Swim­ming to Jerusalem is the sto­ry of Bram Good­man; his fam­i­ly, friends, col­leagues, and demons. Born in France, he spent his child­hood in Israel and moved to the Unit­ed States as a teenag­er. After his fresh­man col­lege year he goes back to Israel and enlists in the army with his cousin Yoni. Their ser­vice is unevent­ful until they are sent to the Lebanon bor­der in 1982 and wit­ness the hor­rors of war. After his dis­charge, he finds him­self in Paris — aim­less and dis­il­lu­sioned —where he meets Liz, an Amer­i­can from Ari­zona, and fol­lows her back to the States. Thir­ty years lat­er, with a fam­i­ly and career, Bram uses his irrev­er­ent per­son­al­i­ty and sharp humor to mask the trag­ic events of his past. When Theo, his youngest child, seeks to learn about his her­itage, Bram begins to con­front the past that he has attempt­ed to keep at bay. It is a jour­ney that will take him back, both emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, to a place he thought he could leave behind.