Why not Alaska?

Imagine living in a democratic Jewish country with Yiddish as its official language, grizzly bear its national animal and its landscape a perfect location for filming “Game of Thrones.” All this almost happened – but then the plan to establish the Jewish state in Alaska was shelved. So why exactly was that snowy land chosen, and what then went wrong along the way?

Beit Avi Chai proudly presents “Sheilta” – an online series that gives answers to the various small questions you didn't know you wanted to ask about Jewish history. In this second episode we contemplate what our lives would have been like if the Alaska program had not been stuffed deep into the freezer.