Books: Talmudic Sleuth

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SATURDAY THE RABBI WENT HUNGRY by Harry Kemelman. 249 pages. Crown. $3.95.

The idea of a rabbi who plays detective on the side is just different enough to offer possibilities to a competent writer who knows all about rabbis. Harry Kemelman, 57, makes the most of the possibilities. He is a Talmudic scholar who never seemed to be getting anywhere composing thoughtful essays on comparative religion. A few years ago he switched to popular fiction, invented a rabbinical sleuth named David Small, of Barnard's Crossing, Mass., and turned Friday the Rabbi Slept Late into a bestseller. Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Kemelman's second book, has become a bestseller too, and deservedly so, for it is a cracking good mystery.

Rabbi Small is a pale, unprepossessing, erudite and somewhat irascible young man who solves mysteries by using Talmudic reasoning instead of chasing off after clues. In this book, the rabbi's troubles begin when influential members of his congregation become annoyed because he has buried an apparent suicide in the temple cemetery.

There is really nothing for Rabbi Small to do except prove that the dead man did not commit suicide, but was murdered—and, for good measure, to go out and collar the murderer. Along the way, the rabbi unobtrusively offers a short course in Conservative Judaism, as well as some choice and not entirely flattering opinions about his fellow Jews. For example, Kernel-man explains why cantors like to call themselves by their diminutives: they are childishly vain.

Kemelman, who teaches English at Boston's Massachusetts State College, is now savoring an unexpected triumph. A Yiddish-language newspaper has begun serializing his first book. This means that his 96-year-old mother, who reads no English', will at last be able to find out why the .rabbi slept late.