In the middle of December in a small synagogue, a group of thirteen men are sitting around a table. By the window, several children are waiting for the first star to appear in the sky. The first and the thirteenth of the men at the table are strangers. The first is very old, and his eyes shine with brilliance. The thirteenth stares straight ahead with his chin rested in his hands. Several of the men are about to talk, but they feel forbidding in the atmosphere. The wind begins to howl. The first man looks across the table at the thirteenth. The thirteenth seems to sleep, and nobody knows where he is from. He comes to the synagogue every day and reads in a beautiful, bewitching voice. All of a sudden, the first elderly man begins to tell a story. He tells the other men how he grew up in Poland. Coming from a week's trip to Russia, he learned that his wife was to give birth. His wife gave birth to a son, but she died in childbirth. The first thing that came from the child's lips when he was born was a scornful laugh, as he laughed at the mother he had killed. In the years that followed, the old man repeatedly heard the laugh and began to hate his son. He asks the men if they are listening, and eleven of the twelve nod. The other stranger is still sleeping. When the man's son was about to be thirteen, a pogrom broke out in their village. The man was beaten, and heard the laughing of his son. Afterwards, the son had vanished, and nobody knew what happened to him. The man met with a famous rabbi who had once been his teacher. The rabbi told him his son was in America, but that a miracle can also be a tragedy. The old man came to America to search for his son. He has been in America for twenty years, and the sound of his son's laugh still haunts him. The old man reveals that a few hours ago, he passed by the synagogue and heard a haunting laugh in their singing. He says his hopes were in vain, and he can now weep. Then, all of a sudden the thirteenth man throws back his head and opens his eyes and utters an unearthly and taunting laugh. The whole synagogue becomes an uproar, and the old man who told the story closes his eyes and his hands hang limply. Several of the men shout that he is dead, and the children at the window shout that the golden star has come.