The film follows the family and the spiritual quests upon which they journey, in large part because of Saul: Miriam's attempt to make herself whole, Aaron's religious uncertainty, and Eliza's desire to be closer to her father.

Miriam lives a secret life throughout her entire marriage to Saul, trying to fulfill the religious idea she learned from him, tikkun olam, or "repairing the world" and "reuniting its shards."

In momentary flashbacks by Miriam, we glimpse a scene of a crashed car with shattered glass, apparently the basis of an underlying hurt she has been suffering since childhood, perhaps the death of her parents.

Saul's son, Aaron, grows unsure of the Judaism foisted on him by his father, and in trying to find a faith he personally believes in, he becomes a Hare Krishna after meeting a woman named Chali in the park.

Saul's obsession with his daughter's gift and the opportunities it presents to him consume him to the point that he is callously ignorant of the collapse of his family around him — his son's interest in Hinduism, which soon comes between him and his father, and his wife's psychological problems suddenly thrust upon him.

In the final scene, Eliza, on the verge of winning the national spelling bee, and now empowered with the ability to heal her family, deliberately misspells the word origami, thereby losing the competition.

But family healing is implied in the final scene in which Eliza purposely loses the National Spelling Bee, a sacrifice drawing upon the spiritual connection she made the night before.