A Polish rabbi sets out to lead a synagogue in California and must make it through the Wild West to get there.

Gathering with her friends at the local soda fountain each day, Mrs. Bloch tells the story of her son, a former rabbi and now a successful businessman.

When the search for a bone marrow donor needed to save the life a nine-year-old boy in Italy turns up an unlikely result, a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York, the boy's young nurse risks her career, racing against time to help save the child, and uncovers terrible secrets from World War II--secrets that reveal how a Catholic child could have Jewish genes.

"A rabbi, a widower nearing 60, lives with his nubile daughter, a cat, and a parrot in 1930s Algiers. The cat narrates throughout, but the parrot doesn't last long. Annoyed by its squawking, the cat eats it, after which the cat can speak human language (it immediately lies about the parrot, so the rabbi forbids it to talk to his daughter--and, oh, by the way, it could already read), at least until it calls out the name of God, after which it's back...

A skeptical visitor to the village of Nemirov finds out where its rabbi really goes just before the Jewish New Year, when the villagers claim he goes to heaven to speak to God.