Fictional Rabbi-Sleuths A Novel Idea

Although American sleuth fiction became popular in the late nineteenth century, the first clerical fictional protagonist appeared in 1910 with G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown series. More than five decades later, in the mid-1960s, a rabbi-sleuth protagonist debuted in Harry Kemelman’s weekday Rabbi Small series (Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, etc.). Following in Kemelman’s footsteps, several authors claim to have been influenced by his works. Rabbi-sleuths, male and female, are found across the denominational spectrum in Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform Judaism. While there are examples of rabbi-sleuths featured in one-off short stories or novels, we focus on six who appear in series of at least two novels. The rabbis and the locales in which we find them are as follows: Harry Kemelman’s David Small in Barnard’s Crossing, Massachusetts, a town north of Boston; Joseph Telushkin’s Daniel Winter in Los Angeles; Roger Herst’s Gabrielle (Gabby) Lewyn in Washington, D.C.; Sheyna Galyan’s David Cohen in Minneapolis; Ilene Schneider’s Aviva Cohen in Walford, New Jersey, a small town near Philadelphia; and Marvin Wolf’s Ben Maimon in various locales, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Pittsburgh. These rabbi-sleuths, like all congregational clergy, are “outsiders within”—part of their communities and yet apart from them. They use their knowledge of Judaism and their rabbinical education, which includes psychology, social studies, and counseling, to unravel mysteries, often murders. They frequently serve as mediators between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds and explain or comment on Jewish practices and traditions.