[1] His own style showed in the daring turns of his action and characters, with double adultery during the holiest of nights of Judaism, the evening of Yom Kippur (despite being printed in a Jewish family newspaper in 1945).

Unbeknownst to his family, he had met and married his third wife, Rosa Frumetl, in Karlsbad and brought her and her daughter Adele back to Warsaw with him.

He is the son of the rabbi of the rural shtetl Tereshpol Minor and from a young age was considered a child prodigy, learned in the Talmudic commentaries and sure to inherit his grandfather's rabbinical chair.

Through a series of coincidences, Asa Heshel soon ended up meeting Reb Meshulam's son-in-law Abram Shapiro, a gregarious and well-loved but undependable debtor.

Abram Shapiro sets Asa Heshel up to rent a room from a family friend, and takes him to dinner at his brother-in-laws house.

Koppel, Reb Meshulam's bailiff, was made the executor and after finding the key to a safe full of money in the house he stuffs it all in a suitcase and steals it while the old man is still alive.

Years after the end of the Great War and the Soviet Revolution, Asa Heshel finally makes his way back to Warsaw by train.

Despite the initial happiness of their reunion, Asa Heshel's deep and frequent bouts of depression, nihilism, and anger put an early cloud over their relationship.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family deals with the deaths of the older generations and the decline of the Hasidic courts, as well as the slow but steady rise of antisemitism in Poland.

Asa Heshel carries out an affair with a young communist named Barbara, leading to the eventual separation of him and Hadassah, who goes to live in the countryside with Dacha.