The Weight of Ink

Kadish makes use of a historical event, the Plague of 1665, to add dynamism and drama to her historical storyline. Between 1665 and 1666, London was ravaged by an outbreak of the bubonic plague (the last large-scale outbreak), and a significant percentage of the population died. As depicted in the novel, those who had the means to do so often fled to the countryside, which was less crowded and therefore less prone to mass outbreaks.

At a time when the cause and spread of disease were poorly understood, many interpreted the terrible disease as divine retribution. As a Londoner tells Ester in a matter-of fact way, “the preachers agree ‘tis God’s punishment, of course” (387). Fear and panic also heightened religious and xenophobic tensions, and Kadish depicts how “the rising [death]toll had spread these weeks from parish to parish like a tide—or rather, like a fire” (389). This comment develops the imagery of fire and water present throughout the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs), as well as revealing the impact of uncontrollable physical forces like disease. Disease operates as a force much like desire; it subverts assumptions that individuals can control their fate and operate entirely as rational beings.

Amidst crisis and danger, a number of deaths and revelations occur. Shortly before his death, Rabbi Mendes confides to Ester that he has known all along that she was writing her own ideas and that there was no crisis in Florence. His tacit complicity in her defiant actions adds complexity to his character, showing how he, like many other characters, navigates a world of moral ambiguity. Nonetheless, he urges Ester to compromise her values in order to obtain security: “[L]et your husband be more blind to your doings than was I” (393). Punning on the idea of blindness (while physically blind, Rabbi Mendes is never unaware of anything), he urges Ester to do what she needs to do to survive, even if she needs to lie for the rest of her life.

Alongside the reveal of the Rabbi’s secret, Rivka’s great secret is also revealed: she is literate, and has also known about Ester’s writing all along. Ester’s self-absorbed arrogance is highlighted as it comes to light that the secret she believed she guarded was never secret at all. Moreover, Ester is forced to confront her arrogance in believing that she was somehow special and entitled to privileges that Rivka did not deserve: “Now she saw how thin a divide had separated her from Rivka’s fate. Had Rivka had the gift of just a few years’ more education—had she been tutored in the necessary languages—then she, rather than Ester, might have scribed for the rabbi” (424). This moment is an important reckoning in a novel that tells the story of one anomalous woman: If there are figures like Ester who have been lost to history, there are countless more like Rivka who might well have held comparable desires and aptitudes, including a Love of Learning and Scholarship.

In the terrible aftermath of Mary’s death and Ester’s illness, Rivka and Ester are effectively besieged in the house, surrounded by hostile forces. Their situation mirrors the siege of Masada (See: Symbols & Motifs), and Rivka indeed considers suicide. However, she ultimately decides not to carry out the act: “[S]he shook her head—once, twice—like a merchant ready to sign an agreement, but for one minor point” (460). The language of “one minor point” ironically highlights how most individuals, even when terrified, will choose life over death. Indeed, the morality of this choice becomes a key theme in this part of the novel, ultimately transforming how Ester understands the world.

At various points, characters who choose to fight to survive, even if it means compromising their most essential values, are valorized for being brave and resilient. Helen repeatedly celebrates the women who chose to live at Masada, while Ester refuses to condemn Rabbi Mendes for begging for his life while being tortured during the Inquisition. Faced with the possibility of being able to escape if they convert, Ester feels no moral conflict about making this choice. As she tells Rivka, “A God who would ask this of us can’t be the same as gave [us] our wish to live” (462). Ester’s long history of being exposed to individuals (such as Spinoza and her mother) who challenged theological beliefs, and her own intellectual pursuits, have prepared her to be able to reconcile submitting to conversion. As a result, she saves her own and Rivka’s lives.

All of these events converge to fundamentally change Ester’s view of the world and her philosophical beliefs. While she was previously very cerebral, sexual experience and her brush with death give her a newfound appreciation of the physical world, her own body, and the urgent forces of life driving toward survival and reproduction. Ester comes to see that “the universe was ruled by a force, and the force was life, and life, and life—a pulsing, commanding law of its own” (471). She later goes on to call this life-force “desire” and it becomes the cornerstone of her philosophical investigation. As a character, Ester develops throughout the novel from someone who is rigid in her thinking, fearful of anything she cannot control and committed to a life of the mind, into someone who can see life as vibrant, ungovernable, and intended to be a source of delight. She now understands the worth of Choosing Risk Over Caution in more ways than just intellectual pursuits.

While Helen and Aaron draw closer to understanding the entirety of Ester’s life, they face their own disruptive life events. Aaron learns that he is going to be a father, while Helen realizes that her own decline and death are drawing closer. While Ester’s commitment to purely intellectual philosophy is upended by her encounters with the bodily realities of sex and death, the same realities impact Helen and Aaron, showing that they also cannot remain cloistered from lived realities even as they pursue their scholarly work. The urgency of ending their intellectual quest increases because they are both being pulled inexorably into the biological realities that life both begins and ends.