Mystery Midrash: An Anthology of Jewish Mystery & Detective Fiction

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! (July)