The judgment of Yoyo Gold

Review by Booklist Review

As the oldest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, Yocheved "Yoyo" Gold faces high expectations from her parents and her entire Orthodox community to be a leader and role model for her peers. She usually handles this status well, but she is currently preoccupied by the banishment of her best friend, Esti, to a boarding school in Las Vegas. Esti is now all the way across the country after she was caught kissing a boy, which is strictly forbidden. Yoyo meets another rabbi's daughter, Mickey, whose mother is the rabbi of a Reform synagogue, and Yoyo's both shocked and intrigued by the differences between them. Mickey introduces Yoyo to social media, and Yoyo crashes headlong into a topsy-turvy world radically different from her own. When she sees her Orthodox friends violating rules like eating at McDonald's or buying drugs, she starts posting anonymous TikTok videos reporting on their transgressions. It all catches up to her, and Yoyo realizes that (1) she needs boundaries, and (2) they need to come from within her. Blum's depiction of a teenage Orthodox Jewish girl is remarkable in its precision and authenticity, along with the depth he gives Yoyo as she experiences life outside her community and contemplates her future. Yoyo's first-person narrative is convincing and appealing along with the well-rounded characters around her.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A high school junior living in fictional Colwyn, Pa., Yocheved "Yoyo" Gold cares for her younger siblings, excels at school, and strives to meet the expectations placed upon her as the eldest daughter of her largely Orthodox Jewish community's rabbi. After she meets the daughter of the town's Reform rabbi, Yoyo starts to question her own community's rules and interpretation of Judaism. She pays teenage Shua Holtzman, recently returned from being kicked out of yeshiva, to remove the filter on Yoyo's phone that restricts her access to social media apps and "other inappropriate content." Yoyo finds release in posting anonymized TikToks about her Orthodox peers' "hypocrisy and unfairness" and bends rules to spend time alone with Shua as feelings blossom between the two. But when one of her TikToks goes viral--and leads to IRL consequences--Yoyo panics about being discovered. Blum (The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen) carefully outlines one character's experiences in her Orthodox community alongside the world she encounters through social media, creating a nuanced novel about finding oneself amid the perceived constraints and comforts of one's environment. Yoyo and Shua read as white. Ages 12--up. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Horn Book Review

