The Cafeteria is the poignant 1984 adaptation of a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Set in a cafeteria on the upper west side of Manhattan in the early 1960s, a young Jewish refugee meets another refugee – a famous Yiddish writer (a thinly disguised version of Singer himself). The relationship starts out on a romantic note, but as the writer learns more about his partner, he realizes that although she may have survived the Holocaust physically, she is already spiritually dead.