Alexandr Davidowich Berman once sewed costumes at the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. Now weary and in his twilight years, this Jewish tailor has the heart of a hero. And he is ever alert to anti-Semitism. When called out of retirement to repair tsarist clothing for a traveling exhibition, he makes a startling discovery. It sets him on an extensive trail throughout Russia and on a seemingly impossible crusade.

In the lining of an old jacket he has discovered a tiny scroll ("the world's smallest Torah") written by a nameless Jew during the time of Nicholas I. Secretly sewn there by some other Jewish tailor, it tells of a lonely father's heartache over losing his son in the Tsar's army.

After repairing and sabotaging the clothing on Lenin's corpse, Berman conceives a grand design that pivots on this story of immemorial grief. Vowing to sew similar scrolls of Jewish biography into historical costumes throughout the Soviet Union, he dragoons an elderly glassblower named Simon Moscovich Zorin to be his companion. Recreating a vivid and magical picture of Jewry over many turbulent centuries, they crisscross the Soviet Union together on a fantastic, comical sojourn.

It culminates in Moscow on a fateful day in 1991.