Jewish Joy with Josh Levy

I’m Heidi Rabinowitz, and I am so happy to be Jewish. The beautiful and varied customs, the focus on deep thought and learning, and the historical connections going back over the centuries, all bring me joy. That’s why I’ve dedicated my career to synagogue librarianship and why I’ve been podcasting about Jewish children’s literature for over a decade. That is also why I created the Jewish Joy series. In fact, the 20th anniversary of The Book of Life Podcast will take place in December 2025 – stay tuned, I’m making celebratory plans! 

What?

I’m thrilled to share this Jewish Joy series for Multicultural Kid Blogs with you. I’ll be bringing you Q&A’s from diverse intersectional Jewish authors, showcasing the variegated tapestry of Jewish life and books. In each interview, I’ll link back to the author’s appearance on The Book of Life Podcast for you to hear their voice and learn more about them.

Why?

In these turbulent times with antisemitism at record highs, Jewish Joy is crucial. As poet Toi Derricotte says, joy is an act of resistance. Joyful books invite everyone in, so that Jewish stories can, in the words of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, become windows as well as mirrors, bringing hope, demystifying the Jewish experience, and building empathy and understanding.

Who?

In the last Jewish Joy post in this series, you met Australian-Iraqi Mizrahi Jewish author Sarah Sassoon. Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Joshua S. Levy, author of The Jake Show, On All Other Nights, and Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop. Josh has appeared several times on The Book of Life podcast, most recently in February 2025 to talk about his middle-grade time travel fantasy about Finn, a mostly secular Jewish kid, and Ezra, an Orthodox Jewish kid.

Josh’s writing is funny, clever, and heartfelt. His books often showcase the diversity within Jewish practice and observance, a theme fairly new in children’s literature. I’m pleased to bring you this exclusive interview for Multicultural Kid Blogs, and if you’d like to hear more from Josh in his own voice, please click on the podcast link below.

Q&A with Joshua S. Levy

THE BOOK OF LIFE: Josh, please describe your own Jewish identity, along with any other aspects of your identity that you’d like to share.

JOSH LEVY: Would you prefer I limit my answer to 50,000 words, or do you think I could take up a bit more space?

Just kidding! (Sort of.) But my Jewish identity means a great deal to me, and I’m very comfortable saying it lives at the heart of who I am and how I think of myself. Here are some highlights:

I personally inhabit “Modern Orthodox” Jewish spaces. My kids go to a Jewish day school. We keep a kosher home. We observe Shabbat (from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday) in the no driving/no electronics sort of way. (A personal favorite observance of mine, which I value more and more over time.) But I’ve got friends and family in many different corners of the larger Jewish community, some religious—of one denomination or another—some not. And, as important as my own (maybe Niche) Jewish identity is to me, equally important is being a part of our larger tapestry. (Too cliché?) I want to be myself in a world full of different types of people, Jewish and not.

TBOL: Why is it important to you to include Jewish representation in your writing?

JL: I’ve got an objective answer and a subjective one. (Also—to return to the previous question for a second—it’s possible that one aspect of my Jewish identity is an inability to answer quick questions with quick answers. But I’m trying!)

My objective answer is: I want to see Jewish representation in books, and I want readers to see Jewish representation in books. I want kids who are Jewish to find something of themselves in characters they encounter. And I want kids who aren’t Jewish or who aren’t familiar with Jewish communities to see us inhabiting good stories, funny stories, complex stories. The world is full of different types of people. Our stories should be full of them too.

And now my subjective answer: It’s just who I am. Even when writing more speculative stories, the act of writing is…creative, artistic. It’s a reflection of identity. And if being Jewish is part of who I am, it’s inevitably going to be some part of the books I write.

TBOL: About being Jewish: what is hard, and what brings you joy?

JL: Oooh! These are great questions.

What is hard? The world, sometimes. It’s a fraught time to be Jewish. Our communities—including in America—feel more tenuous than they have in my memory. I hope
it’s a passing reality.

What brings me joy? Basically everything else. Shabbat (which you already know). Eating matzah and cream cheese on Passover. Sitting in a sukkah on Sukkot. Jewish books. The Touro Synagogue in Newport. Leonard Cohen. I’d need another 50,000 words.

