HARRY KEMELMAN (1908 - 1996)

Asked to name fictional detectives in holy orders, many people will be able to come up with Chesterton’s Father Brown. Some might add Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael. The next best known was probably Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi David Small, though he is less often cited nowadays. There are a great many more—one web site I found several years ago listed three hundred and twenty.

The merit of assigning an ecclesiastical profession to your detective is that religious training should include thinking about ethics and human motivation. In the case of Catholicism the sleuth may also exploit what he has heard in the confessional. With Brother Cadfael, the author draws on the Brother’s skills as a herbalist and pharmacist. In the case of Kemelman’s Rabbi Small and Judaism, the relevant background skill is rabbinical training in Talmudic argument, the close examination of a text or a story and the discussion of its application in other contexts.

Harry Kemelman freely admitted that he wrote his detective stories not just to entertain but to inform Jews and non-Jews about the essentials of Judaism. In the preface to 2002 edition of Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, “The Creation of Rabbi Small”, he writes:

[Members of the congregation] knew about religion in general from their reading or from the movies they had seen, but little or nothing of the tenets of Judaism. Typical was the reaction of the young lawyer who had asked the rabbi they had engaged to bless the Cadillac he had just bought. He was surprised and hurt when the rabbi refused and said he did not bless things. The friends in the synagogue whom he told of the rabbi’s refusal felt much the same way.

I was fascinated by the disaccord between the thinking of the rabbi and that of the congregation, and the problems it gave rise to. So I wrote a book about it. My editor, Arthur Fields, thought the book too low-keyed and suggested jokingly that I could brighten it up by introducing some of the exciting elements in the detective [short] stories that I had written. As I passed by the large parking lot of our synagogue it occurred to me that it was an excellent place to hide a body. And as a rabbi is one who is learned in the law and whose basic function is to sit as a judge in cases brought before him, it seemed to me that he was the ideal character to act as an amateur detective by searching out the truth. Thus was born Rabbi David Small.

Kemelman’s first published fiction was a group of short stories published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, beginning in 1947 with the extraordinary “The Nine Mile Walk”. In this Professor Nicky Welt has a bet with his friend the County Attorney that he can draw a long chain of inferences from a remark casually overheard as they are leaving a café, “A nine mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain.” He infers among other things that the rain is unforeseen, the speaker is no athlete, that the walk was from country towards town rather than the reverse, that it took place at night, and finally suggests that it might point to some criminal rendezvous. He looks at a map to work out which places in the locality are nine miles apart. The attorney makes a phone call and finds that a murder has been committed just where such a rendezvous might have taken place. The police are sent to the café where the remark was overheard and the criminals are arrested. Far-fetched certainly, but the story must by now have figured on the reading lists of many courses of semantics and sociolinguistics. Seven more Nicky Welt stories appeared and were eventually published in book form (1967), but none came up to the standard of the first.

There is no doubt that Kemelman’s books contain a great deal of background about the practices and beliefs of American conservative Jewry. They are also satisfying detective stories, not especially violent or menacing but intriguing enough to keep one turning the pages. What one remembers, though, is more the community’s squabbles and the way the rabbi deals with them. In the first of them, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964), a strangled girl is found in the rabbi’s car and he himself is a suspect, though he manages to clear himself and several members of the congregation who fall under suspicion. What is more memorable is the Din Torah, in which the rabbi uses the Talmud to adjudicate in a quarrel over a car breakdown. This leads to some resentment and continuing uncertainty over whether his contract will be renewed, a theme that recurs in nearly all of the later books. The book was a considerable success and led to a television production called Lanigan’s Rabbi. The pilot episode used the plot of Friday but left out most of the temple politics while introducing a new plot strand involving the victim’s employer needing to conceal her movements because of divorce proceedings and custody battles. The TV star is Art Karney, playing Hugh Lanigan, the catholic police chief, who is a recurrent character in the whole series and becomes a close friend of the rabbi.

