The Weight of Ink

“What was she doing here across the table from them, then? What had drawn a non-Jewish woman of her generation to this obscure life as a specialist in Jewish studies?”

This quotation occurs early in the novel, when Helen tells Ian and Bridgette that she is not Jewish, and can see that they are surprised. The quotation sets up a key plot point that will drive some of the conflict of the plot: Does Helen’s lack of Jewish identity make her less deserving of studying Jewish history and of telling Ester’s story? The quotation also establishes suspense about Helen’s own backstory, so that the mystery of her past and how she came to be interested in Jewish history becomes a mystery that parallels Ester’s history.

“The even features and pale complexion of a privileged English face, blanched of anything he recognized as emotion.”

This quotation reveals Aaron’s point of view and perspective when he is first getting to know Helen. It reveals that he does not initially like or respect her. Aaron sees Helen as someone who is completely different from him, although he will later become much more aware of the commonalities they share. The quotation reveals that Aaron is somewhat arrogant, and makes assumptions based on his own limited perspective: Helen will later be shown to be passionate and full of complex emotions, but he misreads her cool exterior as being indicative of a lack of depth and feeling.

“We advise you to consider that continuance of her labors as your scribe will deny her any remaining prospect of marriage.”

This quotation occurs in a letter that a member of the Amsterdam Jewish community sends to Rabbi Mendes, expressing disapproval that Ester is working as his scribe. The quotation plays an important role in plot development because it reveals to Helen and Aaron that the scribe who worked for Rabbi Mendes was a woman. This changes their perception, and makes them much more interested in the documents they are studying. The quotation also reveals one of the conflicts that drives the action of the plot: Many people are opposed to Ester studying and writing because she is a woman. As the quotation illustrates, many believe that no one will want to marry Ester due to her scholarly nature.

“She picked up her quill, stained with ink, and dipped it. The thought came to her, unwelcome: ink purchased with blood. The price of her freedom.”

This quotation occurs at a pivotal moment in the historical plot, when Ester begins to work as the scribe to Rabbi Mendes. While Ester feels exhilarated by her newfound freedom and agency, the moment is bittersweet. Ester’s brother, Isaac, was initially supposed to be the scribe, and only his decision to run away, followed by his violent death, gives Ester her life-changing opportunity. The quotation compares two liquids, ink and blood, to show just how vital writing becomes to Ester.

“Never underestimate the passion of a lonely mind.”

Helen speaks this quotation to Aaron when he expresses his confusion about why Ester would risk everything to pursue intellectual discourse and philosophy. As they begin their research, Aaron is initially skeptical about to what extent Ester could have pursued her scholarship. Helen’s rebuke shows that she relates more strongly and immediately to Ester: Throughout their research project, Helen is more consistent in her belief that Ester is an important figure. This quotation hints that Helen may feel a kinship with Ester, and that this may be what drives her almost obsessive commitment to the project, speaking to their shared Love of Learning and Scholarship.

“When my mother and I ran from Lisbon, we ran to save our lives. Not our Jewish lives. Our lives.”

This quotation occurs as Ester thinks back to an argument she overheard between her parents as a young child. In the quotation, Ester’s mother lashes out at her husband, rebuking him for being too conservative and limited in his thinking. Ester’s mother, Constantina, was an unorthodox thinker who challenged many traditional Jewish beliefs and disagreed with social expectations, especially for women. To her, there is no point having resisted attempts to exterminate the Jewish people if freedom and agency are then going to be constricted within the community due to religious and social beliefs.

“There was life in London. There was life in her. And desire. A flame leapt in her, defiant of the bounds in which she’d prisoned it.”

This quotation occurs when Ester first begins to move away from a secluded life of study and begins to explore the city of London, Choosing Risk Over Caution in her decision to see more of the life around her. Like many Jewish people at the time, Ester initially thinks that living quietly and attracting little notice will ensure her safety, but she becomes entranced by the individuals who live bolder and more public lives. The energy that Ester draws from urban life will help to empower her to take risks and make bold choices, such as writing her own letters. The quotation uses the metaphor of a flame igniting to capture Ester’s newfound sense of empowerment, developing the motif of fire, which is present throughout the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“Did you see […] how things changed without change? How it only gets worse—how this trap closes harder each time? Helen, why do you want this in your life?”

