Monday the Rabbi Took Off - Harry Kemelman

   1972; 329 pages.  Book 4 (out of 12) in the “Rabbi Small Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Hebrew Culture; Crime Mystery; Jewish Literature; Amateur Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    No matter what the job, everybody needs a break sometimes.  Even Rabbi David Small of the Barnard’s Crossing temple.

 

    He’s served as their rabbi for more than five years, despite not having a contract with them that grants him time off for a vacation, or a yearlong sabbatical leave-of-absence after six years of service.  He’s never once complained about the unpaid overtime hours expected of a rabbi.

 

    But it’s taken its toll.  Now he’s asking for three months off for an extended trip to the Jewish holy land of Israel.  His wife and young son will be accompanying him.  He’s not even asking the Bernard’s Crossing temple to subsidize him.

 

    Hmm.  I wonder if his ultimate aim is to find a new job over there.  Something that gives him time off each year, and will guarantee it in a contract.  If I were on the Barnard’s Crossing temple board, I’d start looking for a replacement to fill in for Rabbi Small while he’s gone, and to take his place if he decides not to come back.

 

What’s To Like...

    I liked the change-of-setting Harry utilizes in Monday the Rabbi Took Off; Israel is a much more interesting place to read about than Barnard’s Crossing.  The timing is important as well.  It’s 1972, just five years after the Six-Day War between Israel and most of its neighbors, and the entire Jewish nation remains in a “siege mentality” for valid reasons.

 

    The descriptions of everyday life in Israel felt very convincing without being boringly stereotypical.  There are rules governing what activities you can and cannot on the Sabbath, and most citizens obey them.  It reminded me of the “Blue Laws” we had in Pennsylvania when I was growing up there: stores, restaurants, and liquor stores were all closed on Sunday mornings, and people lined up as the hour drew close to noon.  Nobody complained about the restrictions, which is also true here in Monday the Rabbi Took Off.

 

    Harry Kemelman blends a fair amount of Hebrew vocabulary into the story, and I liked that.  One is detailed below; others include kiddush, Chassidim, minyan, chaver, gefilte fish, shlemiehl, sherut, and ozzereth.  Fortunately, between the author and my Kindle Fire, almost all of these came with translations.

 

    The main storylines are Rabbi Small and his family enjoying their three-month stay in Jerusalem and the Barnard’s Crossing Temple bigwigs worrying that he won’t come back.  There is a bombing death for Rabbi Small to solve, but that doesn’t arise until more than halfway through the book, and frankly doesn’t have a large impact on the events in the story.  More on that in a bit.

 

    The ending addresses resolves all three of those plot threads, including several neat plot twists, although not a lot of excitement.  Monday the Rabbi Took Off is both a standalone tale and part of a series that I'm reading in order.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 878 ratings and 87 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.87/5 based on 1,992 ratings and 165 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Rebbitzin (n.) : the wife of a rabbi.

Others: Pillion (n.)

 

Excerpts...

    “First we ought to decide if we need a rabbi at all, then—”

    “What do you mean, do we need a rabbi at all?  How are we going to get along without a rabbi?”

    “Lots of places don’t have them,” Goodman replied.  “I mean not regularly.  They get a young punk down from the seminary every Friday evening and pay him maybe fifty or a hundred bucks and expenses.”

    “Sure, and you know what you get?  You get a young punk.”

    “Not just a young punk,” Goodman reproved, "a young rabbi punk.”  (loc. 11313)

 

    “Mahmoud is very good with automobiles, and he keeps this one tuned like a watch.  Well, maybe not like a watch, but like a good serviceable alarm clock.  It is perhaps not so quiet as the car you are used to, nor is the ride so smoothly, but it always starts, and it always goes.”

    “Yeah, well . . . It’s pretty good on gas.  I’ll say that for it.  We’ve been driving for over an hour and the needle on the tank gauge hasn’t moved.”

    Abdul chuckled.  “The gauge doesn’t work.  The needle never moves.”  (loc. 14870)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now the e-book version of Monday the Rabbi Took Off will cost you $6.99 at Amazon.  The other e-books in the series are all in the $1.99-$7.99 range.  I read this as part of a 4-book bundle containing the first four entries is the series, and which costs $17.99.

 

“I make the decisions in my house, but my wife tells me what to decide.”  (loc. 15237)

    Profanity is almost nonexistent in Monday the Rabbi Took Off, which was expected since rabbis abstain from swearing.  I noted just three cusswords in the first 50% of the book, and zero adult situations.  The editing was well done; I only spotted two typos: gravel/gavel and hamburg/hamburger.