TBOL: What do you want the world to know about Jewish people?

JL: Wow. That’s a lot of responsibility. I don’t think of myself as any kind of emissary to the world, and so my big answers are maybe obvious: We want to live, we want our families to be happy and healthy, we want to contribute to the world around us—and we want all the same things for everyone else.

TBOL: Please tell us about any Jewish books you’ve written.

JL: Here goes!

In 2023, HarperCollins published THE JAKE SHOW, a middle-grade novel about a Jewish kid with divorced parents, one side religiously minded, the other side not. Tired of being caught in the middle, Jake lies his way to a summer camp neither side would approve of. The book is a bit semi-autobiographical (divorced parents, different kinds of families), and a bit not (never lied my way to a summer camp!).

In 2024, Harper published FINN AND EZRA’S BAR MITZVAH TIME LOOP, another middle-grade novel, this one about two kids (you guessed it!) trapped in a bar mitzvah time loop. Friday through Sunday, Finn and Ezra have to relive their bar mitzvah weekends while trying to break out of the loop. I think of this book as a kind of contemporary fairy tale about appreciating what you have before it’s gone.

Also in ’24, Abrams published ON ALL OTHER NIGHTS, a middle-grade short story anthology, with each story inspired in some way by one of the traditional steps of the Passover seder. I co-edited that book with Chris Baron and Naomi Milliner.

(Honestly, even my not-super-Jewish books—a middle grade scifi trilogy about kids lost in space, starting with SEVENTH GRADE VS. THE GALAXY—have Jewish aspects to them. One of the secondary characters, Ari, is Jewish, and you get glimpses of it in each book.)

And! I’ve got a middle-grade non-fiction book set to publish in ’27, featuring a collection of biographies of notable Jewish Americans, focused on their lives as kids. Working on that now and feeling very grateful.

So, yeah, I like Jewish stories, and I am very proud to have put some out into the world.

TBOL: What other Jewish books are you excited about, and why?

JL: For a fairly recent release that I’m still so excited about, I’d mention SPARK by my friend (and co-editor!) Chris Baron. I love the Jewish elements of the book, some subtle, some not.

And, while I’ve not yet read either (they’re either just out or still coming out as I’m typing this), I’m very much looking forward to (the now-late) Uri Shulevitz’s THE SKY WAS MY BLANKET: A YOUNG MAN’S JOURNEY ACROSS WARTIME EUROPE, and Ilana Kurshan’s (not quite kidlit, but maybe kidlit adjacent?) CHILDREN OF THE BOOK: A
MEMOIR OF READING TOGETHER.

TBOL: Josh, thank you so much for infusing Jewish joy into all of your writing!

JL: Thanks for having me and for all the work you do!

Discover more interviews in the Jewish Joy Series!

Ruth Behar – a Latina Jewish author of middle-grade fiction and picture books and a cultural anthropologist

Richard Ho – a Chinese Jewish picture book author

Emily Bowen Cohen – a Muscogee Jewish author of a middle-grade graphic novel

Veera Hiranandani – an Indian Jewish author of middle-grade and picture books

Andrew Sass –  an author who writes middle-grade fiction on Jewish identity, neurodiversity, and gender

Shoshana Nambi – a Ugandan Jewish picture book author from the Abayudaya community

Emi Watanabe Cohen – a  Jewish Japanese fantasy author

Lesléa Newman – an author who draws upon her Jewish and LGBTQ+ identity in her writing

Sarah Aroeste & Bridget Hodder – two Sephardic Jewish authors

Sarah Sassoon – a Mizrahi Jewish author of picture books showcasing her Iraqi heritage

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Heidi Rabinowitz

Library Director at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, FL

Heidi Rabinowitz hosts The Book of Life Podcast, a show about Jewish kidlit (mostly) at www.bookoflifepodcast.substack.com. She moderates the Facebook group Jewish Kidlit Mavens for people who have a strong interest in Jewish children's literature, and is co-founder of The Jewish Book Garden on Substack. She's the Library Director at Congregation B'nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida, and does 25+ preschool storytimes every week.

Latest posts by Heidi Rabinowitz (see all)

• Jewish Joy with Rachelle Burk - August 24, 2026
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