The Weight of Ink

The main narrative begins in November 2000, in London. Helen Watt, a British historian who specializes in 17th-century Jewish history, receives a phone call requesting that she come to Richmond to look at some documents that have been uncovered in a historical home dating back to the 1600s. The home belongs to Ian and Bridgette Easton, who inherited it from Bridgette’s aunt. They plan to remodel the home, but when renovations began, the contractors uncovered a cache of old documents. Since Ian once took a class with Helen, he asks her to come and look at them.

Helen briefly looks at the documents, which are written in a combination of Hebrew and Portuguese. She outlines a plan to Ian and Bridgette: She would like to spend approximately three days reviewing the documents, so that she can submit a proposal for the university where she works to purchase them. Since the documents are fragile, Helen will complete her assessment at the house, rather than moving them. Ian and Bridgette readily agree; they want the papers gone so that they can continue their renovations.

Helen calls a colleague named Darcy to request help. Darcy is supervising a young American PhD student named Aaron Levy, and suggests that Aaron can help Helen with her new project. Aaron’s thesis focuses on researching possible connections between Shakespeare and the Jewish community in Elizabethan London. Helen does not have much respect for this topic, since “if the reigning lords of the field had been unable to find anything solid, what was the likelihood that an American postgraduate would be able to do so?” (20).

When Aaron and Helen meet, he reminds her of someone she knew a long time ago, a man named Dror. Helen tries to convey to him the significance of the documents and the delicacy of the situation while the acquisition process is occurring. Helen has already gleaned that the documents are significant: The first one she saw is a letter from Rabbi HaCoen Mendes to another rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel. Helen knows that her project of reviewing the documents is unconventional: a more formal appraisal will be required before the documents can be purchased, and since she is 64 and will be required to retire in less than a year, she has no need to have a breakthrough in her career. Nonetheless, Aaron agrees to help her.

This chapter contains the letter that Helen referenced in the previous chapter. In November 1657, Rabbi HaCoen Mendes had recently arrived in London, and wrote to another rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel. Mendes offers his consolations on the death of ben Israel’s son; because of this death, ben Israel had to leave London shortly before Mendes arrived. Mendes expresses his optimistic hopes that “this land will yet provide a safe home for the persecuted of our people” (27).

Mendes is blind as a result of torture he experienced during the Spanish Inquisition as a young boy. Therefore, whenever he writes letters or other documents, he dictates them to a scribe. After escaping from the Inquisition, Mendes had a safe life as a respected leader within the Jewish community in Amsterdam. However, he was invited by his nephew, Diego da Costa Mendes, to come to London. He decided to do so in order to contribute his learning to the Jewish community in London. Mendes mentions that he lives with a housekeeper and two young orphans, a brother and a sister. He adopted the orphans after the death of their parents in Amsterdam, and brought them with him to London.

Aaron and Helen drive to Richmond to begin reviewing the documents. Aaron is confused by Helen’s project, and wonders if he made a mistake by agreeing to help. However, Aaron is moved by the sight of documents that have lain hidden for centuries: “[I]t was as though someone had reached through the centuries with a message: Here it is. I left this for you” (35). Many of the documents are very fragile, but it is quickly clear that the cache is a significant find. Aaron also gradually observes that Helen gets tremors, and deduces that she needs his help because she does not trust herself to handle fragile and delicate documents alone.

Helen provides additional historical context to Aaron. Rabbi HaCoen Mendes is a little-known historical figure, so these findings are new and significant. Mendes was born in Portugal, was tortured and blinded during the Inquisition, and eventually fled to Amsterdam. In 1657, as an elderly man, he moved to London, where he lived until his death. He worked to help reestablish an active Jewish community in London, writing on a variety of theological and philosophical topics, as well as corresponding with other Jewish scholars. Since he was blind, all of his writings were transcribed by someone; Helen points out that the documents are marked with a small letter from the Hebrew alphabet, indicating the initial of the scribe’s name. Aaron is curious to learn more about the identity of whoever transcribed the Rabbi’s letters.

