Hoping to get it from the library in time to participate
Looking forward to this - will be interesting to compare to People of the Book.
Yay! Picked up my copy at the library yesterday. It looks very interesting. The librarian was fascinated when I mentioned our online book club. 
I started reading—the writing is very engaging. I had trouble putting it down last night and ended up going to sleep after 1am!
I’m only about a quarter of the way into it and only have it from my library for another week. I’ve spent about as much time Googling things as I have reading.
It is fascinating and I’m about 1/4 of the way through as well.
I agree with @tutumom2001 – LOTS to look up. The author has done an amazing job of getting her history right.
I was hoping to join in on the discussion but so far I’m still on the wait list at the library. Hopefully it will come in soon.
Yay—just finished the book.
Confession 1: Evidently, I’ve been reading a lot of fluff. Many instances needed a “go back one page (or two)” to get my bearings before proceeding.
Confession 2: I googled beauty patches.
Liked it.
Rachel Kadish, in 2 minutes, shows some of the materials she used in the research for this book.
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/30-days-30-authors-rachel-kadish
Wow, @author, Rachel looks so very young! Thanks for a very informative and fascinating video!
This is quite a book. I"m almost done with my second reading, and – it’s quite a book.
Thanks to Mary and others–would never have read this book otherwise. I stayed up past 1am two nights to finish the book. It was very engrossing and well written, IMHO.
Yay, was just able to renew this book so will have it awhile in August to refer to during discussion.
It’s a pretty long book, but I am loving it. Looking forward to the discussion!
Good morning! I’m looking forward to starting our discussion! But first…technical difficulties. With this new format, how do I bold, italicize, quote text, etc.? None of the old codes are working for me. When I post, it just shows the **, *,
[quote]
, etc. as text.
For now, I’ll just post without the bells and whistles. As the Bard said, “Make use of time; let not advantage slip”! So let’s begin…
It’s August 1st! Welcome to our discussion of The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish. I loved this book, although I have to admit that a portion of it was over my head. Probably a large portion, if I’m to be honest. For starters, I didn’t even know who Spinoza was. The first half of the book moved slowly — or to be accurate, I moved slowly as I tried to get a sense of the era and the history. But the beautifully drawn characters and the intricate plotting won the day, and I barreled through the second half, quite caught up in the story.
Some things to mull over, if interested:
Discussion Questions
- Describing the impact of his blindness, the rabbi says to Ester, “I came to understand how much of the world was now banned from me—for my hands would never again turn the pages of a book, nor be stained with the sweet, grave weight of ink, a thing I had loved since first memory.”
For the rabbi and for Ester, ink means many things—among them freedom, community, power, and danger. What does the written word mean to you? Is it as powerful today, amid all our forms of media, as it was to the rabbi and to Ester?
- The novel opens with a quote from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71: “Nay, if you read this line, remember not / The hand that writ it”.
Which characters in the novel choose to give anonymously, or without receiving any credit? Would you be willing to have your most meaningful accomplishments remain anonymous or even be attributed to others? In today’s interconnected world, with privacy so hard to achieve, is there anything you would write or say if you knew your words would be anonymous?
- In order to write, Ester betrays the rabbi’s trust. Yet in her final confession Ester says, “Yet I would choose again my very same sin, though it would mean my compunction should wrack me another lifetime and beyond.”
Is Ester’s betrayal of the rabbi’s trust forgivable? When freedom of thought and loyalty argue against each other, which should a person choose?
- John, Manuel, and Alvaro offer Ester very different sorts of love. What does each offer her, and what sacrifice does each require? How might you answer this question for the love between Dror and Helen?
- Both Helen and Ester fear love. How do they wrestle with this fear? Could they have made choices other than the ones they made?
- In what ways did Aaron mature throughout the book?
- Did the motivations of Ester, Helen, and Aaron change as the novel progressed?
- Ester’s life is shaped by the wrenching between the life of the mind and the life of the body. Can a woman today freely choose to combine love, motherhood, and the life of the mind, without unacceptable sacrifices?
- What story do you imagine Dror would tell about his experience with Helen?
- Ester grows up in a community of Portuguese Inquisition refugees who are fiercely focused on ensuring their safety in the “New Jerusalem” of Amsterdam; they place great importance on reviving Jewish learning and they give their harshest punishment to Spinoza for his heretical pronouncements. When Helen goes to Israel, she encounters Holocaust survivors struggling with the legacy of their losses and the need to establish safety in their new home.
In what ways are these communities similar, and in what ways are they different?
- What clues does the author include as to the identity of the true grandfather of the female scribe? Did Lizabeta (Constantina’s mother) make the right choice in refusing to play on his pity and beg him to keep her and her daughter in London?
- After months of chafing at the Patricias’ strict stewardship of the rare manuscript room, Aaron has this epiphany: “and as if his own troubles had given him new ears, Aaron understood that her terseness was love—that all of it was love: the Patricias’ world of meticulous conservation and whispering vigilance and endless policing over f-cking pencils.”
What sorts of love are on display in unexpected ways in The Weight of Ink? In what unexpected ways does love show itself in your own world?
I’m going to start off easy, with love rather than philosophy.
John offers Ester an outlet for her physical desires—as expressed not only through sex, but also nature — his key scenes with Ester involve the sky, the river, the deer, etc. He appreciates Ester’s intellect and her singularity. To be with him, she would have to sacrifice her faith and turn her back on her family and its history. John is no match for Ester; he is too weak. But he’s a good man, and I liked his kind note to Ester later in their lives.
Manual offers Ester security, stability and (potentially) children raised in a faithful Jewish home. He desires Ester’s strength and resiliency. To be with him, she would have to sacrifice her studies — so in a sense, her very being. I wonder what their relationship would have been like if they had married— two strong-willed, stubborn souls. I was sorry to see Manual die “off-screen” with little detail provided (although I know the mystery about that was important to plot development).
Alvaro offers Ester friendship, support, and most importantly, the freedom to write. He needs Ester’s tolerance and understanding. To be with him, she has to sacrifice a physical relationship. But still, there’s love and laughter, so even with the trade-off of celibacy (for her), they have a good life. Neither one has to hide their true character from the other.
I haven’t figured out how the question relates to Helen and Dror, as I didn’t fully understand why she felt she had to walk away from him. What a waste.