ABSTRACT
Many American novels, we know, have featured the rabbi as a fictional hero. Some of these rabbis are even Hasidic, and play schoolyard baseball with an intensity that matches their religious beliefs; others become amateur sleuths who solve crimes after sleeping late on Fridays, going hungry on Saturdays, or taking off on Mondays; still others lead their followers with messianic fervor in staking an unshakable biblical claim to Judea and Samaria. No longer, obviously, is the rabbi a stranger to American fiction.
