I think this is a great story. The quality of the writing and everything else about this book is worth all the recognition it should get. On top of that, I loved it because I felt it close to my heart for several personal reasons.

This novel has two stories in it connected somewhat and both protagonists in the two stories resemble each other, even though one story has happened in London during the 1660s to the Jewish refugees who escaped from the abuse in the Iberian Peninsula, specifically Portugal, and the other story takes place in 2001 in London.

The 2001 story begins with a couple who renovating their centuries-old inherited house who find some papers and old manuscripts in a closet under the stairs. Thinking the papers may have some worth to them, the couple asks for help from the institution. The job is offered to Helen Watts, a scholar of Jewish history who is about to retire who is the protagonist in the framing story. Helen Watts, a gentile, begins to work with Aaron Levy who is sent by the faculty to help her as she is old and frail. Aaron Levy is the Jewish Ph.D. student working on a Shakespeare thesis and not liking what he comes off with. Both Helen and Levy know Latin, Hebrew, and Portuguese.

The manuscripts are a major find as they contain the letters between the two famous rabbis of the time one in London, the other in Israel and other letters of the famous intellectuals of the time such as Spinoza and household accounts. Most of the documents have the scribe’s name under them but instead of a full name, there is one letter, Aleph, of the Hebrew alphabet. Through the course of the story, Aaron and Helen Watts finally determine that “Aleph” points to Ester.

The other protagonist of 1661 is Ester Velasquez who, together with her brother, is the protégé of Rabbi Mendes who was blinded by the torture of the Inquisition and has managed to take refuge in London. Ester and her brother have lost all the members of their family during the same Portuguese Inquisition. Although the rabbi tries to take on Ester’s brother as his scribe, Ester becomes the one to take on the job as she has a passion for books and learning and has been taught by her father quite a few things although in that time women weren’t educated at all.

Ester, unlike the women of her time, resists marriage, as Helen Watts in 2001 does also. Both women are scholars and they’ve both lost the loves of their lives.

The stories have numerous twists and turns and many theological arguments. The relationships of the main characters are spectacularly explored as well as those of the supporting characters, such as the maid in the Rabbi’s household and his landlords’ family.

To say more on the plot would be giving it away and I don’t even think I could do it justice if I tried to cover everything in it.

The story is told in alternating chapters of the 2001 story and 1660s’ one.

The settings differ from scene to scene in both stories, but the most central ones are the Rabbi’s house in the 1660s and rare manuscript room of the library where Aaron and Helen Watts work.

The prose is clear yet beautiful and the historical letters are especially thought-provoking. Plus, an unimaginable amount of research must have gone into this incredible book.

In short, this novel is inspirational and exciting, and it absorbs the reader with its depth.

seeing how a complicated plot can be constructed to flow with such ease.

everything, the characterization, the construction of the plot, and the logic of the arguments in it.

is Rachel Kadish who has also written the novel Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story. Among her many honors are a Koret Award, a Pushcart Prize, and citations in the 1997 and 2003 editions of The Best American Short Stories.

of the perfect rendition of its story elements and also because of the strength of the two women in it who never give up.

While reading this book, I had to look up quite a few things like philosophers the history of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, Kibbutzes in Israel, etc.

It was a learning experience.

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