Ivan Fox, manager of a small tobacco factory in north London, is reluctantly relocated to Northern Ireland's strife-torn capital. He sees himself as agnostic and assumes that he will be left alone, but the tiny Jewish community welcomes him in with such determination that he is pushed and pressured into embarking on a quest for his own faith.

When the president of Belfast's Jewish community discovers that he has a reluctant Jew on his hands, he doesn't care whether Ivan is lapsed or the Chief Rabbi - it's numbers that count.