It will hardly have escaped your notice that I love historical novels, so to have two novels that not only deal with a genuine historical period, but also with historical research is a win:win.
The two novels also deal with a similar subject, the storage and discovery of documents relating to Jewish history: the genizah. According to Jewish practice and law “do not take the name of the Lord in vain” you cannot destroy written works that have the name of the divinity written upon them, but since most letters, lists and even accounts often start with a salutation along the lines of “with the help of G-d” or similar, great stores of these same documents have turned up, leading to excitement beyond measure in the archivists’ hearts.
One find, more famous than many others, was the discovery of a great cache of such documents in the roof space of a synagogue in Cairo. This is the core of the novel The Last Watchman of Old Cairo. In this novel, Michael David Lukas, weaves a magical tale about the last surviving member of an ancient family who for centuries have guarded the Ibn Ezra synagogue and its treasure: the Ezra Scroll. A mysterious package arrives in Berkeley, California and its recipient becomes involved in a mesmerising adventure, which twists and turns back through his own history and the finding of the genizah in that synagogue.
The historical truth embedded in this novel is the story of two elderly Victorian ladies, twin sisters, whose mission to save these documents from thieves, rescued the bulk of this treasure house of incunabula, shopping lists, letters and accounts for genuine historians. It all started with the sale of a single document which led eventually to the opening up by the proper authorities, of the storage space under the roof of the synagogue.
This is a wonderful story, it has some magical thinking in it but at heart it stems from a respect for history, for lineage and for archivists.
Which is why the second book, The Weight of Ink is also so absorbing. The central tenets of which are entirely fictional, but with an accurate historical background, beautifully and sensitively realised by Rachel Kadish.
This novel swings seamlessly between 2000-2001 and the seventeenth century. In an old house in Richmond upon Thames a cache of papers have been found hidden behind some panelling. An academic, Helen Watts, known to the owner of the house is called in to look at the papers. At a recommendation from an associate she takes with her a Jewish scholar, Aaron Levy.
What they find is an amazing collection of letters from a rabbi, Moseh HaCohen Mendes, to various people with at least some of the responding correspondence. So far, all the characters mentioned are fictional, but the recipients are not. Rabbi Mendes was appointed to lead the revived Jewish community in London after many years of prohibition. The laws have softened and the hidden community is being revived. Rabbi Mendes is blind, an act of desecration by the Spanish authorities, he had fled to Amsterdam and there has taken under his guardianship two orphans, Isaac and Ester Velasquez. From the sage haven of Amsterdam he has moved with his two wards to Creechurch Street, London.
Back in the twenty first century, the documents are being examined by the two historians, translated and studied and discussed. Slowly a picture emerges that is not only astonishing but radical.
Sandwiched between these passages, are the lives of Rabbi Mendes and Ester and the housekeeper, another great character Rivka. Rivka has been devoted to the Rabbi, she is also a refugee from the Spanish, but from Galicia, she maintains a quiet but sturdy presence throughout the novel and it many ways it is through her that we learn a great deal about the dreary domestic life of the times. The endless cooking, washing and cleaning against the general filth and pollution of central London.
The historical scene is set at a turbulent period, Oliver Cromwell has died and his son, Richard, is failing to keep the peace; the Restoration is pending, and when it finally breaks out London changes for everyone, not only for the Jews. The novel covers (roughly) the years between 1657 and 1691, we follow Ester and her struggles with conscience and situation and with her gender. Interesting times!
Truly, this is a magnificent achievement, fascinating, painful, enlightening and wonderfully imagined. The two novel compliment each other and deepen our own understanding.
And if you enjoyed either of these you might enjoy The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. Another novel that encapsulates a true historical event with an embroidered back story. The Sarajevo Haggadah is a real incunabula, a small prayer book designed to be used at the Seder Supper. Every Jewish family would have had one, this one is exceptional because it is bound up with illustrations, similar to those found in a medieval Book of Hours, but unique in a Jewish book.
The people of the book, the term, means all the people whose basis for worship comes from the Middle Eastern story of Abraham, in the context of the novel, it is all the people who handled it in its long and adventurous existence. The Muslim who saved it from destruction during the Siege of Sarajevo, the Christian who saved it from the Nazis and back through history to it Sephardic origins in convivial Spain, before the reign of Isabella II of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, who between them united Spain, swept away centuries of cohabitation with the Muslims and Jews and supported the Spanish Inquisition. It was in this febrile and tormented period that the Haggadah began its journey to Sarajevo.
The characters in this novel are fiction, the historical facts are truthful and based on reliable and genuine research carried out on this precious artifact. Sadly, having survived so many near disasters, the Sarajevo Haggadah is held in a Bosnian Museum, but is not on public display.
