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Why author Rabbi Lawrence Raphael loves detective stories.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Special to the Jewish News
R
abbi Lawrence Raphael
believes that a good detec-
tive story is much like
Judaism.
"Our tradition has always embraced
and been influenced by the mystery,
the unknown, the need to solve what
is given to us as a puzzle," says the
author of Mystery Midrash (Jewish
Lights Publishing; $16.95). "Life is a
mystery God's working in the uni-
verse is a mystery, our covenantal rela-
tionship with the Eternal is a mystery
that unfolds each day. In Genesis we
read that God and the first family of
Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel faced many
a mystery, and we are still trying to
find. the answers ...
Rabbi Raphael's own passion for the
unknown began in earnest when he
was a rabbinic student at the Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion. While as a child he "probably
read some Sherlock
Holmes," it was a
Ross MacDonald
novel he
picked up in
1972 that
truly
sparked his
interest.
"What a
world was
Rabbi
Lawrence
Raphael: The
first mystery was
in "Genesis."
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opened up to me: strong plot, won-
derful character development and a
thoughtful twist and mystery to keep
me guessing to the very end," he says.
It is those three elements — plot,
characters and subtle clues along the
way — that Raphael says make a good
story. He finds them all in the pieces
he included in Mystery Midrash.
The idea for the book first came
when "my wife and I were in a book-
store, and she called my attention to a
terrific book, which I think is titled
Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: The
Black Mystery Writer in America," he
says. "I thought: I can put together a
book like that on Jewish detectives."
Good idea, but it lay long forgot-
ten. That is until Rabbi Raphael met
up with several Jewish authors and
decided to ask them if they would
each write a story that would present
an intriguing mystery, and at the same
time develop the Jewish identity of a
lead character or offer a distinctly
Jewish angle.
Most authors he approached were
more than eager for the challenge.
Just a few couldn't meet the dead-
line, and a handful weren't inter-
ested in writing a short-story
mystery.
Then came Rabbi
Raphael's work. As editor, he
not only compiled and edited
the stories, he found the pub-
lisher, wrote the introduction
and secured a preface from friend and
movie critic Joel Siegel.
It might strike some readers as a lit-
tle, well, mysterious, that this man
who loves mysteries has included none
of his own in his book.
Rabbi Raphael says there's a simple
reason: He doesn't write them.
"I regularly write nonfiction — ser-
mons, speeches, articles for publica-
tion," says the rabbi, who serves as
director of the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations' department of
adult Jewish growth. "But the art of
writing fiction is not something I have
tried my hand at yet."
Among the mystery writers Rabbi
Raphael finds most compelling are
Dashiell Hammett and Dorothy
Sayers, while his favorite Jewish
policeman is 'Abe Lieberman" and
"my favorite Jewish mother is James
Yaffe's mother, who appears in his sto-
ries and novels."
Even in the most suspenseful of
works by his favorite authors, Rabbi
Raphael does not succumb to the ter-
rible habit that has taken hold of so
many fans of the genre. He insists he
never turns to the end of the book —
to that one page that will finally solve
the mystery — before it's time.
"If it isn't a good mystery, I some-
times never get around to finishing it,"
he says. "But I have read more than
150 Jewish mysteries, and I read them
all from beginning to end." Fl
Crime Scenes
Why you'll detect many good stories and
a lot offun in 'Mystery Midrash."
y. So many problems! Rabbis in trouble, Jewish writers
dropping dead, kidnappings -- all in one book.
Mystery Midrash by Rabbi I.-avvrence W. Raphael (Jewish
Lights Publishing; $ I 6.95) is a collection of 13 tales that
are indeed both mystery and Jewish. Yes, the big names like
Faye Kellerman, are here — though often it's the more
obscure authors who steal the show in this book.
Even if you don't like reading mysteries, this is a fun
read. The stories are fairly short, almost always surprising
and well written.
Before compiling the pieces to be included, editor Rabbi
Lawrence Raphael specifically asked authors to provide a rel
evant Jewish angle — rather than simply creating a character
who happens to be Jewish — to each tale. And for the most
CRIME SCENES
on page 89