This quotation occurs when Helen thinks back to her relationship with Dror in Israel in the 1950s. In the quotation, Dror describes his tragic vision of Jewish history to Helen because he wants her to know what she might be facing if she chooses a life with him. At the time when Helen and Dror have this conversation, it is only a few years after the horrors of the Holocaust, and Dror feels extremely fatalistic about what it means to be Jewish. The quotation shows that Dror is not intending to push Helen away, but that he does need her to be aware of what it means to be Jewish. The tensions in their relationship speak to the Barriers Between Individuals From Different Cultures and Beliefs.

“There’s a hole in you where your heart once was. And in its place, you’ve put history.”

Helen speaks this quotation to Dror when she ends their relationship. She accuses him of being unable to move toward a future because he is fixated on the past instead. Helen also accuses Dror of being skeptical about their future together because she is not Jewish, and cannot fully relate to the pain and trauma he carries with him. Helen later reflects that she was unfair to speak these words to Dror, and that she was lashing out based on her own fears. In the letter she writes to him shortly before her death, Helen alludes back to this comment, but reframes it as an embrace of the Jewish history and a legacy of her love for him.

“Her voice was stopped by a craving. To trust desire as Mary did. To reach for love and call it good.”

This quotation occurs as Ester and Mary spend more time together, often discussing their differing views about love and desire. Even before Mary begins her dalliance with Thomas Farrow, Ester is skeptical about Mary’s bold desire to experience love and attraction. Due to what Ester has been told by her mother, she sees love as a dangerous thing. This quotation shows Ester beginning to change and develop as a character, paving the way for her to eventually fall in love with John and become open to Choosing Risk Over Caution more often.

“This is not a Jewish story. This story, whatever it proves to be, belongs to all of us.”

Helen speaks this quotation to Aaron when the two of them get into an argument about the research project. Aaron challenges whether or not Helen has any right to be working on the papers, especially when no one else has access to the documents. Helen angrily offers this rebuttal, asserting that it is unfair to define Ester’s story as solely a Jewish one. The comment highlights a source of conflict in the novel, and of antagonism between Helen and Aaron.

“Perhaps the sole faculty member who cares more for the past than for his own selfish present.”

Patricia speaks this quotation to Helen, explaining why she has always admired her, and highlighting a moral challenge faced by professional historians. Researchers like Helen, Aaron, and Wilton have significant professional incentives to publish breakthroughs by any means necessary; some of them, however, also feel a moral obligation to display care and compassion as they tell the stories of historical subjects. The quotation also reveals why, even though Helen and Aaron lack some of the resources of the more glamorous research teams, they bring a special skill set to their research project.

“Nature gave a woman not only body but also intelligence, and a wish to employ it. Was it then predetermined that one side of Ester’s nature must suffocate the other?”

This quotation reflects Ester’s distress and emotional agitation after Manuel HaLevy confides his desire to marry her. Ester feels conflicted about avoiding marriage forever, especially since she will have to betray Rabbi Mendes in order to do so. At the same time, the quotation reveals that Ester cannot envision any way in which she could enjoy love, sexuality, and potentially motherhood without being forced to give up her intellectual work. Ester articulates a conflict that has faced women in many different societies and time periods: the struggle to balance both her ambitions and desires.

“He’d wanted Ester’s story to serve up something staggering: some triumphal parade showcasing the very qualities Aaron wished to see in his own reflection. He’d wished Ester to be independent, clever, indomitable, rebellious.”

This quotation occurs after Aaron learns that Ester eventually married, and reveals the disappointment he feels upon learning this news. Aaron is self-aware enough to see that his vision of Ester reflects his own, contemporary values, but he cannot help feeling crushed at the idea that she may have eventually gone on to live an ordinary life. Aaron’s reaction shows how modern historians and readers are often looking to the past for heroes and heroines, not average individuals making compromises in order to survive. Like Ester herself, Aaron has to learn that an ordinary life can be beautiful—and can even conceal the extraordinary within it.

“The greatest act of love—indeed, the only religion she could comprehend—was to speak the truth about the world.”

This quotation occurs as Ester wrestles with feelings of guilt about her decision to deceive Rabbi Mendes. She loves the Rabbi, and feels guilty about lying to him. At the same time, Ester believes that her lying comes in service of a greater truth: the truth that comes with asking probing questions and trying to understand the world around her. The quotation reveals Ester’s emerging values and worldview; as she thinks for herself, she becomes freer to come to her own conclusions about her beliefs, even if they are unconventional, thereby Choosing Risk Over Caution.

