These are turbulent times in Spain. Not only are there religious problems within its populace -- city Christians, Islamics, and Jews did not rub shoulders willingly -- but the Inquisition is systematically hunting down the undesirables.
When their small study group is betrayed to the Inquisition, Don Immanuel quickly finds himself transformed into the spiritual pivot of the age, while his daughter falls in love with one of the Inquisition's soldiers. The whole town looks on as this horrible mechanism comes to claim one they have adopted as their own.
Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi uses an all-too-real fictional world in order to demonstrate the basic esoteric principles in action. He shows how, despite all odds, it is tolerance and wisdom, compassion and understanding that come to undermine the efforts of prejudice, fear, ignorance, and hate. Set in a world not entirely unlike our own, The Anointed finds common ground inseemingly irreconcilable religious differences, demonstrating that God's business transcends the human delineations of religion and class.