My apologies to the publisher. I had thought I indicated that I would not be finishing this book but obviously I didn't.

This book is a journey – through time (1600’s, mid-1900’s and early 2000) and space (Amsterdam, Israel, and London) whose only requirement is that we give ourselves over to the story being told and flow with it.

It was a fortunate event to discover this novel listed at NetGalley under the historical fiction category. It is exactly the type of novel which I seek, offering original and fascinating characters that provide insight into their worlds. Ester Velazquez is a heroine of great courage, daring, brilliant intellect and who represents the scholarly bookend to the novel’s contemporary heroine, Helen Watt. Watt is a 21st century British historian and professor of Jewish Studies who is in the right place at the right time. She and her American male researcher are given the opportunity to transcribe and discover Ester’s 17th century documents. Buried within the narrative are hidden secrets, events that will be interpreted as the two scholars conduct their translations.
As a scribe for a blinded rabbi who’d been tortured in Portugal for his religious devotion, Ester is herself a philosopher and questioner. As the rabbi’s “eyes”, reader and correspondence secretary, her passions move her to question and understand God’s truths and even his existance. She wonders about those other philosophers of her era, Spinoza’s rejection of Judaism and belief in the Hebrew God. And wonders about Sabbatai Zeva’s proclamation to be the Jews’ Messiah and his influence on the Florence Jewish community.
Ester longs to be part of the world of thinking men, to also belong to the philosophical societies and discuss her deepest beliefs and questions. And she rejects a life of comfort and marriage where she risks losing her personal freedom to find her own answers.
The novel is beautifully written, and as expected, a challenging read. Once I hit the half way mark at about page 300 I knew that all efforts to grasp the narrative would be worthwhile. The dialogue in both time periods seems authentic and the language is perfect. I encourage all dedicated readers to spend as much time as necessary to live in these two worlds.
A good example of theme and narrative might be “Slowly she turned the pages of Philosophical Transactions. Like air, like water, such conversation belonged to these men for the taking—while for the sake of her own halting correspondence she must deceive and betray, and labor for each flare of light to read by. And yet here were men parading their hypotheses and conclusions as though thoughts did not need to be clothed, but could walk about in the world naked and fearless. Her envy warred with her wonder over such folly—for should the king die, or should his fondness turn from one style of Christianity to another, these words lettered on the page might loft their authors’ heads on pikes.”
The symbolic side story of Helen’s consideration to make Aliyah in early Israel, herself a Christian, is an interesting and appropriate diversion. Both women must weigh their passions and accept that they will always be outsiders. Ultimately both realize that their curiosity and love of philosophy and history takes priority over the need for romantic companionship.

The Weight of Ink, written by Rachel Kadish is a story within a story. Though the book itself is weighty the plot moves along at a quick pace so the reader never feels dragged down by the volume.

The story is test of love and the ability to understand yourself knowing when and how to accept love otherwise you are left with loneliness. There are many messages in this novel, of understanding yourself, being able to give yourself to someone and not feel you have forsaken your individuality and of being able to accept love.

The story is written across centuries. Helen Watts is a senior professor at the local college in London when she receives a phone call from an former student. He and his wife are renovating an old house and come across some ancient documents that seem to be written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The University Library purchases the papers and as the librarians work to preserve the precious parchment and ink, Helen and her assistant Aaron Levy, an American graduate student begin to translate the letters and other papers. They are working to uncover information about the author and time period of the work. Their discoveries are incredible and they can hardly believe what they have found. They are translating the writings of a 17th century woman, who is recording the Jewish diaspora from the horrific Spanish Inquisition to the Jews in the city of Amsterdam, who escape to the safety of London. We follow the thoughts and correspondence of Ester Velasquez, as she writes about her life in the 17th century, being a woman and a scholar. She has been orphaned and rescued by elderly Rabbi Moseh HaCohen Mendes. He was blinded during the Inquisition and has also escaped to London, where Ester is his scribe, a position unheard of in this time period, who to engage with the brilliant men of her time writes under an assumed pen name. She tries to communicate with the scholars and the shunned including Baruch de Spinoza.