The second book, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (1966), is probably the best of the whole series and involves the most heated disagreement with the board of the temple. The president is an architect and is set on building a traditional style annex onto the modern temple building. An elderly member who might donate enough to pay for this work has to be coaxed into taking his medicine during the Yom Kippur fast; the rabbi tells him that not taking the medicine might be construed as suicide, which would mean being buried in unconsecrated ground. Then a local but non-observant Jew dies from carbon monoxide poisoning and the rabbi is asked by the widow to bury him, which he does. When a life insurance company asserts that the death was suicide, the temple board tries to redesign the layout of the cemetery so that the new grave is outside the boundary, which the rabbi forbids. The only way that the rabbi can keep his job now is to show that the carbon monoxide poisoning was not suicide but murder. Meanwhile the rabbi’s wife is on the point of giving birth to their first child.

In the next book, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home (1969), quarrels over whether the congregation should support political protest movements threaten to lead to a split, with a second temple opening. The death of a drug dealer embroils the teenage children of several community members, but the rabbi is able to point the investigation in another direction. The book ends with the rabbi awarded a sabbatical to spend in Israel, leading to Monday the Rabbi Took Off (1972), the first of two books set in Israel, the other being One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross (1987). Both these books combine a travelogue element, the rabbi’s rather offhand dealings with those of his congregants who are also visiting Israel, and a fairly perfunctory and rather unlikely crime component.

When the rabbi returns in Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red (1973), we encounter a second background theme, Kemelman’s strong views on tertiary education. He had meanwhile published a non-fiction volume on this subject, Common Sense in Education (1970), in which he deplores the emphasis given by colleges to research over teaching, and makes fun of research topics dealing with obscure and worthless literary practitioners, a theme he returns to even more strongly in the last book of the series, That Day the Rabbi Left Town (1996). Tuesday begins with a memorable scene where the rabbi upbraids a young member of the congregation for hiring a non-kosher caterer for her wedding in the temple. Later the rabbi accepts a part-time post at Windemere Christian College to teach a course in Jewish philosophy, and is present in the building when the college dean dies from having a massive bust of Plato fall on her head. Was the bust dislodge by a very small bomb set off by a group of student protesters, or had it been maliciously dislodge much earlier?

Here is a list of all the books in order, showing the progress of the Rabbi's career.

1964 - Friday the Rabbi slept late
President: Jacob Wasserman
The newly appointed Rabbi David Small is thirty years old. He holds a Din Torah to resolve a dispute between Schwarz and Reich. This leads to Al Becker’s resentment that he has to claim under warranty for Reich’s car, and he tries to block renewal of the Rabbi’s contract, but this evaporates when the Rabbi clears his associate Mel Bronstein of complicity in murder.
Victim: Elspeth Bleech
Culprit: ?????

Other suspects: Mel Bronstein, Stanley Doble, the Rabbi.

1966 - Saturday the Rabbi went hungry
President: Mortimer Schwarz, architect.
The Rabbi’s third year. He has a five-year contract. Al Becker has been president meanwhile. Rabbi’s wife is pregnant. New president wants to use anticipated bequest to build temple annex in trad style.
Victim dies of carbon monoxide in a closed garage; is it accidental? He is buried in Jewish cemetery. When an insurance investigator asserts it was suicide, old man Goralsky feels sure threaten the body has contaminated the cemetery and withdraws his donation. But then the Rabbi shows it was a murder.
Rabbi’s son is born. Rabbi persuades old man Goralsky that the building he is funding should be a cemetery chapel, using the argumentat mixing architectural styles on one building is against Jewish law in the same way as mixing fabrics.
Victim: Isaac Hirsh
Culprit: ?????

Other suspects: Mrs Hirsh, Marvin Brown, Ben Goralsky, Peter Dodge

1969 - Sunday the Rabbi stayed home.
President Ben Gorfinkle, businessman.
The rabbi is in his early thirties and has been rabbi for six years. New president wants the temple to be more political. Previous member Meyer Paff wants to establish a rival temple and tries to persuade the rabbi to join.
Victims: Drug dealer Wilcox and Moose Carter.
Culprit: ?????

Other suspects: most of the teenage offspring of the Rabbi’s congregation.

1972 - Monday the Rabbi took off
Baby Jonathan has grown into a talking kindergarten-attending football-playing child. Miriam is pregnant again. The Rabbi is not offered a permanent contract and a sabbatical by the new board but wants to go to Jerusalem for three months. The board finds Rabbi Deutch as a replacement and would like the replacement to be permanent. The Rabbi rents a flat in Jerusalem.
Victim: Memavet, the used car broker.
Culprit: ?????

