Samuel Landau

Getsel, a wandering Purim player, comes to a Galica village and gets a job with Reb Nuchem, the shoemaker. He falls in love with Esther, the shoemaker's daughter, but knows she is in love with a wandering circus player. However, Getzel is content in his work and dreams. Esther's father inherits a fortune and attempts to marry her to a man of his choice, but she flees with Getzel to Warsaw, where he meets and marries the circus player. Getzel returns to the village and is blamed for Esther's disappearance until she shows up and explains what happened. Getzel shoulders his pack and wanders on to another village.

In a Polish shtetl, two young men who have grown up together betrothe their unborn children, ignoring the advice of a mysterious traveler not to pledge the lives of future generations. Soon after, one of them dies, and the wife of the other dies in childbirth. The children grow up in different towns, without ever knowing of the betrothal, but the power of the vow leads them to meet each other when they are marriageable. The young woman, Leah, is promised to another man, but Channon, the son of the father who died, is a practitioner of mysticism, and seeks to win his bride through sorcery.

A young woman poses as a man in a group of klezmer musicians in Poland.