Dr. Morse asks Ruben to join the faculty hiring committee, revealing the candidate is a Jewish historian named Ben-Zion Netanyahu.

Rabbi Edelman's letter of recommendation enthusiastically praises Ben-Zion's academic achievements and defends unexplained gaps in his career record.

A second letter, from a colleague in Jerusalem, warns Ruben that Ben-Zion is confrontational, egotistical, and politically extreme.

Edith's parents arrive in Corbindale for Rosh Hashanah, and Edith's mother Sabine openly criticizes Ruben's home and career.

During Thanksgiving dinner, Ruben's father Alter gets into a heated argument with Judy over the meaning of fairness.

Alter forces open Judy's stuck bedroom door and the doorknob strikes her face, breaking her nose.

Judy is rushed to the hospital after the accident, and Ruben privately suspects she deliberately engineered the injury.

The entire Netanyahu family arrives uninvited at the Blums' home in a battered, borrowed station wagon.

Ben-Zion teaches a trial Bible lesson arguing that Jewish survival under oppression depended on the freedom to interpret scripture.

The faculty hiring committee interviews Ben-Zion about his historical research and presses him hard on his political affiliations.

Tzila cancels the hotel reservation and tells Edith that the entire Netanyahu family will stay at the Blums' house.

Ben-Zion's public lecture argues that Jewish assimilation in America is a falsehood and that American Jews will never be fully American.

The Blums return home to find their new color TV smashed and Iddo asleep in the ruins of a gingerbread house.

Jonathan is discovered upstairs having sex with Judy; he and Benjamin flee the house, with Jonathan running out naked.

Ruben tells the sheriff who drives him home that the Netanyahu family are Turks, not Jews.

Ruben Blum, the sole Jewish professor at a small American university, is asked to help evaluate Ben-Zion Netanyahu for a faculty position, receiving two sharply contradictory letters about the man before the visit begins. A chaotic Thanksgiving incident gives Ruben's daughter Judy the nose surgery she has long wanted, and Ruben suspects she engineered the injury herself. When Ben-Zion arrives with his entire uninvited family, the campus visit — including a provocative Bible lesson, a tense faculty interview, and a lecture attacking American assimilation — forces Ruben to reckon with his own Jewish identity. The evening collapses into chaos when the Netanyahu boys wreck the Blum household and Jonathan is discovered with Judy, sending everyone scrambling into the night. The episode ends with Ruben denying the Netanyahus their Jewish identity to the local sheriff, marking his retreat into his assimilated American life.

The headline events of the Netanyahu visit and its aftermath.

Ruben reflects on being hired as the first and only Jewish professor at Corbin University, always feeling marked as an outsider.

Ruben reads through Ben-Zion's academic essays and corrects the English, realizing the reading is itself a form of self-evaluation.

Levavi's letter reveals that Ben-Zion's family changed their Polish surname Mileikowsky to Netanyahu, meaning God-Given.

Ruben invites both sets of grandparents to Corbindale for Rosh Hashanah, expecting them to decline; only Edith's parents accept.

A tube of nose-shrinking cream explodes in Sabine's suitcase, ruining the new clothes she brought as gifts for Judy.

Judy storms furiously to her room after discovering that her grandmother already knows about her wish to change her nose.

Alter threatens to cut off Judy's nose after she laughs at his warnings about antisemitism and Jewish survival.

Edith cancels all Christmas social obligations to care for Judy; Ruben is left to make excuses for the family alone.

Judy heals from her nose surgery and attends a New Year's Eve dance with her newly transformed profile.

The Netanyahu boys track snow through the Blums' front door while Edith desperately asks the whole family to remove their shoes.

Ben-Zion quotes Yiddish to Dr. Huggles and claims it is an original Hebrew verse from Exodus; Huggles cannot tell the difference.

Ben-Zion explicitly compares Ruben to a medieval Court Jew while walking together after the faculty interview ends.

Ben-Zion asks Ruben to personally confirm that the university will pay his lecture fee before he agrees to speak.

Dr. Morse's written introduction for Ben-Zion's lecture turns out to be just Ben-Zion's cover letter with minor alterations.

The credits reveal that Jonathan was killed in action at Entebbe, Benjamin entered politics, and Iddo became a radiologist.

Before Ben-Zion Netanyahu ever arrives, the Blum household is already in turmoil — competing grandparents, a daughter desperate to alter her nose, and Ruben quietly wrestling with what it means to be Jewish in America. Reading Ben-Zion's academic work convinces Ruben that the upcoming meeting will be a form of personal reckoning. The visit itself produces culture clashes from the first moment, and the faculty's shallow engagement with Ben-Zion exposes the university's assumptions about Jewish identity. Off-stage negotiations over hotel rooms, babysitting arrangements, and lecture fees reveal deeper rifts between Israeli and American Jewish values. The novel closes by tracing the documented fates of the real Netanyahu children, grounding the fiction in verifiable history.

The supporting moments that shaped the Netanyahu visit.

Ruben recalls his old synagogue becoming a church, which becomes his personal metaphor for the assumptions others make about his Jewishness.

Levavi's warning letter closes with a German phrase meaning May we all be judged by strangers, putting Ruben on alert.

Ruben's orthodox parents Alter and Henya arrive for Thanksgiving, sharpening the contrast between devout and secular Jewish identity in the family.

Ruben has a disturbing dream in which Jabotinsky sits in his university office while the whole faculty watches from above and judges him.

Ruben stops playing Santa Claus during the holiday season and discovers he has grown an unkempt beard, feeling like a bedraggled rabbi.

Ben-Zion and Tzila bicker loudly in a mixture of Hebrew and English while their three boys run wild through the Blums' house.

Tzila marvels at the Blums' color TV and disposable diapers, highlighting the stark gap between American and Israeli living standards.

Ruben and Ben-Zion leave for the campus visit together, leaving Tzila and the boys behind with Edith.

Dr. Hillard states during the interview that he views history's purpose as reinforcing government and political institutions.

Ben-Zion argues in the interview that the word revisionism has no fixed meaning and simply takes on its user's agenda.

Edith is found already drinking in the hotel taproom, furious that Tzila commandeered the Blums' home without their permission.

Tzila arranges for Judy to babysit all three Netanyahu boys free of charge while Ben-Zion gives his evening lecture.

After Ben-Zion's lecture, Ruben feels that his suit, his tie, his pipe, and even his own skin all feel like a costume.

Edith tells Ruben after the lecture that she no longer believes in anything at all and finds that emptiness comforting.

Cohen reveals the novel is based on Harold Bloom's personal anecdote; the book ends with a scathing email from the real-life Judy.

From Ruben's childhood memory of a synagogue turned church — his personal symbol for the assumptions everyone makes about his faith — through a cryptic warning letter and a disturbing dream, the novel builds a portrait of a man straining against his own Jewish identity. The arrival of the Netanyahu family shatters the Blums' domestic calm and forces a direct confrontation between Israeli and American definitions of Jewishness. Inside the faculty interview, the purpose of history, the meaning of political labels, and the limits of speaking for an entire people are all argued over, with Ben-Zion exposing the shallowness of American academic assumptions. The evening unravels as Edith discovers how thoroughly Tzila has upended her home, and Ben-Zion's lecture leaves Ruben feeling alienated from his own life. The novel ends with Edith's liberating disbelief, a chaotic confrontation over Jonathan and Judy, and Joshua Cohen's metafictional admission that the entire story is built on a borrowed anecdote.