Weekend With the Rabbi

Weekend With the Rabbi by Harry Kemelman 565 pages

This book is three mystery novels under one cover: Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964), Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (1966), and Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home (1969)

Rereading a favorite series is like eating comfort food. So it was with the first three novels in the Rabbi Small series. In the first book, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Rabbi David Small is nearing the end of  his first year as Rabbi for the Jewish congregation in the small town of Barnard's Crossing. When a young woman's body is found on the temple grounds, both Rabbi Small and Stanley, the temple's handyman, are for a time suspects in her murder. Rabbi Small and the town's Catholic police chief, Hugh Lanigan find a camaraderie: Lanigan is fascinated with the Jewish faith and pilpul, a critical analysis of talmudic reasoning, which Rabbi Small applies to the real world as well. Rabbi Small's reasoning helps to solve the crime.

In Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Isaac Hirsh, a nonobservant Jewish scientist–also a recovering alcoholic–is found dead on the eve of Yom Kippur. After his burial in the Jewish cemetery, there are rumors that his death may have been a suicide, which upsets a rich elderly donor in the congregation who had been willing to finance a new chapel. This causes friction between Rabbi Small and the president of the congregation, because the Rabbi says the body should stay, but the president wants something to be done to keep the donor from changing his mind about the chapel. As the disagreement continues, the Rabbi and the police chief once again meet to suss out the situation, coming to the conclusion that Hirsh was actually murdered, and work from there to solve the murder.

In Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home, different philosophical views about how to deal with social justice issues are threatening to break the congregation apart. In the town, the police have been active, trying to stop drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the college-aged children of the congregation are returning home to Barnard's Crossing for Passover week. When an acquaintance of theirs shows up uninvited for a beach party, and later ends up dead, the students are in the spotlight. Rabbi Small's role is critical in reasoning out the who and why of the death.