The novel takes the reader back and forth between Helen and Aaron translating the letters and working to figure out who is writing them and what their positions were. They also are working through their own awkward relationship with each other and their individual interpersonal relationships. Both Helen and Aaron are unlucky at love. Helen let the love of her life get away many years ago. Aaron is at risk of loosing at love because he is unsure of his feelings. Across the century, Ester and her friend Mary are also struggling with feelings of love and marriage. Ester has sworn never to fall in love, Mary is anxious to find true love. Mary asks Ester whether she thinks love is real, "I mean", Mary continued slowly, ignoring Ester;s laughter, "do you think love can be made to happen with whichever man our minds choose - so it's a thing a lady may direct as she pleases?" Ester replies, "Outside control, and so folly to seek." Mary disagrees and says that though it is our of her control, love is not folly but good. Ester says, "It's a danger to a woman even to feel love."

Kadish delivers a weighty novel full of intrigue, historical references and a love story with parallels because relationships have so much in common even centuries apart. Following all the characters and conversations can be complicated, but the reward is sweet.

Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink gives us a partnership made in sitcom heaven: Helen Watt is a British gentile historian coming up on retirement age, friendless, unmarried, childless, forged in iron by decades of academic infighting. Aaron Levy is an American Jewish Ph.D. student dithering on a Shakespeare dissertation, unsure of every facet of his identity except for his canny way with women. When Helen stumbles on a trove of potentially valuable documents from 17th century London’s Jewish community, Aaron is sent by his advisor to help her translate and make sense of the find.

Their odd-couple mismatch is rather amusing, even in the early days of their work when neither of them particularly respects the other. But as Helen begins to defrost her exterior and Aaron stops trying to be charming all the time, they realize they’ve made an incredible historical find: evidence of a Jewish woman scribe and philosopher from the time of Spinoza, whose own narrative is interwoven with Helen’s and Aaron’s. Their book-long journey from terse coworkers to true colleagues, united by their investment in the history of this singular woman, is incredibly satisfying, especially for every student who has worried that their professor doesn’t like them.

At first, Aaron’s character feels almost like a parody of the cocksure, self-obsessed graduate student convinced of his own genius -- as if he’s an inside joke for Kadish, perhaps based on someone she went to school with. It’s not easy to care much about Aaron early in the novel, as his first actions include flirting with the married owner of the house where the documents were found and writing an excessively long, smarmy email to an ex-flame explaining the work he’s doing with Helen. Of course, the email also functions as exposition for the reader, since the details of Jewish life in 17th century Europe are not exactly common knowledge, not to mention the minutiae of the relationships between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews during that time, Spinoza’s expulsion from the Jewish community in Amsterdam, and the relative levels of safety and status held by Jews in Portugal versus the Netherlands versus England. It’s perhaps the least painful manner in which Kadish can get all of the necessary background out of the way before digging into the real meat of her story.

And what meat it is. After all, The Weight of Ink is not merely Helen’s and Aaron’s story, set in 2001, but also that of Ester Velasquez, an orphan who writes letters for the blind rabbi who took her in and nourished her intellect, despite protestations that a woman shouldn’t be tutored in religious thinking and philosophy. As a result of having been born in the 17th century, alas, Ester’s days as the rabbi’s hands are numbered, as the Portuguese Jews living in London begin to push her to fulfill her duty to marry and have children, many of whom will likely die in infancy.

While Ester is presented as that rare gem -- a young woman with her own mind who garners grudging respect from some men because she’s stubbornly different --Kadish is careful not to condemn Ester’s eventual acquaintance with Mary, a daughter from a prominent family in the community, for not being excited by knowledge and intellectual debate. They’re both doing the best they can to survive and thrive within their unhappy situations as women in Tudor Europe; Ester by secretly reading the rabbi’s books and, eventually, writing to philosophers (including Spinoza) under a male pen name, and Mary by dolling herself up and dallying with stage actors who only want her money.

