Mystery Midrash
An Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Confront murder, mayhem—and your own mysteries of being.
From a corporate giant's kidnapping of a rabbi, to the disappearance of the clarinetist in a klezmer band, to four rabbis' use of their text interpretation skills to help a detective solve a murder that one of them has committed, this unique collection of mysteries will enlighten you at the same time it intrigues and entertains.
While featuring enough death and deception to keep the detective protagonists on their toes, each story presents the uncertainties that are a part of contemporary Jewish identity—inviting us all to confront our own mysteries of being. Throughout the stories' tangled puzzles and suspenseful adventures, the characters solve not only the "whodunit"-type mysteries, but also struggle to solve the mystery of their spiritual lives.
Mystery Midrash will be a lasting delight for mystery buffs of all faith traditions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like a good Jewish grandmother, Raphael serves up a feast of well-chosen tastes and textures in this collection of 13 original stories by well-known authors whose characters span the spectrum of American Jewish experience, from secular to orthodox. In his introduction, Raphael maintains that "there is something essentially Jewish about mystery fiction," for Midrash--the extraction of deep meaning from seemingly simple passages in holy texts--is itself a process of hunting for clues that others have overlooked, and of piecing them together to find the truth. "A Final Midrash," by Richard Fliegel, tenderly evokes the love of knowledge and personal involvement with the Torah that pervades the rabbinical experience; in it, four rabbis use their training in interpretation to help a detective solve a murder that one of them has committed. Passover tradition helps lawyer Rachel Gold piece together a fellow Jew's contested will in Michael Kahn's jigsaw puzzle, "Bread of Affliction." A lapsed Jew, shunning all belief in God, finds consolation in helping a dead rabbi's family believe the inner truth about his life rather than the ugly truth of his death, in the touching "Kaddish," by Batya Yasgur. Despite their Jewish themes, these stories have an ecumenical appeal: to Raphael, Mazel Tov!
