Review: Finn & Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop
Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop
by Joshua S. Levy
Katherine Tegan Books (imprint of HarperCollins), 2024
Category: Middle Grade
Reviewer: Leah Cypess
Buy at Bookshop.org
Two very different boys. One (literally) never-ending bar mitzvah weekend.
Finn and Ezra seem to have nothing in common, except that both boys are inexplicably trapped in a time loop that has them living their bar mitzvah weekends over and over and over and…
Ezra is the middle child in a large Orthodox family, feeling like an afterthought even at his own bar mitzvah. Finn is the suffocatingly adored only child of secular Jewish parents. Ezra is laid back, avoidant, and hasn’t done much to end his time loop… until he meets Finn, who is competitive, likes to be in charge, and is determined to get to the bottom of the problem. Even if some of Finn’s ideas for how to escape the time loop strike Ezra as a little dubious, it doesn’t really matter, does it? No matter what they do, time will always re-set.
Or will it?
This hilarious, authentic, and heartfelt story is both extremely entertaining and, in the end, deep and thought-provoking. Somewhere between zany antics to end the time loop and seeking help from jargon-spouting physicists, Finn and Ezra will learn that they have more in common than they thought… including the fact that, perhaps, they have both been looking at their time loop problem from the entirely wrong angle.
This book should be a very strong contender for the Sydney Taylor Book Award. It is simultaneously an accessible story about universal themes, and also a deeply Jewish narrative—not just due to the fact that it is about two bar mitzvah boys, but in its authentic and non-didactic presentation of both boys’ very different and very Jewish lives.
Leah Cypess is the author of the middle grade SISTERS EVER AFTER series, being published by Delacorte/Random House, and of an upcoming early reader series, MIRIAM'S MAGICAL CREATURE FILES, which will be published by Abrams Books. Leah also writes Judaica books under the name "Leah Sokol." Her most recent Judaica book, YOSEF MENDELEVICH: HERO OF SOVIET JEWRY, was published by Menucha Publishers.
Two very different boys. One (literally) never-ending bar mitzvah weekend.
Finn and Ezra seem to have nothing in common, except that both boys are inexplicably trapped in a time loop that has them living their bar mitzvah weekends over and over and over and…
Ezra is the middle child in a large Orthodox family, feeling like an afterthought even at his own bar mitzvah. Finn is the suffocatingly adored only child of secular Jewish parents. Ezra is laid back, avoidant, and hasn’t done much to end his time loop… until he meets Finn, who is competitive, likes to be in charge, and is determined to get to the bottom of the problem. Even if some of Finn’s ideas for how to escape the time loop strike Ezra as a little dubious, it doesn’t really matter, does it? No matter what they do, time will always re-set.
Or will it?
This hilarious, authentic, and heartfelt story is both extremely entertaining and, in the end, deep and thought-provoking. Somewhere between zany antics to end the time loop and seeking help from jargon-spouting physicists, Finn and Ezra will learn that they have more in common than they thought… including the fact that, perhaps, they have both been looking at their time loop problem from the entirely wrong angle.
This book should be a very strong contender for the Sydney Taylor Book Award. It is simultaneously an accessible story about universal themes, and also a deeply Jewish narrative—not just due to the fact that it is about two bar mitzvah boys, but in its authentic and non-didactic presentation of both boys’ very different and very Jewish lives.
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