Joshua Mendes misses his best friend Isaac, who has moved to Boston. Joshua's Papa is importing chocolate beans to the American Colonies, showing cafe owners how to make hot chocolate now that the tea tax has made tea too expensive to drink. When Papa travels to Boston, Joshua joins him. Together, they help Isaac's family open a chocolate house, while the people of Boston demonstrate against British tea taxation. Set against the backdrop of Hanukkah and the American fight for independence, this is a story of friendship, freedom, and a love of chocolate. End notes provide background about the Boston Tea Party, a brief explanation of the holiday of Hanukkah, and a description of America's first Jews, predominantly settlers from Spain and Portugal who came to escape religious persecution and to find religious freedom and economic opportunity. Includes recipes for Colonial-style hot chocolate and bunuelos.

Mayer Aaron Levi lives in a small village. Like his fellow Jews, Mayer Aaron studies Torah and goes to the synagogue three times a day. Unlike everybody else, he also owns a lemon tree. When the lemons are ripe his wife Raizel brews her special lemonade, chills it and puts it in jars so that Mayer Aaron can make extra money for the family by selling it in the town square. Even though Raizel is very possessive about the lemons, Mayer Aaron realises that they have more than enough. While he finds a way to secretly share the extra lemons with the village's poor people, Raizel thinks a thief is stealing them. The plot thickens as Raizel sits outside guarding the family property, only to find that her husband has a lesson he wants to hand down from generation to generation.