Chassidic Jew Joseph Gillis grapples with the artifice and hypocrisy of Harvard life, decrying the muddle of egoism and lunacy in the academic world even as he succumbs to it.

A man from Vienna has recently become an American citizen and now works as a musician at a Jewish restaurant in New York, where he plays piano in a quintet. When the restaurant is robbed and the man is held hostage along with the restaurant's guests and staff, he must try to survive while maintaining his grip on reality as strange things begin to happen around him.