To the untrained eye, the rabbi is far from desirable. He is lofty and unkempt, he is ageing and his congregation is ever diminishing. But to one man, he is the object of obsession. Our narrator adores the rabbi and worships the universe between his legs. But so too does he bristle at being relegated to the peripheries of the rabbi’s life. When they’re apart, he manically contemplates every element of the rabbi’s being: his absent husband; his first (and only) wife and child, both now deceased; his unstable, yet alluring, adopted son. Until, in a bid to help sustain their relationship, our narrator embarks on an increasingly urgent quest to better understand his mercurial lover – one which threatens to upturn the lives of both men.