Other suspects: various student activists.

1973 - Tuesday the Rabbi saw red Begins with the Rabbi telling off Edie Chernow for hiring a non-kosher caterer for her wedding in the temple. The rabbi accepts a part-time post at Windemere Christian College to teach a course in Jewish Philosophy. He is mid thirties. Daughter Hepzibah mentioned briefly. Note that Windemere College is spelled throughout with one R, though in the later books the more familiar {British) spelling Windermere is adopted.
Victim: Professor Hendryx
Culprit: ?????

Other suspects: The Rabbi. Abner Selzer, student. Roger Fine, assistant professor and husband of Edie. Various student agitators.

1976 - Wednesday the Rabbi got wet
Jonathan is 5.
New president Chester Kaplan wants to arrange retreats and meditation and buy a property, paid for by a bequest from the Goralskys. This means denying Marcus Aptaker’s drugstore an extension of his lease, which the Rabbi thinks is unethical. The main plot concerns switching of two bottles of pills, so that the Aptakers are apparently guilty of a (deliberate?) mistake with the prescriptions.
Victim: Jacob Kestler
Culprit: ?????

Other suspects: Dr Ben Cohen, Ross McClane, Arnold Aptaker

1978 - Thursday the Rabbi walked out
The Rabbi has been in post for twelve years. The Rabbi and Morton Brooks are both in their early forties. New president, Henry Maltzman, wants to politicise the temple and tries to organise a board vote not to renew the Rabbi’s contract. This book contains the idea of claiming to be a marksman by drawing a target round the bullet hole. In this case the marksman tries to divert suspicion by firing a volley of random shots, suggesting the fatal accurate shot was a fluke.
Victim: Ellsworth Jordon, real estate dealer
Culprit:

Other suspects: Henry Maltzman, Stanley Dobie, Billy Green (Jordon’s natural son), Martha Peterson (housekeeper), Molly Mandell (Gore’s secretary)

1981 - Conversations with Rabbi Small
Written as a narrative but not a crime story at all. The rabbi is visited by a non-Jewsih girl in love with a Jew and wanting advice on whether or how to convert.

1985 - Some day the Rabbi will leave
The Rabbi’s children are 17 and 13.
President Sam Feinberg is replaced by tycoon Howard Magnuson. Main action concerns the president’s daughter Laura Magnuson who takes up John Scofield and promotes his effort to be elected as Republican state senator,
Victim: Tony D’Angelo
Culprit:

Other suspects: Paul Kramer, Howard Halperin

1987 - One fine day the Rabbi bought a cross
The Rabbi goes to Jerusalem a second time. The main plot concerns a map of concealed armaments that is to be delivered by Grenish to an Arab terrorist group.
Victim: Abraham Grenish
Culprit:

Other suspect: Jordan Goodman.

1992 - The day the Rabbi resigned
President is Al Bergson, supportive. The Rabbi attains 23 years service and will soon qualify for his pension. He hankers after a teaching position. He is upbraided for insufficient visiting of the sick.
Victim: Victor Joyce
Culprit:

Other suspects: Mordecai Jacobs, Abner Gorfinkle, Malcolm Dorfbetter
Chapter 22 contains a wonderful two-page description of the way an amateur orchestra rehearses,

1996 - That day the Rabbi left town
President: Al Bergson
The final book. The Rabbi is replaced by Rabbi Selig and joins the staff of Windermere College. Professor Kent controls Miller by threatening to reveal he has plagiarised his Ph D thesis, a study of the poetaster Simeon Suggs. Some discussion of the futility of researching worthless writers.
Victim: Professor Malcolm Kent (Michael Canty)
Culprit:

Other suspects: Rabbi Selig, Tony Donofrio

Other Books by Harry Kemelmaan

• The Nine Mile Walk, 1947
• The Straw Man, 1950
• End Play, 1950
• The Ten-o’clock Scholar, 1952
• Time and Again, 1962
• The Bread and Butter Case, 1962
• The Whistling Tea Kettle, 1963
• The Man on the Ladder, 1967

Common Sense in Education, 1970