“Simon says Goodbye to his Foreskin”—a title as straightforward as this comedy’s charm. Twelve-year-old Simon Grünberg approaches his Bar Mitzvah in the midst of his parents’ marital separation. His recently observant Jewish father advocates for his circumcision, seeing the significance of his son’s covenant with God as a non-negotiable rite of passage. His mother, a fiery and headstrong erotica author, finds this appalling and refuses to subject her son to circumcision for the sake of pious rules. Simon, for lack of a better term, is torn.
To complicate matters, Simon’s new Rabbi, Rebecca (Catherine De Léan), is a warm, beautiful, intelligent woman—and he’s not the only one who notices. With well-meaning strategic help from his buddies Ben and Clemens, Simon sets off to win her heart before his father can. When an especially intimate tactic (that drew groans of all kinds from its North American Premiere audience) becomes public fodder for a private feud, Simon considers more drastic measures. His desperation to attract a first love twenty years his senior drives him to bond with God on his own terms.