I hope this narrative touches you as it has touched me.

Harry Bernstein, a Jewish writer born in England and settled in America, tells how in his village the main street that run from end to end through it was divide by an Invisible Wall (which is the title of his autobiography), as only Christians lived on one side of it and only Jews on the other. And they never mixed. The only contact took place on the eve of the Sabbath when the Jews needed to light their fire but could not do it as any physical activity was forbidden on the Sabbath since its eve, and so they would call a Christian from the other side of the street to light their fire for them.

Eventually the inevitable happened. A Jewish girl, Lily, sister of the book’s writer, Harry, fell in love with a Christian boy, Arthur, and he with her. First on the sly. Then the parents of both came to know of it and both forbad the match. Lily’s family was poor but they got some relatives in America to send them the ticket for Lily to go there and so to forget about Arthur. The ticket arrived, but on the eve of the voyage when her mother was packing for her and was placing her best dress in her trunk, Lily told her she wanted to wear it as a farewell. Then she asked her brother Harry to accompany her, they went to an office a the other end of the village where Arthur was waiting, also in his best suit. It was the register’s office, and there they got married. 

 Her brother came back home to tell the mother. (Their father was always drunk and oblivious of everything.) His mother uttered a sharp cry and began to tear at her dress. Neighbouring women gathered and restrained her. Then they closed all the windows and hung black drapes on the mirrors as in mourning. As their daughter had married a Gentile she had to be held as dead, and they began the mourning at home. Then the newlywed, Lily and Arthur, arrived. This is how Harry tells the story:

“My sister saw the condition my mother was in, with her head sunk on her chest, and became distraught immediately, fell on her knees before her, took both my mother’s hands in hers  and cried, ‘Mama, what’s the matter? Are you ill? Look at me, Mama. This is Lily, your daughter. I’m not dead, Mama. I’m not dead. Look at me, Mama. I’m not dead, Mama, I’m alive. I’m married and Arthur is my husband now. We love each other. I love you too, Mama. I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to be angry with me. Talk to me. Say something. Oh Mama, Mama. Please, please…’. She burst into tears. She might just as well have been talking to a wall for all the response she got. There was nothing showing on my mother’s face, no sign of recognition, no acknowledgement of the voice, and Lily kept pleading with her, begging her to listen, to say something, and we all sat there numbly, too frightened and too shocked ourselves to be able to do or say anything. There was no response from my mother. Nothing at all. It was as if she had not heard her. She remained silent, with her head bent. Lily kept on pleading until Arthur finally bent down and lifted her up and led her away, and I could hear Lily still crying as they went out into the street and the door had closed after them.”

When, on the next Saturday eve, his mother told Harry to call the Christian woman neighbour to light their fire, she came to her door and shouted among insults: “You can light your own damned fire, dirty Jews! Who killed Christ, anyway?” Harry told her mother, and she was about to come out to fight with the other woman when she remembered the Sabbath had began and it was forbidden to fight. But who was then going to light their fire? After a while, someone knocked at their door. It was another neighbouring Christian woman from the other end of the street who had heard the shouts and she told Harry: “Tell your mother that if she wants I can kindle the fire for you.” Her offer was certainly a help, but that would amount to accepting Lily’s wedding. On the other hand, to remain without fire and without cooking on the Sabbath would be an even greater sin. His mother found a way out: “I have to go out just now, but she can come in to light the fire while I am out. And don’t forget to give to her the shilling we always give for the task.” The neighbour woman came in, lit the fire, and refused the shilling: “Thank you, but it’s been my pleasure to do it.”

Harry visited his sister from time to time, and soon he realised she was pregnant. One day he found that the child had been born. “You’re already an uncle”, his sister told him. On top of it Lily remarks that the baby looked like him when he was small. Harry goes back home and gives his mother the news: “Lily has had a baby and he looks like me.”

“There was a long silence. She must have been going through a great emotional upheaval. The daughter who was supposed to be dead had given birth to a child and that meant she had to be alive herself. How could it be denied? And yet her religion told her that she was dead. I broke the silence saying, ‘Lily told me to tell you that she wants you to come to see her and your grandchild.’
‘She said that?’ my mother whispered and her throat seemed constricted, as if she were having difficulty talking.
‘Yes’, I said.
Then she said something that surprised me. ‘You must go across the street and tell Arthur’s parents that she has had the baby.’
I went running. They knew it already as they had been going to see the couple. Then they told me they wanted to have a birthday party for the whole street, but only if my mother agreed. I went home and told my mother.

My mother stood for a long time saying nothing. She just looked at me. She was utterly confused. A tug of war was taking place within her, between her religion and her heart. How could she agree to celebrate the baby with a party when she had not even seen it yet, when she refused even to acknowledge that the mother of the baby, her daughter, was alive? Then suddenly her mind was made up. ‘Take me to see Lily and her baby’, she said, speaking abruptly, as if in a hurry to get the words out of her mouth before changing her mind. I was only too glad to go.

