The story is set in Jerusalem in the winter of 1959. Shmuel Ash, a sensitive student who has dropped out of university because his father's finances have collapsed, takes a live-in job as a companion to an elderly, incapacitated man, Gershom Wald, who needs someone to argue with. Wald learns from Shmuel that he has stopped working on his thesis, which dealt with Jewish views on Jesus. The conversation between... see more