 

    As already mentioned, the big problem is the murder-mystery plotline.  It starts incredibly late in the text and is solved with more by armchair reasoning than onsite sleuthing.

 

    So if you can read a Rabbi Small story strictly for its insight into Jewish culture—both in America and in Israel—you are in for a treat; Harry Kemelman does a fantastic job in this respect.  But if you’re expecting a fascinating cozy mystery seamlessly merged into the tale as well, as I did, Monday the Rabbi Took Off probably won't live up to your expectations.

 

    7 Stars.  One minor plot tangent in the book deals with a fertilizer being field-tested by Israeli experts.  I've worked for a company that manufactures liquid fertilizers, and remember reading about some field research being done over there.  Specifically, it involved something called “drip irrigation”, and IIRC the Israelis came up with a remarkable way to minimize the amount of water needed for this.  When your entire country’s a desert and your population is constantly increasing due to immigration, such improvements are miracles.

Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home - Harry Kemelman

    1966; 270 pages.  Book 3 (out of 12) in the “Rabbi Small Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime Mystery; Jewish Literature;  Amateur Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    The members of the Barnard’s Crossing Temple are bickering again.

 

    The conservative faction, headed by Ben Gorfinkle, wants Rabbi David Small to publicly take a stand supporting book censorship and prayer in the schools; plus attacking the coddling of criminals and denouncing the Civil Rights protests.  And Gorfinkle is confident they have enough votes to make this temple policy.

 

    The progressive faction, headed by Meyer Paff, wants Rabbi Small to publicly take the opposite stand on all these issues.  They’re aware they don’t have enough votes for this, and therefore are prepared to break away and start their own temple, taking a lot of the present congregation, and hopefully Rabbi Small, with them.

 

    Although the Rabbi is sympathetic with the Meyer Paff’s group, he doesn’t want have the congregation split in two.  He’d prefer to do anything except be forced to choose one temple faction or the other.

 

    Like investigate a murder or two, perhaps?

 

What’s To Like...

    Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home is a blend of three storylines.  One is an enlightening discussion of Jewish-vs.-Christian dogma; one is an insightful look at inter-congregational squabbling; one is Rabbi Small’s investigation into two local deaths that have suspicious circumstances.

 

    The temple squabbles receive the majority of the attention and I suspect it will be a recurring theme of this series, since Book 11 is titled The Day the Rabbi Resigned.  A new twist of it crops up here: Rabbi Small is becoming popular among the Jewish youths, and he’s now considering joining Hillel, the largest Jewish student organization worldwide, as a counselor.

 

    Harry Kemelman works a lot of Yiddish religious terms and phrases into the text, and I always like that.  Rabbi Small engages in a couple of discussions with a Roman Catholic priest at the local Newman Center (the Catholic equivalent of Hillel), which both Father Bennett and myself found thought-provoking.  Two of the topics were a.) the role of Faith and/or the lack of it, and b.) the importance of what we believe versus that which we do.

 

    The Rabbi’s investigations into the two deaths are suitably thorough despite the lack of clues.  Sunday The Rabbi Stayed Home was published in 1969, and I was not surprised to see marijuana (or “marihuana” as the author spells it) being a factor in the probes.  I winced at the repeated use of the word “Negro” here, then remembered it was the preferred term for blacks during that era.

 

    Things build to a so-so ending.  Rabbi Small figures out the “whodunit” by clever deductive reasoning.  Unfortunately, all the evidence is circumstantial, but help comes from an unexpected source.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 1,008 ratings and 83 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.84/5 based on 2,108 ratings and 163 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I made my money too late to change my habits.  My Laura is after me I should have my suits made to order.  ‘You’ve got it now; spend it.’  But I can’t.  I can’t get interested enough in clothes to bother.  When I play poker, I play penny ante, and I notice that I get as much fun out of winning ninety cents as I would if it were ninety dollars.  And Irving is just as sore at losing thirty-two cents.”

    “Thirty-seven cents.”  (loc. 8505)

 

    “I told him that I’d had a meeting with a majority of the board prior to our little talk and that we had decided that if he refused to go along, at the next a motion would be offered—and passed—calling for his resignation.”

    “You fired him?”

    He pursed his lips and canted his head to one side.  “Just about.”

    “Nothing personal, of course.”

