The Weight Of Ink by Rachel Kadish

 

A discovery of unseen documents from the 1660's has been found while renovating a house in London.  Helen Watt, a professor of Jewish history, is called to view them by the owner who is a former student.  When she sees the treasure trove, she does two things.  She arranges for an American graduate student, Aaron Levy, to assist her in translating and studying the document and she persuades her university to buy them rather than let them go to auction.

The papers are the work of a Dutch immigrant, EsterVelasquez.  She has come to live in the house of a famous rabbi along with her brother after their parents were killed.  When her brother is also killed, Ester becomes the rabbi's scribe as he is blind from the results of the Inquisition in Spain.  Having a woman who can read and write is almost unheard of but Ester has a mind that loves the philosophy and religious logic that the rabbi debates in his sermons and his letters with other men around the world.  She has no interest in marrying which would force her to give up her reading and interests of the mind.

Helen can relate as she has also put aside love for the life of the mind.  As a young girl she had gone to Israel where she had a love affair with a Jewish man who wanted to marry her.  But in the end, Helen had turned her back on love and returned to London.  Now she is at the end of her career and this could be her greatest triumph if she can stay healthy long enough to find out all of Ester and the rabbi's secrets.  

Rachel Kadish has used this story to delve into the disparity between the way society viewed men and women, reserving education and matters of the mind for men and consigning women to the kitchen and nursery.  It also explores love and whether there are things more important than having the love of a man in one's life.  I'm not sure I agree with the idea that women must choose between the two and if so, that work is more important than love as I'm lucky enough to live in a time when a woman can have both.  This work is recommended to readers of historical fiction.