It is Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish New Year and Day of Judgement - in
Moscow during the Stalinist purges of 1936. In the Lubyanka secret
police prison, senior investigator Grisha Shwartzman masterfully pursues
the rigorous logic and obsessive legalism of the Soviet witch-hunt.
Facing an extraordinary prisoner, Grisha realizes that the Soviet system
he has faithfully served is murderously corrupt and that he himself will
be the next victim - but not an innocent one. In despair, he flees to
his home, where his deranged wife and an unexpected Rosh Hashanah letter
from his father-in-law, the enigmatic Krimsker Rebbe in America, await
him. The Day of Judgement proves to be a startling experience as Grisha,
the once idealistic radical, judges himself, accepts his
responsibilities, and is guided to sublime passion and possible
redemption by his mad wife, who for twenty years has been patiently
awaiting him in a closed wardrobe. In 1942 a train of imprisoned Jews
leaves the Warsaw ghetto for "resettlement in the East." It is Yom
Kippur - the Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish year. In
a crowded cattle car stands a lonely, defeated individual who is ashamed
that he cannot even remember his own name. During the tortuous journey
Yechiel Katzman will overhear a talmudic debate and meet a dull-witted
giant who turns out to be none other than Itzik Dribble, also from
Krimsk. As they arrive in the death camp of Treblinka, Yechiel remembers
not only his name but also the Krimsker Rebbe's prophetic curse that
exiled him from Krimsk forty years earlier. Yet as death approaches,
that curse will prove a blessing.