While Ester continually proclaims her lack of interest in romance and sex to both Mary and to her eventual suitor, swearing she will never marry, she’s revealed to be a quite a bit hypocritical in that regard, which, frankly, makes her more endearing and realistic. But when the plague hits London, shattering any veneer of stability, Ester has to figure out how to survive in the face of disease, and how to maintain her faith when confronted with angry Londoners looking to blame the city’s Jews for their troubles.

As Helen and Aaron translate and digest more and more of her story -- told in secretive autobiographical writings written on copies of the rabbi’s correspondences -- it’s clear that they become emotionally attached to Ester’s eventual triumph over the sheer impossibility of her situation, albeit in different ways. It’s perhaps unwise for historians to become so invested in their research subject managing a to have a happy ending, but it’s hard not to appreciate how Kadish fashions Ester almost as a merging of the two disparate threads that are Helen and Aaron’s lives. Helen sees in Ester a reflection of her own self-imposed isolation and love of learning for its own sake and clings to this research as one last hurrah in her academic career before she retires and becomes nothing more than a memory in her history department.

Meanwhile, Aaron finds himself relating to Ester’s own questioning and unsureness of the Jewish doctrines both have been taught all their lives, and to how Ester chafes at the expectations of those around her. Ester’s community wants her to marry and live the life of a traditional Jewish wife, while Aaron slowly becomes conscious of the pressures placed on him to play a certain role -- whether it’s his rabbi father expecting him to be more pious, the aforementioned ex-flame who sees through his womanizing bullshit, or even Helen, who sees in him a reminder of the Jewish lover she left behind decades ago in Israel.

The key difference between Ester and Aaron, though, is that Ester knows who she is, while Aaron is terrified because he doesn’t know who he is, or who he will become. In the end, this research is in many ways all that Helen and Aaron have that is real, concrete, and meaningful, and so naturally, they hang their hopes on Ester’s chance at living a fulfilling life, and as the academic competitiveness merely touched upon in the beginning of the novel rears its ugly head, Kadish makes reading about people reading about history captivating and thrilling.

The Weight of Ink is a shining example of historical fiction’s best qualities: the combining of real-life events with imagination and emotion to create a story that has real “weight” and resonance. While the plot can get convoluted at times as it jumps from the 21st to the 17th century to a detour to the 20th century where we learn why Helen studies Jewish history, it’s absolutely worth following Helen, Aaron, and Ester on their journeys to self-discovery and fulfillment.

Fabulous book. Highly recommend. Great book club pick

Loved it

Thank you netgalley.com for the advanced copy of The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish in return for my honest review.

From reading the reviews of others I know that I am in the minority with my rating of The Weight of Ink. No one is more surprised than I that I didn't like it more. I expected to. I was anxious to read it, and even chose to read it in the summer when I had the time to savor the story. This is not an easy read. it requires concentration and focus. The book is over 500 pages and it moved very slowly for me. Reading is not always meant to be easy. I recognize that fact and I appreciate that it may take work to muscle through a complicated and intense subject-matter. It simply turned out to be a book that I wanted to like, but I didn't, not really.

I take the blame for my feelings about this book. There is no doubt that the novel is well-developed, well-researched and well-written. Oddly, I liked the modern story more than the historical one,which is unusual for me, but despite my preference, I learned a great deal from the historical period presented. There was so much going on in the story that I am sure that with all that I learned I missed quite a bit more. It was very difficult for me to connect to any of the characters; they were all so flawed, and not necessarily in an endearing way. To the the author's credit though, I feel that I came to know the characters despite not having a real affection for any them.

That being said, I understand the rave reviews. There are readers that are going to devour this historical fiction. I wish that I had been one of them. I am disappointed that I wasn't.

