Isaac Fietlebaum is a fluent speaker of Yiddish and a Talmudic scholar. But he is not your typical Jewish boy. He was born on the planet Hijdor, and he works as a psychiatrist at the student clinic of the Transgalactic Merchant Marine Academy on the backwater planet of Polmod. Fietlebaum is coerced into a drug war over the illegal jorftoss plant that bestows immortality. The conflict leads him across the galaxy, where he fights not only the unusual mental disturbances of aliens, but also a jorftoss killing virus, and a murderous Galactic Intelligence agent, whose immortality depends on his gaining control over the galaxy's last living jorftoss plants. Fietlebaum is driven to defeat this agent, who has kidnapped his grandson. He threatens to kill the boy, Fietlebaum, and the charming schlemiel, Teysoot Motzo, a Janpooran labor leader and hapless crook who accompanies Fietlebaum in his adventures across the galaxy.