical, cool-headed response. Sometimes the cool-headed response is leaving. For now, the cool-headed, intellectual response is having an answer to the question “what will I do if it’s time?” Escape may never actually be required, but the escape plan is. Fantasy islands are an anxiolytic curbing my biggest fears of a Trump administration.
Israel is the elephant in my thoughts. Like Canada but unlike Canada, Israel is touched by gravity. Its defenders may sometimes call it an island of democracy, but there’s nothing island-like about it. It is not separate from the world, but very much at the disproportionate center. I know that my quasi-territorialist fantasy of a Yiddish-speaking resort is an implicit critique of Israeli policies. And I know that it’s only implicit because I’ve refused to make the connection too explicit. I’ve refused to admit publicly just how much I’ve been turned off by the policies of the Netanyahu government, the raw extent of it, and I still don’t want to push that button. Yet I’ve also never been more convinced of the basic necessity of a Jewish state and the logic underpinning Zionism. The essential need for sovereignty, for control over your fate, has never been clearer.
This has always struck me as the intellectual conclusion of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. As someone who likes both Yiddish literature and crime novels, I didn’t really enjoy the book that much when I read it. I had two thoughts at the time: (1) the mystery ultimately wasn’t that interesting and that undercut all the worldbuilding; (2) the premise was backwards. Instead of reimagining the shtetl as a noirscape, Chabon should have inserted a noir figure into a neo-shtetl story. I wanted “Marlowe in Kasrilevke.” I wanted — and still want — a first person monologue where a character tells Sholem Aleichem about the PI that came to town. I wanted the narrative to center on some sort of real estate development scheme that imperils the entire town’s legal fiction. “Chinatown” but also I.L. Peretz’s “The Dead Town.” Trump the real estate licensor would have made an ideal villain.
But I was deeply drawn to what I saw as the message of the book. It was, fundamentally, an argument for Zionism. By imagining the absence of Israel, Chabon reasserted its promise and mission in the lives of Jews. Without it there was only statelessness and ethereal uncertainty. It disambiguated the politics of the state from political Zionism. Is it a fundamentally untenable midpoint? Perhaps — but it’s the only plank I feel comfortable walking.
— —
“Vilstu nokh a kokteyl?” the waitress asks me calmly. At least I think she does. It’s hard to tell from her use of “nokh” if she means ‘another’ or if she’s judging me for drinking too much.
I stare at the drink menu. “Yes,” I say, “I’ll have another kokteyl.”
The foreign pronunciation of the word garbles in my mouth, but I sound the syllables passably. I order a royter lutyan, a red snapper. I’d had one with breakfast. It’s really a Bloody Mary. The Jews who run this resort, like the Catholics at the St. Regis, refuse to use the name “Bloody Mary.” As good hoteliers, the Jews who run this resort know that it all comes down to the little details.
The drink arrives. I wander from the bar to the beach. The sounds and smells of the Atlantic seep into my glass. To my right, a family fights over the seating plan for their son’s bar mitzvah. To my left, a group of Israelis smoke clove cigarettes. English mingles with Hebrew. Occasionally you hear the resort staff speak Yiddish. According to policy, the guests are supposed to use as much Yiddish as possible, but most guests shrug off the recommendations, and ignored the recommended vocabulary words. Only the most zealous of waitresses insists you abide by the rules. The language has a home, here. This hotel will always be a Yiddishland. Is there really a need to speak it?
I watch as the sun set over the water. I think to myself: I should stay in this hotel forever. Why would I ever leave? Why should I ever go back to a country that’s decided that only White Christians are created equal? True, this is still technically part of that country, but the Hotel Zamenhof really isn’t of that world. This six acre Island in the middle of the US Virgin Islands is as close to a Jewish homeland as I will ever find in America.
