The third install­ment in the Adven­tures of a Life­time series, this book is set in the peri­od of the Ottoman Empire in Jerusalem, a his­tor­i­cal set­ting not usu­al­ly well detailed in fic­tion for this age group. It is well writ­ten and supe­ri­or to oth­ers in the series. The twelve-year-old pro­tag­o­nists, Avra­ham from Jerusa­lem and Alex from Amer­i­ca, have just a few months until their bar mitz­vahs. The two take on the dual tasks of locat­ing Rab­bi Yekusiel, a dear friend of Avraham’s father who has been kid­napped, while at the same time, try­ing to iden­ti­fy those who are pres­sur­ing stu­dents in a local yeshi­va to trans­fer to the school the Ottomans pre­fer, the Lemel school. Is mon­ey an issue in either of these under­tak­ings? A cast of mys­te­ri­ous strangers appear and disap­pear from the boys’ lives includ­ing Amer­i­cans, British, and local Jew­ish and Arab res­i­dents of Jerusalem, as they try to resolve these ques­tions. This is both a his­tor­i­cal mys­tery and a com­ing of age sto­ry and there is much col­or­ful inter­play between the Ashke­naz­im and Sephardim of the Israel of the time.

While the char­ac­ters and back­grounds are clear­ly Ortho­dox, the book’s action sus­tains inter­est for those read­ers who have no famil­iarity with the lifestyle or the his­tor­i­cal period.

A glos­sary of Hebrew words used in the sto­ry appears at the end of the book. Recom­mended for ages 10 – 14