In this family of six grown children is a clan as united in its blood yet scattered wide-like the elder son Charles, hoping to be a Supreme Court Judge; the family beauty and District Attorney Nell with children by different lovers; the art-expert sister Erika-Freddi whose altered nose hasn't kept her from being custodian of their Jewishness; or Zach, artist and manipulator with two wives at home. Over all is their mother, Zipporah-Zoe: infamous in Israel, American academic, born of a "well-to-do" Boston background but not nowadays rich. She is intellectualised, yet bound in memory to all the "embroidery past" of the women in the family, which never quite dies. Zipporah-Zoe is married in an eternally sexual love-match, to a non-Jew and archetypal father. Challenging them is Bert the grandson, who will become ordained as a rabbi yet hang back from the synagogue. Interspersed throughout is the buried history of their most significant Sunday visitor, Lev. He will ultimately bring Debr