“It is the only thing I have feared in this world…that should the Inquisition take me once more, my soul would fail me a second time.”

Rabbi Mendes speaks this quotation to Ester shortly before his death, when he confides that he has always been haunted by his perceived failure to adequately assert his faith when he was tortured during the Inquisition. He has always regretted this, and feared that he might be put in a similar situation and fail again. This quotation shows how many individuals look back on choices and eventually wish that they had chosen differently. It also illustrates the tragic reality that, even while living an exemplary life, Rabbi Mendes has always felt that he failed to live up to his obligation as a Jewish man.

“The sole labor that remained for Aaron then, in these dwindling hours of reading, was to listen. No more, and no less. Which was, as he should have known all along, a historian’s only true charge.”

This quotation occurs as Aaron is coming to the end of the documents. He is trying to accept that, at this point, it looks like no notable discovery is going to emerge. Faced with this disappointing reality, Aaron’s perspective changes, and he is able to approach the documents with greater humility. The quotation shows how Aaron’s thinking has matured due to the time he has spent with Helen, and what he has learned from looking at the documents. While he is still ambitious and excited about the prospect of making important discoveries, he can also accept a quieter role for himself, remaining open to whatever he may find instead of having preconceived notions.

“No one ever mentions that they might have been something other than weak-hearted—that they might in fact have disbelieved the worldview that required their murder.”

Helen speaks this quotation to Aaron as she challenges the traditional view of the two women who hid during the mass suicide at Masada. Helen argues that it can be brave to choose to live at any cost, even if moral compromises might be involved. She uses this argument to contextualize her proposition that Ester might have invented a crisis in Florence in order to create conditions that allowed her to write. Helen sees a thematic connection between the women at Masada and a woman like Ester—both chose to defy tradition and act in morally-ambiguous ways because they wanted the agency to decide their own fate.

“And tried to imagine himself, instead, as he wanted to be: a man who moved cleanly through life, because he understood some essential, elemental thing. A man irreducible, undivided, inseparable from himself. A man who deserved a baby.”

This quotation occurs as Aaron reels from learning that Marisa is pregnant with his child. Aaron is overwhelmed by the news because he does not think that he is mature enough to be a good father. He does not have clear professional ambitions, and he feels conflicted about who he wants to be in the world. However, as a consequence of learning from individuals like Helen, Aaron can envision someone who is consistent and has a deep-rooted sense of who they are. While Aaron is unsure of whether he or not can be such a man, he now knows what he aspires to be.

“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.”

This quotation occurs after Ester learns that Rivka can read, as she reflects on how this knowledge changes her perception of the other woman. Ester had felt entitled to learning and scholarship, even if she knew that it meant Rivka had to work harder around the house. When she realizes that Rivka is not so different from her, Ester has to confront that she is merely lucky—there are likely women everywhere who could have had a Love of Learning and Scholarship just as much as she does, had they just been given the chance.

“How fearsome a thing was love. She’d wasted her life fleeing it.”

This quotation reflects Helen’s thoughts as she muses on her past and how she feels as she approaches the end of her life. Helen now sees that she achieved nothing by rejecting Dror, and that she could not achieve emotional safety by cutting herself off from relationships with others. The language of “fleeing” reveals the extent to which Helen’s choice was driven by fear. Helen only comes to this conclusion years too late, but it still brings her peace to be honest with herself prior to the end of her life.

“She’d been wrong to think the universe cold, and only the human heart driven by desire. The universe was built of naught but desire, and desire was its sole living god.”

This quotation occurs as Ester ponders how her philosophy changed after her brush with death during the plague. Ester sees resilience, survival, and life’s ability to find a way in the face of overwhelming obstacles as the most powerful forces she has encountered; she also feels a new respect for the physical world. The quotation shows the key belief that will go on to animate Ester’s philosophy as she engages with other thinkers, notably Spinoza.

“No people’s thread was separate from any other’s, but everyone’s fate was woven together in this illuminated, love-stricken world. There could be no standing apart.”

This quotation occurs as Helen ponders the possibility that Ester may have been the granddaughter of William Shakespeare. This possibility is meaningful to her because it shows that there is no clear distinction between Jewish history and English history; if this is true, Ester’s story is intertwined with the story of one of the most influential individuals in English culture. As an English person who loves Jewish history, this possibility is profoundly moving and comforting to Helen at the end of her life.