    “I flatter myself that I handled it pretty well,” said Gorfinkle with a smirk.  (loc. 9562)

 

Kindle Details…

    Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home is priced at $8.99 at Amazon at present.  The other books in the series are in the $0.99-$7.99 range, with most of them costing $6.99.  I read this as part of an e-book bundle containing the first four volumes of the series, and which costs $17.99 right now.

 

“By God, you nice respectable people can blunder into a situation and foul it up to make the angels weep.”  (loc. 9572)

    There’s only a smattering of profanity in Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home.  I counted just nine instances in the first half of the book, and those were all of the “milder” ilk.  The pejorative version of “Negro” (the "N-word") was used once, but with a negative connotation.  Typos were scarce and mostly involved missing commas and periods.

 

    The portrayal of pot dealers back in 1969 was a bit skewed.  Trust me, I was a teenager back then, and although drug dealing could be hazardous in those days, that was only true if the drug quantities were large.  A couple of joints does not constitute a large quantity.  Methinks Harry Kemelman took the movie Reefer Madness too seriously.

 

    The biggest issue I have with Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home is the diminished role of the crime investigation.  The first murder doesn’t come until 58% Kindle, and Rabbi Small doesn’t start his investigation until 65% Kindle.  It’s almost like the crimes were just a slapdash add-on to the book's storyline.

 

    Overall, this was a so-so read for me, probably because I’m reading this series mostly for the crime mystery aspect, not the religious angles.  If you happen to be reading these Rabbi Small books for their spiritual messages, add a couple stars to my rating.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  Kudos for the brief mention of (Moses) Maimonides.  That was one kewl dude, centuries before his time.  If you don’t know anything about him, look him up in Wikipedia.

Saturday The Rabbi Went Hungry - Harry Kemelman

   1966; 270 pages.  Book 2 (out of 12) in the “Rabbi Small Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime Mystery; Jewish Literature;  Amateur Sleuths.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    Poor Isaac Hirsh.  He had a good job and a beautiful wife.  But he was a recovering alcoholic, and one night he fell off the wagon.

 

    While almost everyone else in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Barnard’s Crossing was observing Yom Kippur, Isaac went drinking and driving.  Then he came home, parked his car in the garage, closed the garage door, and passed out in the driver’s seat with the engine still running.  That's where the police found his body.

 

    Was it an accidental death or was it suicide?  That may seem like a trivial issue to most people, but it makes a big difference to the life insurance company that covers Isaac’s policy.  It also impacts where Isaac, a non-practicing Jew, can be buried.  Suicide’s a sin, and no sinners are allowed in a Jewish cemetery.  It’s up to Rabbi Small to figure this all out and render a judgment.

 

    Hmm, suicide or accident.  Which was it?  What if it’s neither?

 

What’s To Like...

    Saturday The Rabbi Went Hungry is the second book in Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi  Small cozy-mystery series.  I read the first book in the series, Friday The Rabbi Slept Late; it is reviewed here.

 

    Once again, the story blends a noteworthy amount of Jewish theology with the investigations by various parties, including the police, Rabbi Small, the life insurance claims agent.  Temple politics play a significant part in the Rabbi getting involved.  God moves in mysterious ways.  Harry Kemelman makes use of a lot of Hebrew vocabulary in the text, but that’s not a problem in the Kindle version since highlighting the word or phrase brings up the English definition. 

 

    There are lots of characters to meet and be suspicious of, and lots of red herrings to throw both the reader and the Rabbi off-track in the investigation.  The insights into Jewish theology and how it differs from Christian thinking was also enlightening.  The story opens with the Rabbi leading a Yom Kippur service, which I gather is the most important Holy day of the year in Judaism.

 

    The book was published in 1966, during the height of the American Civil Rights movement.  Rabbi Small gets invited to take part in that movement, and I was surprised when he gave his reasons for declining to do so.  I winced the half dozen or so times the word “negro” was used, having to remind myself that in the 60s it was the politically correct word to use.

 

    The ending is okay by 1960s crime-mystery standards, but pretty blah by today’s.  The key clue is noticed by the Rabbi, but not revealed to the reader.  Rabbi Small only divulges it when he makes his accusation.  Bottom line: don’t try to solve this before the Rabbi does.  Just tag along and enjoy his interactions with the many possible suspects.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 1,549 ratings and 153 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.91/5 based on 2,775 ratings and 256 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Jocose (adj.) : playful or humorous.

Others: Escheat (v.).

 

Excerpts...

