Isaac Geldhart is a Holocaust survivor who, overcome by grief at the recent death of his wife, seems determined to run his publishing firm into the ground by printing books that have no hope of financial success. His son Aaron, who also works at the company, grows frustrated with Isaac's emotional decline and attempts to take over the firm. The resulting crisis involves Isaac's other two children, his daughter Sarah and his dying son Martin.
A put-upon Jewish deli owner in Brooklyn dreams of getting out from underneath the thumb of his domineering father and his haughty fashion-model girlfriend by buying his own restaurant in midtown Manhattan.