Ben­ji Zeb Is a Rav­en­ous Were­wolf is Deke Moulton’s sec­ond nov­el to com­bine myth­i­cal crea­tures with real-life issues sur­round­ing Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. Ben­ji, a Jew­ish boy who lives on a kib­butz in Wash­ing­ton State, is anx­ious about his upcom­ing bar mitz­vah. Benji’s Torah por­tion will include his name­sake, Jacob’s youngest son. The bib­li­cal Ben­jamin is silent while con­sum­ing his foes, as if he is a ​“rav­en­ous wolf.” Ben­ji Zeb is more ver­bal and def­i­nite­ly less aggres­sive, but he is also a were­wolf who feels con­nect­ed to his famous ancestor.

The pres­sures of reach­ing adult­hood are a chal­lenge for Ben­ji, who strug­gles with anx­i­ety, fam­i­ly issues, and his emerg­ing aware­ness that he is gay. Mar­gin­al­i­ty is an ever-present real­i­ty, as the com­mu­ni­ty sur­round­ing the kib­butz includes both active anti­semites and neigh­bors who are vul­ner­a­ble to believ­ing destruc­tive stereo­types about Jews. As Ben­ji notes, ​“those con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are eas­i­ly dis­proven, but … even peo­ple who don’t know about them still think hurt­ing us is okay because it’s ​‘punch­ing up.’” 

Adding were­wolves to the equa­tion stirs up oth­er kinds of fear and hatred. Moul­ton coun­ters mis­con­cep­tions about were­wolves from the first page, inform­ing read­ers that ​“the myths get a lot of stuff wrong.” For exam­ple, the preva­lent belief that were­wolves are trans­formed under a full moon is con­trary to Jew­ish tra­di­tion, in which the new moon, Rosh Chodesh, is rit­u­al­ly most impor­tant. As for the spe­cif­ic demands on Jew­ish were­wolves, no trans­form­ing between species is allowed on shab­bat, as this would vio­late the prin­ci­ple of makeh bepatish, com­plet­ing a project. 

Benji’s roman­tic feel­ings for Caleb Gao, an Amer­i­can Chi­nese class­mate who has a con­tentious rela­tion­ship with a racist step­fa­ther, sen­si­tizes both boys to what they share in com­mon. In teach­ing Caleb about the fun­da­men­tals of Jew­ish cul­ture, Ben­ji is able to view these tra­di­tions from a fresh per­spec­tive. Obser­vance of Shab­bat becomes both a com­fort­ing rou­tine and a strik­ing depar­ture from the norm. The struc­tured rep­e­ti­tion of prayer ser­vices and the cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion of the par­sha rep­re­sent both equi­lib­ri­um and inno­va­tion. The inte­gra­tion of Hebrew into Benji’s sto­ry is also immer­sive. In addi­tion to words such as shalom and chaver, many oth­er phras­es appear, some­times with­out trans­la­tion. (There is a com­plete glos­sary included.) 

When Velv­el, one of the kibbutz’s old­est mem­bers, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly engages with Ben­ji and Caleb, he teach­es them about the indeli­ble nature of who they are. ​“Human. Wolf. They are all the same. You can nev­er not be you.” Both boys, along with every­one they know, need to learn that for themselves.