Klein's mission to Israel in 1949 on behalf of "The Canadian Jewish Chronicle" inspired his last major work and only complete novel, "The Second Scroll". Taking cues equally from James Joyce, the Torah and Talmud, and the events of recent history, Klein structured his novel as a series of five chapters, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, each of which corresponds to one of the five books of the Pentateuch. The story's narrator, an unnamed character based loosely on Klein himself, goes in search of his long-lost uncle, Melech Davidson, a Holocaust survivor who drifts to Rome and then Casablanca before immigrating to Israel. Just as the narrator is about to catch up to his mercurial uncle, Davidson is murdered by a group of Arabs, leaving the end of the novel open as to whether Davidson was a martyr to the Jewish nation or a false Messiah whose heroic status was inflated by his nephew's eagerness to meet his elusive uncle. Following the main narrative of "The Second Scroll" is a series of numbered glosses that add further commentary to the narrative in the form of poems, a liturgy, a playlet, and, most notably, a meditative essay on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo. Although "The Second Scroll" was not a commercial success in its first edition from Knopf in New York City, a subsequent re-print in Canada's New Canadian Library ensured its survival as one of the significant works of modern Canadian literature.