Atalia is a 40-year-old widow who lost her husband in the Six-Day War and lives on a kibbutz with her adolescent daughter. Lonely and feeling outcast, she enters into a forbidden affair with her daughter's classmate, Matti, an idealistic 19-year-old rejected by the army.

A group of friends at a Jerusalem retirement home build a machine for self-euthanasia in order to help their terminally ill friend. When rumors of the machine begin to spread, more and more people ask for their help, and the friends are faced with an emotional dilemma