I had extensive notes for my review but my file was corrupted and reloading wouldnt retrieve the notes. SIGH. So this will be shorter than usual with no pinpointing of what I actually loved and disliked with the prose.

The book was written in a format I quite enjoy--dual timelines. There's London/Richmond in the 1650s/60s and 2000 London/Richmond. Also [briefly] Lisbon and Amsterdam for the earlier time period.]

The earlier story was far more interesting--consider the premise. Ester Velasquez, an orphaned emigrant from Amsterdam, becomes a scribe for the blind Rabbi HaCoen who moves to England after Cromwell lifts the ban on Jews. A female scholar is an anomaly since women are not supposed to be learned. Ester signs the Rabi's correspondence Aleph. Of course, there is more to her story/background. The gradual piecing together of Ester's story forms the mystery which is the heart and lifeblood of the book.

Helen Watt, a Gentile historian on Judaica with Parkinson’s, is on the brink of retirement. She is called in to review a cache of letters/documents written in Portuguese, Hebrew, and Latin that are uncovered in a home awaiting conversion to an art gallery. She recruits Aaron Levy, a postgraduate student, to help her with the translations. The heart of the book is the letters. How did they get to Richmond? Who is Aleph? What is her story [when they piece together that she is a female] and so much more that is going on with her correspondence --including letters to Spinoza [from her and not the Rabbi] and the Rabbi's household--especially Rivka. BUT--simultaneously not enough and too much!

Helen in Israel in the 1950s falls in love with Dror, a Holocaust survivor. Meh. Aaron' in 2000 and his brief romance with Marisa--so what?! In fact, I found the “love scenes” romance/flat—the weakest part of the novel and the prose in these instances often a detractor.

This book was waaaay too long. In fact, I slogged through most of it and even the older story--which was far more interesting -- dragged.; it was just too much.

Nonetheless, I found this book admirable in the depth of research that Kadish undertook.

I received this ARC from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

I just couldn't get into this story. Maybe I'll try to read it again at a later date.

Abandoned at 20%, no rating.

I really enjoyed this passionate story that takes place in England and Israel throughout several time periods with thought provoking connections.

An intense and well written novel, tying together two stories of two very different times. After the Inquisition, many Portuguese Jews fled to Amsterdam. In London after leaving Amsterdam, a blind Rabbi brings Ester, after a fire takes her parents. Ester is not typical, yearning for education and of a philosophical mind. In 2000, the Historian Helen Watt finds a treasure trove of writings, and gets help from an American student, Aaron Levy, who is in London working on a dissertation. The relationship that evolves between the brash American and the very stiff upper lip Helen, is unique and meaningful. Although some of the deep philosophical discussions were quite heavy, stick with it. I recommend for those interested in Jewish history.

I was thoroughly drawn into the Weight of Ink. Although the book switches between characters and time periods the transitions are seamless. The content was "heavy" and I needed to pay careful attention to the relationships and philosophies, but I felt enriched by this reading. I will highly recommend this book to my book clubs.

It is hard to do justice to Kadish's brilliant novel in such a short space. In Weight of Ink she intertwines the stories of three main characters to explore such themes as scholarship and the life of the mind, the meaning of love in all its forms, duty or perceived duty and courage, academic game-playing, the role of religion in relationships and in life, religious persecution, and more. Helen, a scholar at the end of her career but offered the opportunity to examine a cache of 17th century papers stumbled upon by a former student who is renovating a newly-inherited house, employs Aaron, a young doctoral student whose arrogant mannerisms are an attempt to cover his lack of confidence not only in his dissertation topic but in nearly all aspects of his life. Together, they discover Ester, scribe to a blind Rabbi living in London who corresponds with controversial contemporary philosophers under a variety of male pseudonyms. And together they discover much more about themselves and about each other. These are the characters through whom Kadish narrates her complex set of stories. Although the book has nearly 600 pages, I wanted to read more. I'm planning a second reading, more slowly this time, to capture the many nuances I'm sure I missed.

