Man Of Mystery Jimmy (of New Parthenon) & Leo (of Leo's Coney Island) invite you to enjoy big savings on us! BUY ONE LUNCH OR DINNER AT REGULAR PRICE, GET THE SECOND FOR Not good with any other offer One coupon per couple 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." HENTIC CUISINE 7 DAYS WEEK RD LAKE RD. INDS PLAZA WEST BLOOMFIELD D LAKE & LONE PINE 11/19 1999 88 6000 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