Under pressure from the Elders and the Law, a childless couple must separate after ten years of living together. Isaac, the husband, (played by Ivan Mosjoukine), ends up dying, whereas Sarah realizes – too late – that she is pregnant… The director is clearly sympathetic with Isaac’s brother, Baruch, a young student who represents the values of young, liberated Jewish intellectuals at the beginning of the century. The director, Arkatov, debuted in 1910 with a screenplay for the first Jewish film shot by the Russian subsidiary of Pathé, L’Khaim, the success of which sealed the genre’s fate. He then began directing in 1912, first at Pathé where he chose stories that criticized the traditional way of living. In February 1917, he began making films attacking the conditions imposed on Jews by the empire for the Zionist oriented Odessa company Mizrah, which produced The Life of the Jews in Palestine (1913).