From the beginning, it iwas clear that this book was written with integrity, unrushed by the author as she wove it together over time. Writing taken seriously, based on research, fictionalized into art.

This is a long book. Its plot developed through various characters separated by centuries. A scholarly mystery to solve. And the parallel mystery of what is life...unfolding across the pages.

It was a privilege to read and review this book. To experience its richness, the nuance, the fierceness of dedication.

The truism that history repeats itself is even more true in fiction. Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink demonstrates this with three people in three different centuries who face the same choices between love, life, and duty. In the 1650s, Ester Velasquez struggles to find a way to read and write things that are forbidden to her as a Jewish woman. In the 2000s, Aaron Levy wrestles with his academic obligations and his love for a mysterious women who just headed out to a kibbutz. In the 1950s, Helen Watt falls in love with a Holocaust survivor who offers her a seemingly impossible choice. Over and over, the characters ask themselves whether or not they can make the hard choices that might lead to happiness.

in 2001, Helen Watt is called in to evaluate a cache of documents and books written in Portuguese, Hebrew, and Latin. The items belonged to a seventeenth century rabbi who made his home in Richmond, England; he was one of the first rabbis to move back to England when Oliver Cromwell lifted the ban on Jews living in the country. She leaps on the find, hoping to make one last major discovery before Parkinson’s puts a period on her academic career. Aaron Levy is her appointed assistant, which she resents until they learn to work together. As they read and translate, the third character—Ester Velasquez—begins to emerge.

Ester is an impossibility. She is desperate to learn more about philosophy and theology (really anything she can get her hands on), but her religion and community believe that the only proper role for women is wife and mother. She only manages to scribe for the aforementioned rabbi because he is blind and because he taught her when she was a child. Still, Ester wants more. She wants to write to another one of the rabbi’s students: Benedictus de Spinoza. (Spinoza, according to the Jews of the time, was an outcast for his radical ideas about god.) Even with the gentiles, Ester isn’t taken seriously because of her gender.

For all three characters, choice after choice comes up that forces them to examine their goals and who they are. For Ester, the choices revolve around her religion and gender. How far is she willing to go in her quest for learning? Can she survive being an exile like Spinoza? For Helen, the choice in the 1950s was if she could accept a man who bore the weight of history and duty. Would she be willing to share the man she loved with his country? In the 2000s, the question is whether or not she will buck the rules of academic in her race to learn more about Ester before she’s found out. And, for Aaron, the choice is much like one Ester faces later in the book. Will Aaron give up his current situation to follow the possibility of love? There are many further complications for each of the trio but, essentially, their choice is between what they know and an unknown future.

As a bonus for me, The Weight of Ink is also full of Jewish and philosophical history that I devoured. I didn’t find the ins and outs of seventeenth century Jewish life and philosophy heavy going, but I suspect that it’s because I’m a librarian and an academic. Most of this book takes place in libraries. For me, reading about translation and research are not at all boring. For readers who are interested in Jewish characters, history, and philosophy or who just like reading about research, this book will be amazing. It’s clear to me that Kadish did a lot of research to bring Ester’s world to life and I think she’s very good at introducing detail without overloading the book or sounding pedantic.

Unlike most books that move back and forth through time, I was equally interested in all three characters in their different centuries. Each time the perspective changed, I would immediately engage with the new chapter. The parallels between the characters and the choices they face link them all and their personalities put a fresh spin on these decisions. Choosing the possibility of love and happiness over staying put might seem like an easy choice, but each of the characters’ journeys show just how hard it is to make the leap. I was on tenterhooks until the end of the book and their decisions were revealed.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration. It will be released 6 June 2017.

Perfect book to discuss during Women's History Month. The story of a young Jewish woman's life and struggle to learn in a time when women were actively prevented from doing so. Set in England in 1660s just after Jews were allowed to migrate back to London, the story alternates between Ester and modern-day Helen. The determined scholar and the historian both tell their stories of choices and sacrifices easily recognized by both sexes. Great book club book.

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