Since flunking out of rabbinical school, Benzy has lived in the basement of his parents’ brownstone in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Benzy’s scientist mother and accountant father had grown up secular, but have since devoted themselves to practicing Hasidic Judaism. At a bar mitzvah, Benzy speaks with his cousin, Berush, who offers Benzy a job at a camera store in tourist-packed Manhattan. Benzy begins working at the store, eight hours a day, six days a week, alongside colleagues who are similarly “Hasidim, but chilled out.” After work, the employees usually hit up a downtown bar and vent over beers. One particularly late night, while waiting at the subway platform, Benzy sees that the next train won’t arrive for another 30 minutes. Drunk and hungry, Benzy buys a bag of potato chips, which, though technically kosher, contains dairy lacking Jewish supervision. Benzy feels guilty about eating the chips, but rationalizes that, if he were to vomit on the train, he would be making all Hasidic Jewish people look bad. After a few bites, Benzy notices a severed finger in the bag of chips—aimed straight up as if it were pointing at him. He wonders if the finger is God’s punishment for his buying non-kosher chips. Benzy thinks about who he can tell—the police, his coworkers—but chooses not to share what he has seen with anyone. He does, however, carry the bag around with him. Benzy’s coworkers badger him, noticing a change in his behavior, but Benzy replies that he is thinking about a page of Gemara (the second part of the Talmud). That night, he doesn’t go out drinking and returns home to study Gemara with his father. Benzy, having attended rabbinical school, teaches his father, selecting a passage: “When a man loses his limb, it is buried alongside the man when one day he expires.” Benzy gradually becomes withdrawn at work, forgoing bar nights; his coworkers assume he has grown more religious. One day, after work, Benzy decides to visit the New Jersey factory in which the chips were made. Assumed to be the rabbi assigned to determine the product’s kosher status, he is let into the factory without questioning. Benzy talks with the plant manager and asks about the finger; she assures him that the matter has been taken care of, but allows him to speak with Joby, the worker whose finger it is. Benzy tells Joby that it was an accident and that he doesn’t have to worry about it, then returns Joby’s finger to him. Benzy travels home, newly inspired to read the stories of the Gemara.