Later that night, Aaron writes an email to a woman named Marisa. Marisa and Aaron had a brief romantic relationship before she left London to travel to Israel, and he often thinks about her longingly. He eagerly tells her about his new project helping Helen review the documents, although he refers to Helen as “an utter bitch, a Brit of the ice-in-her-veins variety” (42). In his email, Aaron provides historical exposition: Jews were officially expelled from England in the 1290s, leading to centuries in which there was virtually no visible Jewish presence in England. There was a strong Jewish presence in Spain and Portugal, but during the 16th and 17th centuries, Jews were persecuted and tortured there. Many of them ended up fleeing to Amsterdam, which was relatively tolerant. The expatriate community of Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam, however, ended up being quite doctrinally rigid and insular; for example, the philosopher Spinoza (a Dutch born Jew) was excommunicated from the Jewish community in 1656 due to his philosophical writings, which challenged Jewish beliefs.

In the 1650s, Menasseh ben Israel, a prominent member of the Dutch Jewish community, became interested in the idea of establishing a Jewish community in England. During this time, England was being ruled as a Commonwealth, largely under the control of Oliver Cromwell (King Charles I had been executed in 1649, and the monarchy would not be restored until 1660). Cromwell was amenable to the idea of allowing Jews to openly live in England and cautiously supported a Jewish community being present in London. Menasseh ben Israel lived in London from 1655 to 1657, but grew frustrated with the lack of assertiveness he witnessed in the Jewish community there. In 1657 (as referenced in the letter that Helen discovered), Menasseh ben Israel went back to Amsterdam upon the death of his son, and ended up dying there himself shortly afterward. Thus, the discovery of letters from Rabbi HaCoen Mendes offers a window into a precarious and little-documented period in English Jewish history.

This chapter features a brief letter (dated November 1657) from Rabbi HaCoen Mendes to Menasseh ben Israel, referencing the same events that Aaron described in his email. Mendes has learned that ben Israel has fallen ill, and expresses his hope for a recovery, since “the spark of your learning is still needed by the people” (50).

It is now the second day of Helen and Aaron’s project. They sit together in Richmond, reviewing the documents. Aaron translates the documents and transcribes them. As he reviews a copy of a sermon that Mendes delivered upon the death of Menasseh ben Israel, Aaron thinks about his own identity as a Jewish man and the son of a rabbi. He sometimes feels conflicted about how “he’d quietly turned his back on the version of manhood he’d been groomed for. And in the place of religion and all that went with it […] he’d set history” (55). Aaron also notices that in his sermon, Mendes encourages his congregation to study, think, and avoid being drawn in by false promises—this may be an example of early caution towards individuals who would claim to be the Messiah.

When Helen consults Aaron about what he has found, the two of them argue with one another. However, Aaron reports a useful finding: the one known text written by Mendes (a pamphlet published after his death) was dedicated to someone named Benjamin HaLevy. Since they have also uncovered that the house was originally owned by a Jewish family named HaLevy in the 1600s, this seems to explain how documents associated with the Mendes household got from their original location in central London to Richmond: If Benjamin HaLevy knew Rabbi Mendes, he may have preserved Mendes’s writings in his own home. There is now only one more day remaining in which Helen and Aaron have unlimited access to the documents, before official appraisers come from Sotheby’s to begin to determine a price for the documents.

The narrative shifts to October 1657, as a ship sails across the English Channel, bound for London.

The narrative returns to November 2000. Helen is continuing to look through the cache of documents, but her time is almost up. It seems likely that the university where she works is going to purchase the documents. Helen reads through a new letter, this one addressed to Rabbi HaCoen Mendes (rather than written by him). The letter is written by a member of the Jewish community in Amsterdam. The writer references that Mendes has a young woman with the last name of Velasquez working for him as a scribe. The author of the letter disapproves of a young woman reading and writing, implying that her activities as a scribe will make her undesirable as a future wife. He urges Mendes to hire someone else to be his scribe instead.