    “I was good to him; I took care of him like a mother."

    “And yet he drank.”

    “That started before I met him.  And I’m not sorry,” she added defiantly, “because that’s how I met him.”

    “So?”

    “He had holed up at this little hotel where I was working on the cigar counter in the lobby.  If he hadn’t been on a bender, how could the likes of me have met a man like him?”

    “And you feel you got the best of the bargain?”

    “It was the best kind of bargain there is, Rabbi, where both parties feel they’ve got the best of it.”  (loc. 4804)

 

    “Well, when a man drives into his garage, turns off the headlights, closes the garage door behind him, and then is found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning there’s always a question.”

    “Suicide?”

    “Isaac Hirsh took out an insurance policy of twenty-five thousand dollars less than a year ago.  There’s a two-year suicide clause on all our policies and double indemnity for accidental death.  If his death was an accident, the company forks out fifty thousand dollars.  If it was suicide, we don’t pay a red cent.  The company feels that fifty thousand dollars is worth a little investigation.”  (loc. 5088)

 

Kindle Details…

    Saturday The Rabbi Went Hungry is priced at $6.99 at Amazon right now.  The other books in the series are in the $1.99-$8.99 range, in no apparent pattern.  Alternatively, there is a bundle containing the first four books of the series, for $17.99, which is the format I’m using.

 

In a small town there are no secrets; a secret is not something unknown, only something not talked about openly.  (loc. 6515)

    There’s no blood, gore, or “adult situations” in Saturday The Rabbi Went Hungry, and I noted only five cusswords in the first 50% of the book.   The raciest thing I could come up with was a single use of a slang term to describe parts of the female anatomy.

 

    All the other quibbles have been covered.  If differences in religious practices and beliefs don’t interest you, then you’ll find the pacing slow.  If the word "negro” makes you wince, just be thankful the other “n-word” wasn’t used.  If you like trying to solve the mystery alongside the protagonist, concentrate instead on using logic to eliminate various characters from the sizable list of suspects.

 

    I’m still getting used to the tone and structure of this series.  The theological exegesis are interesting to me.  I felt the storyline is more character-driven than whodunit-driven is a bit disappointing, but I still enjoyed watching the amateur sleuth Rabbi Small go about his investigation.  We’ll see if I keep that attitude through the remaining two books in the bundle.

 

    7 Stars.  There is a father-son duo that pop up frequently in the storyline.  Their last name is Goralsky, and the son’s name in Ben.  For some reason, the name of the father is withheld for about 95% of the tale.  A key clue?  A freaky background story?  Who knows.  Just before the end of the book, his name is finally disclosed: he's Moses.  Now I’m more mystified than ever.

Friday The Rabbi Slept Late - Harry Kemelman

   1964; 198 pages.  Book 1 (out of 12) in the “Rabbi Small Mystery” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Religious Mystery; Jewish Literature; Amateur Sleuth Mystery.  Laurels: 1965 Edgar Award for Best First Novel.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    It was a shocking crime in a quiet, upstanding neighborhood.  The victim, a nice 20-something girl, was strangled with her own necklace, and the body dumped in a church parking lot.

    Well, technically, it was a temple parking lot, since it was a Jewish house of worship.  The crime was committed late at night – the police say it was after midnight – and the body not discovered until the next morning because it was hidden behind an outside wall.

    There was only one car in the parking lot that evening, and it belongs to the rabbi in charge of the temple.  But he’s known to often leave his vehicle there overnight and besides, a rabbi – like a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister – is pretty much above suspicion for a crime like this, right?

    So why was the young woman’s purse found in the rabbi’s car, tucked underneath the front seat?

What’s To Like...

    Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (and the whole series for that matter) is a mix of two genres: Jewish Literature and Murder-Mystery.  That may seem like an odd combination, so Harry Kemelman inserts a brief section called “The Creation of Rabbi Small” the the start of the novel, and I found it quite informative.  The book is an incredibly fast and easy read, with 28 chapters covering 198 pages.  The whole story takes place in the greater Boston area, more accurately a small fictitious seaside town called Barnard’s Crossing.

    The murder-mystery is structured so that the reader can accompany our amateur sleuth, Rabbi David Small, as he tries to figure out whodunit.  The clues are there, along with lots of red herrings, for anyone to piece together.  I happen to like mysteries where I can vie with the protagonist to see who can solve the crime first.  Here, I’m happy to say that I correctly deduced the key clue, but failed to fit it together with other info to identify the perpetrator.

