Bloody Winter, and the Jews

Officially, winter is still two weeks away, but here we've already had almost 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow with temps steadily below freezing for a week if not two. The worst is yet to come, I optimistically believe (as in the joke: "Pessimist: 'Things are so bad, they can't get any worse.' Optimist, gleefully: 'Yes, they can! They can!'"); MofM got 100 inches of snow last winter and I'm sure it will be even more this time. Even though I come from a place with similar winter conditions, I find myself utterly unprepared, grossly underdressed, and freezing my butt off pretty much each time I go outside, although I've discovered that two layers of cotton, three layers of wool, and a winter coat will keep you alive. I think, I'm adapting, or at least developing strategies to survive: the most important one -- minimal exposure to the elements; next stage -- finding warmer boots and coat, which is a bit tricky if you stick to strategy one.

Since misery loves company, I've been trying to locate places in countries I've been to that are as cold now. The three other locations on my NY Times weather page -- New York, Tel Aviv, and Moscow -- have so far been almost always warmer. Even Alaska is not as cold. Which surprised me: when they show a certain unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate in her natural habitat, it always seems colder and snowier there.

Which made me wonder whether I can and should move there or at least visit. I've always been fascinated by Alaska. Not sure whether it's because of polar bears and northern lights, or because the place used to belong to Russia and I imagine it as a more or less natural mix of things Russian and American and for that reason feel certain affinity for it. Or maybe it's because it was once considered as a potential homeland for the Jews (if was Russian Far East on the other side of the Pacific, why not far west on this side of it?), which more than 70 years later ended up as a premise of one of my favorite novels. If the real Sitka today is no bustling Jewish metropolis, as it is imagined in the novel, there are still more Jews in Alaska than I have ever thought (around 6,000, according to some sources). State's two largest cities -- Anchorage and Fairbanks -- both have had Jewish mayors, and Alaska's first governor and senator was Jewish. My favorite part about Alaska Jews -- judging from thousands miles away -- is their sense of humor: the Anchorage synagogue's website is www.frozenchosen.org, and its softball teams (men's and coed) are called "10 Plagues" (sadly, neither did great last season, even worse than the Yankess).

I admire adventurous spirit and clever wit of some of my tribesmen, but just as I concur with a fictional Jew who said "...wasn't it a mistake on the part of God to settle Jews in Russia, for them to be tormented worse than in Hell?", so I doubt that Jews and winter mix well on either side of the Pacific (current temperature in Alaska are abnormally high). Benya Krik might have been a gangster, but wasn't he also a visionary: "How would it hurt if the Jews lived in Switzerland, where they would be surrounded by first-class lakes, mountain air, and nothing but Frenchies?" Although there too, I hear, it snows plenty.