In this coming-of-age novel set in an insular Orthodox Jewish community (adjacent to the one in The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen, rev. 11/22), Yocheved "Yoyo" Gold is the eldest daughter of the local rabbi and has been cast in a particular and demanding role by those around her. After her best friend leaves town under questionable circumstances, Yoyo begins to notice cracks in the standards of behavior she has always accepted and feels an urge to call out the hypocrisy she sees. New friends -- one from outside her tight-knit community and one who is pushing boundaries within it -- lead her to question both her responsibilities and her beliefs. Social media, alcohol, and physical relationships feature heavily in the story, and each potential hot-button issue is handled with delicacy and nuance as Yoyo approaches these new experiences from her sheltered but mature perspective. While the book critiques Orthodoxy, it also treats its norms and traditions with respect. Even at the height of mean-girl drama, the characters have dimension and agency, and Yoyo models a level of integrity that feels both genuine and aspirational. The story's depictions of teens grappling with expectations are specific to this community and also represent universal themes of growing up, friendship, family pressures, and being true to oneself. Miriam Steinberg-EgethNovember/December 2024 p.82 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Yocheved "Yoyo" Gold is a good Orthodox Jewish girl. She proudly does the family's grocery shopping, the weekly Shabbos cooking, and even looks after her two younger brothers. When her closest friend, Esti, is suddenly put on a plane to attend boarding school in Las Vegas after kissing boys and breaking the laws of kashrut, Yoyo feels blindsided, depressed, and betrayed. She misses sharing absolutely everything with her best friend and only confidant. While she's volunteering with Jewish Hunger Relief, Yoyo is paired for meal delivery with Mickey, who has a white dad and a Korean and white mom who's a rabbi at a Reform synagogue. Through her, Yoyo is introduced to different ways of being Jewish. She soon decides to get the filter on her smartphone removed and turns to TikTok for comfort. As she attempts to navigate her sheltered upbringing on the outskirts of Philadelphia and the intoxicating world of social media, Yoyo confronts new situations and difficult decisions. Through her new friendship and a budding forbidden romance with Shua, her friend Chani's older brother, Yoyo discovers more about herself and the role she wants to play within her family and the Orthodox Jewish community. The book's well-written short chapters and fast-paced, first-person narrative will keep readers glued to the pages. Yoyo's voice is compelling, and both she and her observant family are portrayed positively and respectfully. Blum's fans won't be disappointed. A kosher coming-of-age story with a bissel of romance.(Fiction. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Prologue Hindsight is supposed to make everything clear. But when I think back, I'm still not sure how much of it was my fault. I'm trying to be easier on myself, so I won't accept all of the blame. But I have to take at least some of it. Because I should have recognized what was happening to Esti. The signs were all there. My father always says it's a slippery slope. That's why strict observance is so important: once you do one non-­observant thing, you've taken a step down the slope, and that leads to more non-observant things, and before you know it you're sliding uncontrollably into a sick world of secular depravity. Or, in Esti's case, you're on a plane to Las Vegas, which I guess is kind of the same thing. I, of all people, should have picked up on the signs. I'm the rabbi's daughter, and I'm expected to set an example, to help guide my peers. But maybe your best friend is a blind spot, like that space alongside a car that the mirror doesn't show. That's why they have those electronic sensing systems on cars. But they don't have those for best friends. There was no Esti-­shaped warning light that flashed when she did stuff she wasn't supposed to. Because it would have gone off when Esti cut her hair short and dyed it purple. It would have gone off when she suggested that we find a basement or parking lot that was "both dark and remote" in which to try marijuana. It would have gone haywire when she kissed Ari Fischer in a field. That one set the whole community abuzz. Everybody was talking about her. My father was calling me into his office on a regular basis, asking me to fix the problem. *** "Ari's tongue is very slippery," Esti explained to me. "I thought it might be more like a cat's tongue, you know? Where it's kind of rough and grippy." We were having this conversation in the street. It was Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest, and we were walking home from our friend Shira's house. Our town is almost all Orthodox, and observant Jews don't drive on the Sabbath. "Why would you think that?" I asked her. "Because, you see, Esti, you also have a human tongue. Is your tongue grippy, like a cat's?" "That's a great point. You know, Yoyo, it's a good thing I keep you around." And she kept talking about Ari, but I tuned it out, because we were supposed to be good Orthodox girls. And that meant that we didn't kiss boys. We didn't talk to boys. We made sure not to be alone in the same room as boys. Suddenly there was a car coming. Esti was wandering into the middle of the road, lost in her thoughts of Ari. As the car blared its horn, I pulled her out of the street onto the sidewalk. "See?" Esti said, coughing at the car's lingering fumes. "We'd all be roadkill if not for you. I'd just be a smear on the pavement without my Yoyo. Do you think Ari would still love my mangled, disfigured corpse? I think he would." "Did you just say . . . 'love' ?" "Yeah," she said casually, almost matter-­of-­fact. "He loves me. And I love him. He's my bashert." That's when my internal alarm system finally went off. I panicked. I scrambled. "No. No. Esti. You can't know that. You can't. Only HaShem knows that." From the Torah, we know lots of the things God wants. He wants us to follow the dietary laws of kashrut and keep kosher. He wants us to do chesed and help others. He wants us to marry Jewish men and raise studious Jewish children. But these are all general things, the things he wants of the Jews, of his people. The Torah doesn't say anything about specific individuals. So we know what God wants of women, but we don't know what he wants from any given woman. The Torah is mum on the subject of what I should have for lunch, and it doesn't say a word about whom Esti Saperstein is supposed to marry. "That's not for you to decide," I said. "That decision is reserved for HaShem." "It doesn't feel like a decision," Esti explained. She kicked a piece of gravel along the sidewalk in front of her. "It just is . Your dad said ." "No, he did not say--­" "He said to think of the coming together with your bashert not as a union but as a reunion , right? You are two half-­souls that have been missing from each other, so HaShem brings you back together." "I know. I know. But who are you to just decide that he's your other half? Just because you feel something?" I dug deep and tried to channel my father's religious wisdom. "Tell me: In the Torah, did Yitzhak and Rivka make textural observations about each other's oral anatomy and fall in love? No . Eliezer, as a messenger of HaShem, arranged their marriage." Esti just shrugged. She shrugged at her best friend. She shrugged at God and his Torah. That's when I knew how bad it was. And I also knew that it was too late. Esti was too far down, and the slope too slippery. "You don't understand. You've probably never had a feeling this . . . powerful," Esti explained. "I had my hand on his face, and I could feel his heartbeat , his pulse , and everything in the world was one big explosion, like a bomb, a big one. It's a good thing we were in a secluded area. Otherwise, there would have been casualties." A few days later, Esti moved to Las Vegas to attend a boarding school. And in those first few surreal days, when Esti was gone, but before the loss of my best friend really hit me, I kept thinking back to that metaphor, the bomb. Because it was a big bomb and there was at least one casualty. Me. Esti exploded my whole life. Excerpted from The Judgment of Yoyo Gold by Isaac Blum All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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