Helen immediately tells Aaron the information she has learned: The rabbi’s scribe was a woman. This discovery astonishes Helen, leading her to observe “the flurry of her own heart, like something long silent abruptly waking to argue its innocence” (66).

In November 1657, Ester Velasquez is living in London, in the household of Rabbi Mendes. Her brother Isaac is supposed to be acting as the rabbi’s scribe, but he has vanished from the household. Ester goes to the docks to look for her brother, but when she finds him, Isaac refuses to return. He is no longer interested in working for the rabbi. Ester thinks back to their childhood growing up in Amsterdam; Isaac was always stubborn and rebellious. She and Isaac bonded with Rabbi Mendes, who was known to be tolerant and open to new ideas. However, after Isaac accidentally caused the fire in which both of their parents were killed, he became bitter and alienated. Isaac tells Ester that he is never going to return to the rabbi’s house, but urges her to try to make something of her life. He tells his sister, “[Y]ou’re like a coin made out of stone instead of metal […] something strange, but sound too” (74).

Ester returns sadly to the Rabbi’s house. She spends much of her time helping their housekeeper, Rivka, with the domestic labor of the household. Ester thinks longingly of her more privileged life in Amsterdam, where she had been given the rare opportunity to learn and study. When Rabbi Mendes realizes that Isaac has not returned, he asks Ester to transcribe a letter while he dictates. He tells her that Rivka can hire someone to help with the housework; Rivka is frugal, and decides to do all of the work herself instead. Ester is ambivalent about her new opportunity, especially after she learns that Isaac was killed in a fight shortly after running away.

The narrative shifts to November 2000 and Aaron’s point of view. While ostensibly transcribing documents, Aaron furtively reads an email from Marisa, who is living in Israel and studying Hebrew. He thinks back to how they met when they took the same Hebrew language class at a London university. Like him, Marisa is American. At first, Marisa mistrusted him, but eventually she gave him a chance. The two of them slept together only once before Marisa left for Israel. They have been carrying on an ambivalent correspondence, since Marisa still finds him somewhat spoiled and naïve.

Aaron’s reverie is interrupted when Helen tells him what she has discovered: The scribe working for Rabbi Mendes was a woman. Aaron is initially not overly impressed, pointing out that the scribe probably only worked for a short time before getting married and returning to a more traditional life. As he argues, “I doubt there’s much of a trail to follow” (96). After they both return to work, Aaron slips off to explore the rest of the house. He stumbles upon Bridgette in one of the bedrooms; she and Aaron have been discreetly flirting throughout the days he has spent at the house.

Aaron returns to where Helen is working. She has checked through some of the documents dated after the letter that referenced a woman working as the rabbi’s scribe. The documents continue to be transcribed in the same handwriting, confirming that the female scribe was active for at least six months. Helen has also uncovered something even more shocking: In a 1660 letter sent from a scholar in Amsterdam to Rabbi Mendes, there is a small note in the margin in the handwriting of the scribe. The note quotes from the philosopher Spinoza, offering a rebuttal to a theological claim made in the letter.

This note is important because in 1660, Spinoza had not yet published his philosophical works. In order to be familiar with his arguments, either the rabbi, the scribe, or both would have had to have known him personally. This is possible, since Spinoza was a member of the Amsterdam Jewish community before being excommunicated for his radical ideas. Before Helen and Aaron can discuss the implications of these new possibilities, the assessor arrives. In light of the discovery of the connection to Spinoza, the papers are now at risk of being purchased by another institution or a private collector. To Aaron’s surprise, Helen calmly leaves the house, turning over the documents to the assessor.

After they leave, Aaron confronts Helen with his fears that, depending on who purchases the documents, the two of them may never have access to them again. Helen points out that the assessor may not notice the reference to Spinoza, but admits that if this connection is revealed, the price may rise too high for her university to be able to afford them. Aaron wonders why any member of the Jewish community would have engaged with Spinoza’s ideas after he had been excommunicated, but Helen points out that there have always been individuals who have thought for themselves.