‘But your grandfather was, forgive me, and his fathers before him. Did they hand down myths and lies, father to son, generation to generation? Your father, peace upon him, may have departed from tradition as many Jews did when they moved to the city and into the twentieth century. But this was an aberration. After Hitler, many who survived are coming back to Torah. This is the only truth we possess. Come, learn it a while, then go. What do you have to lose?’

Nothing, thought Dovidl. Nothing of value, beyond world fame and more money than he could spend in six lifetimes.

‘Nothing much,’ he told Spielman.

‘It may be a good thing that he should stay indoors for another week,’ said the Rebbe, ‘until the beard is thick and black and no policeman or informer will recognise him on the street.’ In another week, thought Dovidl, he would not know himself in the mirror.

The Rebbe’s concern, Spielman confirmed privately, was not so much for the fugitive’s safety as for the welfare of certain of his Hassidim whose passports and livelihoods were not, as he put it, ‘strictly kosher’. Many had arrived in Britain on false papers. They made a living by shifting untaxed diamonds between the great cutting and trading centres of Antwerp, Johannesburg, Tel Aviv and Manhattan’s 47th Street. As survivors, they did what was needed to eat and live. When desperate, they resorted to fraud and theft, justifying the acts as needful and non-violent. No bones were broken; none stole more than he required for subsistence; none worked more than was minimally necessary to provide food, clothing and a roof over his family’s heads.

Work was incidental to the Medzhiners’ lives. These Old Believers lived from one Sabbath to the next, rushing to market on Friday mornings, then to the ritual bath, the mikve, and finally home to change into a golden capota and fur shtreiml hat. All week long they scrimped and denied themselves luxury. On Friday night the table was decked with delicacies, the silverware shone in candlelight, the Song of Songs was chanted, eyes sparkled and husbands and wives renewed their marriages in an erotic compact with the holy Sabbath. Relieved of mortal stresses, they came together in mutual harmony and cosmic unity.

From Friday sunset to the counting of three stars on Saturday night, mundanity was suspended. No kettle was boiled in a Medzhiner kitchen, no light-switch flicked, letter opened, telephone answered or doorbell rung; no object was carried outside the house, even in a pocket; nothing was allowed to disturb the unearthliness of the Sabbath. And when, on Saturday night, the silver kiddush cup overflowed with sweet red wine and a blessing bade farewell to the beloved Sabbath, a spicebox was sniffed to restore men and women to wakefulness, as if from a dead faint.