    The book was published in 1964 and I really enjoyed going back to those times (I was 14 then) and seeing how much has changed.  Wives were generally homemakers, many couldn’t drive, and most of them, even the “white hat” ones, smoked cigarettes.  Males used hair gel for that “greasy kid” look, and some of those in management weren’t above patting female underlings on the rear, especially if they were attractive, a practice that was frowned upon by some, but not openly condemned by anyone.  A typical house in Barnard’s Crossing cost about $20,000, and Rabbi Small’s annual salary was $9,500.  Racial epithets were in common usage, and rock-n-roll was considered by adults to be crazy music.  Every car had two keys: one for the ignition and doors, and one for the trunk.

    There are only a few cusswords, and although the murder occurs “onscreen”, there is no blood.  This doesn’t quite qualify it as a “cozy mystery”, but it comes close.  It also should be mentioned that anti-Semitic bigotry rears its ugly head when Rabbi Small becomes a suspect.  Not very nice, but very realistic, even in today's world.

    The book was very insightful about Jewish practices.  One example:  their prayers are mostly about giving thanks, whereas the usual Christian prayer is more of a petition for something.  Even within the Jewish temple differences existed.  Rabbi Small is a Conservative (Orthodox) Jew and wants to emphasize what sets his religion apart from his Christian neighbors.  His congregation is more “modern” (Reformed), and would prefer to “blend in” with the surrounding gentiles by stressing what they have in common.

Kewlest New Word  ...

Obtrude (v.) : to become noticeable in an unwelcome or intrusive way.

Others : Upstumped (v., for which, surprisingly, Google doesn’t supply a usable definition).

Excerpts...

    “They say he’s careless about his appointments, careless in his appearance, even careless in his manner in the pulpit.  His clothes, they’re apt to be wrinkled.  When he gets up to speak in front of the congregation, or at a meeting, it doesn’t look right.”

    She nodded. “I know.  And maybe some of these critics blame me.  A wife should see to her husband.  But what can I do?  I see that his clothes are neat when he leaves in the morning, but can I follow him around all day?  He’s a scholar.  When he gets interested in a book, nothing else matters.  If he feels like lying down to read he doesn’t bother to take off his jacket.  (loc. 937)

  “If you will tell me what happened, perhaps I can tell you what you wish to know, or at least be able to help you more intelligently.”

    “You’re right, rabbi.  You understand that we’re bound be regulations.  My common sense tells me that you as a man of the cloth are in no way implicated, but as a policeman-“

    “As a policeman you are not supposed to use your common sense?  Is that what you were going to say?”  (loc. 1125)

Kindle Details...

    Friday The Rabbi Slept Late currently sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  All the other e-books in the series go for either $6.99 or $8.99, and if there’s a determining factor for choosing either of those prices, I don’t see it.

 “Misfortune can happen to anyone.  Only the dead are safe from it.”  (loc. 2368)

    Friday The Rabbi Slept Late garnered an Edgar Award in 1965 for “Best First Novel”, but I had some quibbles with it.

    For starters, although I thoroughly enjoyed the inclusion of a plethora of Hebrew words in the storyline (Examples: minyan, Kaddish, Din Torah, kochlefed, Gaon, cheder, rebbitzin, S’michah, pilpul, and kipoh), less than half of them come with definitions.  Yes, I can certainly google them, but that’s still a minor PITA.  OTOH, the “7-WD stores” reference was both enlightening and hilarious.

    The pacing is so-so.  The murder doesn’t take place until 30%-Kindle, so until then you pretty much have to content yourself with temple infighting and 1960’s daily life in Barnard’s Crossing.

    Finally, the ending is anti-climactic.  Rabbi Small figures out whodunit, and conveys his reasoning and resulting conclusions to the local chief-of-police.  But the actual apprehension of the perpetrator is skipped over entirely.  One minute the rabbi is presenting his case, the next we’re in the epilogue, with everything already tied up.  Presumably the perp was taken in without incident and without protest. 

    7 Stars.  Friday The Rabbi Slept Late has to be rated in accordance with the state of murder-mystery novels in the 50’/60’s.  In that respect it does quite well, but like Science-Fiction, the genre has evolved significantly since then.  Amazon discounts select Rabbi Small e-books at times, and ISTR seeing the paperback versions in the bargain bins at Half Price Books.  If I come across another one in the series at a discount outlet I will certainly pick it up.