He has lost none of his charm, or persuasiveness. I can never trust him again, but his arguments are irrefutable and I have no choice but to play at his tempo. So for the next few hours we exchange family trivia, avoiding contention, as children and grandchildren troop in and out, some replenishing our refreshments tray, others depleting it. The young men sport curly sidelocks and wear shiny capotas. The women wear housecoats and headscarves. The hubbub is constant – doors slamming, kids yelling, water flushing, someone singing – but there is a calm about the house that is absent from my own, a sense of shared contentment and earthly purpose.

Dovidl explains that he has converted the upper floor into a separate flat for his eldest daughter, Pessia, and her husband, a yeshiva student whom he has undertaken to support for five years. They already have three children – ‘The last of my names,’ he smiles – with a fourth on the way.

His progeny regard me with mild curiosity. ‘Iz der choshuvdikke gast a Yid? ’ one of the little kids pipes up, in Yiddish vernacular – is the important guest Jewish? In my own eyes, and Peter Stemp’s, unmistakably. But with head uncovered in the house of devout Jews, I could be a passing Mormon for all the tribal affinity they sense. Dovidl assures them that I have a Jewish heart and that my family saved his life during the terrible war. They look at me again, as if at a museum exhibit, and whisper behind cupped hands. One of the older lads engages me in polite chit-chat in basic English – did I have a good journey? where am I staying? is my hotel comfortable? Dovidl beams patriarchally over his brood.

‘ “A righteous man”,’ I compliment him, ‘ “will flourish like a palm tree, like a cedar in the Lebanon he will rise.” ’

‘ “Plantati in domo Domini ”,’ he replies in near-Vulgate, fresh from Father Jeffries’ class, ‘ “in atriis Dei nostri florebunt. Those who are planted in the House of the Lord will flourish in the courts of our God.” ’

‘ “They will still bear fruit in old age”,’ I reply, nodding at his ample patriarchy, ‘“fat and vigorous they shall be.”’

‘ “ Lehagid ki yoshor Adonoy”,’ pipes up a teenaged son in yeshivist Hebrew. ‘ “Tsuri veloy avlosoh boy.” ’

‘Meaning?’ demands Dovidl.

‘ “To tell”, ’ says the boy, in diffident English, ‘ “that Hashem, our God, is upright. He is my rock, there is no . . . injustice in him.” ’

‘Do they play an instrument?’ I ask the patriarch.

He shakes his shaggy beard. ‘They study Torah, it takes up all their time.’

‘Tateh zol spielen eppes? ’ squeaks a grandchild on his knee.

He beams again, delighted that the Yiddish-raised infant has intuited his way into an English conversation. No, he chides, he will not be playing tonight, for this is a night of reunion.