Adas Library Reviews

A Meeting of Scholars

The Weight of Ink weaves together two tales of scholarly women in London, one set in modern times and the other in the 1660s. In the contemporary story, Helen Watt, an ailing British professor of Jewish history, receives a phone call from a former student about a mysterious cache of old letters discovered under the staircase of his historic home. Helen swiftly ascertains that the letters are written in Hebrew and Portuguese and date from the 17th Century. She hires an American graduate student, Aaron Levy, to help translate and analyze them. Racing to stay ahead of rival historians, this literary detective duo determines that the enigmatic scribe writing the letters is a brilliant young Jewish woman, Ester Velasquez, the ward of a blind rabbi. Ester’s writings illuminate life within the first Jewish community in London established after England lifted its four-century ban against Jews.

In the 17th-Century story, we meet Ester and the blind rabbi; they are immigrants to London from Amsterdam. As the story progresses, Ester feels increasingly trapped by religious and cultural mores and covertly flouts them. She takes on a man’s identity to secretly correspond with innovative thinkers, including Benedict Spinoza, who was excommunicated by the Amsterdam Sephardic Jewish community. Ester’s correspondence enthralls Helen and Aaron as a first-hand report on a Jewish community about which little was known, beyond the disastrous impact of the Great Plague of 1165-66. More personally, Ester’s courage inspires Helen and Aaron to confront unresolved issues in their own lives.