Arthur received us with surprise and joy and took us upstairs to see Lily. When he came to the door he leaned in and we heard him say, ‘Lily, I’ve got visitors for you and you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.’ He straightened up and moved aside to let us in. My mother went first. I was behind her, conscious of the shock Lily must be feeling. She was in bed, with the baby in its cradle at the side of the bed. Her eyes were riveted on my mother, as were my mother’s on her. There was a brief and breathless halt when neither seemed to know what to do or say. The Lily let out a cry: ‘Mam!’ I heard my mother begin to sob, then their arms went out to one another and they were both together, both weeping. I stood watching, stirred myself by what I was seeing. Once it was over Lily said, ‘Don’t you want to see the baby, Mam?’ She turned her head towards the cradle and smiled. The baby was awake. It looked back at her.
My mother laughed. ‘He knows me already’, she said.
‘Yes, he does.’ Lily laughed too, happily. ‘Would you like to pick him up and hold him, Mam?’
‘Would it be all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’
She had been wanting to do that all along, you could see. She bent over the cradle and took the baby in her arms and held him up close to her, and there was an expression on her face that I had seen before. It was the one we saw when she looked at her own baby, or any one of us, and it was one of deep love.
‘Are you going to have a circumcision ceremony?’ she asked.
Lily must have been dreading this question. It would be the natural thing for my mother to ask. A Jewish child was circumcised when he was eight days old and this made him a Jew. She looked desperately towards the door where Arthur was lolling up against it. He had been saying nothing until now, simply watching and taking it all in. But now, seeing the look Lily gave him, he came forward to her rescue, smiling. ‘My father asked me a similar question. Not quite the same, but very much like it. He wanted to know if we were going to have a christening, a baptism, that is when the minister sprinkles what is supposed to be holy water on the child’s forehead and by that ritual he becomes a Christian. This is followed by a party.’ ‘We could have that, at least’, Lily said. ‘We could have a party for the families.’
‘Arthur’s father told me he wanted a big party for the whole street’, I blurted out, speaking for the first time. Arthur said, ‘It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. What do you think, Lily?’ ‘I’m not so sure about that’, Lily said hesitating. ‘I was thinking of just a private little party for ourselves. I’m not sure all those people on our street would want to come.’ Arthur answered, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. They’d come all right. And there couldn’t be a better way to bring both sides together for once. The more I think of the idea, the more I like it. What about you, Mam? What do you think?’ My mother spoke slowly and again without looking at him. ‘If there can’t be a circumcision then I suppose a party will have to do.’ And I think that settled it.

Soon people from all the houses in the street were on their hands and knees in front of their doorsteps with buckets of water and coloured sandstones to rub on the floor and decorate the pavement in front of their doorstep until, when they were done, it looked like two rainbows with all the different colours running down on either side of the street from top to bottom. And with that there ran a current of excitement through every house. It was only the start of how our street was to be decked out for the party that was to be held on Sunday. They were all coming. There had been no question as to that and then all took a hand in the preparations, some with the decoration, some cooking special dishes, some baking cakes, everybody contributing what the family could manage to the party. Arthur’s parents would supply the beer and my mother would practically empty her small shop to bring the fruit, which was all she could afford.

The weather was just perfect. The sun had begun shining from early morning and the sky was a deep blue. It was a Sunday sky, of course, the mills not working and no smoke coming from their tall stacks to darken it. And since it was early May the air was soft and balmy. It couldn’t have been a better day and yet I noticed there were some people who were slow in coming out of their houses, and when they did come there was a tendency on the part of either side to stick together, the Jews all gathering on one side of the improvised table that run the length of the street, the Christians on the other in the same old way. Then suddenly there was the clop clop of a horse and carriage as it came into the street, and all heads turned towards it and a great shout went up, because this was Lily and Arthur arriving with the baby. Everyone rushed towards it. There was just this one awkward moment as Arthur and Lily were alighting. She had the baby in her arms, and both my mother and Arthur’s mother reached up to take it from her. Lily, still standing on the step, hesitated not knowing which one to give it to. Arthur’s mother solved her dilemma by taking it from her and giving it to my mother, smiling. But she remained close while my mother proudly showed it to others.

The kids were having a great time, running wild on the street around the table, yelling and screaming, wrestling with one another, both Jewish and Christian kids playing together for the first time that I could remember. The gramophone continued to make itself heard over the din, and then came a lively tune that made someone get up and do a clog dance. There was more dancing after that by other people, and more dinking. The woman neighbour that had refused to light the Sabbath fire for us approached my mother, and there was a moment of expectation when she approached my mother, as all knew the confrontation that had taken place a few days before. But she told my mother, ‘I’d like to drink a toast to you.’ And she went on, ‘My good lady, if you want me to do your Sabbath fire just send your Harry out to call me, and I’ll come quick, I promise you. And I tell you something else. You didn’t kill Christ and if anybody says you did he’s a liar.’ This added to the satisfaction my mother felt about the whole day. It was not only that it had brought the two sides of the street together in a bond that would last for quite some time, but it had brought Lily back to her. Lily was a living creature and she had added to her own life with another, and that’s what completed the day for her.

Eventually the street grew quiet. The last of the men had gone in. The last door had banged shut. The lights in all the houses had gone out and the two rows of houses were in darkness, save for the pale greenish light thrown by the gas lamp on the upper corner. It was very still in our house and soon I fell asleep.”

(Harry Bernstein, The Invisible Wall, Arrow  Books, London 2007, p. 288 ff.)