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1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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?
4. William, 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?
5. Both Helen and Ester fear love. How do they wrestle with this fear?
Could they have made choices other than the ones they made?
6. In what ways did Aaron mature throughout the book?
7. Did the motivations of Ester, Helen, and Aaron change as the novel
progressed?
8. 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?
9. What story do you imagine Dror would tell about his experience with
Helen?
10. 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?
11. 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?
12. 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?
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