When Margalit Zinati and Ilan Tuma fight, all the villagers know to keep away. This is not just another fight, they are fighting over what is to them the most precious thing on earth: The Key! It is the key to the 2000-year-old Jewish synagogue. A year ago, Margalit’s mother died at the age of 101, leaving her 76-year-old spinster daughter to fend for herself. To add to her misery, Ilan moves to her village, Pekiin, an ancient rural village in the Galille Mountains, claiming to be her successor. Since Margalit and Ilan’s grandfathers were brothers, Ilan believes he has the right to take away Margalit’s lifelong role as the key keeper of Pekiin’s ancient synagogue. Margalit, on the other hand, states she would rather kill herself or give the key to Saddam Hussein than hand the key over to Ilan. As their dispute heats up, a new synagogue begins construction illegally next door to the ancient one. With this new threat to her life-long tradition, Margalit joins forces with her worst rival, Ilan, to defeat their mutual enemy. At a rare moment of ceasefire, Ilan says that his war with Margalit symbolizes the essence of the conflict in the Middle East on a small scale: “when an outside enemy attacks, all Jews, in spite of their domestic disagreements gather and unite. But when that conflict is over, the Jews will eat one another alive and the Arabs will sit on the balcony and laugh to death," he says and laughs bitterly. Margalit and Ilan’s fierce struggle turns “The Key” into a tragic and ironic adage about the ridiculous irrationality of the human urge to fight, and about the inexcusable ease with which we tend to find outside enemies in order to put aside our more important inner problems.