The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Anti-anti-Semitism

As far as I know the institution of the genizah - a kind of literary mortuary used before the final burial of any document bearing the divine name - is a concept and a practice unique to Judaism. Sometimes, as in Rachel Kadish’s novel, the genizah is abandoned because of persecution or some other disaster, at which point it becomes an historian’s or archaeologists’s potential treasure trove of sacred trash. But the real cultural significance of the contents of the genizah is not the meaning of the correspondence, old liturgical books, sermons, or household ledgers it might contain. Of central concern is the language of these documents. In no other culture is language itself considered sacred*, not simply deserving of respectful disposition but demanding of the rites of demise - or failing that, the kid glove treatment of a museum curator.

The genizah which is the centre of Kadish’s novel is found in the house of the Eastons, a rather unlikeable upper middle-class English couple. These two are not overtly anti-Semitic but harbour an undisguised resentment that such an item was found on their premises (Mrs. Easton in particular knows full well what the thing is, and purposely mispronounces its name, as if it were an offensive smell). Their call for help about what to do with the contents of the genizah is pointedly to an academic acquaintance rather than to the local Jewish community. Their fear is that the local Jews would interfere with their plans for the house. The wisdom of their decision to call in an academic is confirmed when they learn that what they have discovered is of considerable monetary value. The theme of cultural appropriation beyond the mere documents is thereby established early on.

My view is that just as there is subtle anti-Semitism, there can be equally subtle anti-anti-Semitism and that Kadish’s book is a good example of the genre. Calling out the various nuances of prejudice explicitly isn’t usually effective, largely because they can be denied as misinterpretations created by excessive sensitivities. Much more effective, therefore, is to allow the signals of condescension, dismissal, and even hatred emerge through a softer allegorical mode which has a parallel ambiguity and deniability. A store of Jewish cultural treasure hidden in a Gentile household seems to me a rather fruitful way of depicting the reality of Jewish existence, not only in England but throughout Europe. My assessment of the book is made in this light.

There is a sufficient (but certainly not good) reason for the simmering anti-Semitism in The Weight of Ink; and it has been a persistent reason throughout the history of Christian culture: self-definition through the denial of Jewish identity. Christians have always been keen to ensure that they were not those whom their gospels had said crucified Jesus. They insisted on this to the imperial government in Rome, and to their intended converts in Asia Minor. And most crucially to themselves in their later gospels and in their epistolary scripture. They wanted nothing to do with ‘Judaizers,’ around whom they feel (and properly so) illegitimate. But it is two such Judaizers - one a Jew, the other an historian of Judaism - who are admitted to the house as researchers and who disrupt the Eastons’ cultural tranquility.

What is less obvious but more relevant in subsequent history is that Christians also identified themselves by redefining what had previously constituted religion and religious language. Christians might continue to speak the same Koina Greek, Latin, or Aramaic as Jews but they rejected not just the historical interpretations of what had been written and said in these languages, but also the fundamental category of language as a divine gift. For the Eastons the contents of the genizah are an asset to be bought and sold. That is, the language of wisdom, suffering, and history in its letters, sermons, and records is useful rather than revelatory. The language has no impact on the course of the Eastons’ lives. For them it was mere waste paper.

Ironically it was Jesus who articulated the prevailing Jewish attitude toward language. When tempted in the desert, Jesus rebukes the devil that human sustenance includes “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Further in Matthew’s gospel, he is reported to proclaim unambiguously, “For‭ verily‭ I say‭‭ unto you‭, Till‭‭ heaven‭ and‭ earth‭ pass‭‭, one‭ ‭jot‭‭ or‭ one‭ tittle‭ shall in no wise‭ pass‭‭ from‭ the law‭…” (5:18). It is the ‘weight’ of the letters written in the old gall ink in some of the documents of the genizah that literally eats the paper on which it is placed. These letters evaporate, only to be inhaled by those who open the documents, becoming part of them as the dust is assimilated into their bodies in an eternal cycle - language in search of a voice in search of a language to express itself.

The law is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. It is sacred, as Jesus says, in its every detail. It must be revered and obeyed until the end of time. Yet Paul, his avid but unmet disciple, contradicts Jesus, abrogates the Mosaic Law of the Torah, and declares a New Law of Faith (Romans 3: 21-28). For Paul, obedience to the law, and its ethical action, is replaced by something Jesus never mentioned and wouldn’t have understood. What Christians can’t forget (or forgive) is that Jesus was a Jew who knew the importance and the role of not just the law but also the nature of the words through which the law was conveyed. Mrs. Easton is a flirt. She uses words to seduce and get her way. She has arrogant faith, mainly in herself, that her will is law in her house.

The word ‘faith’ was redefined by Paul in order to make his claim credible. Faith was his new form of religion expressed in his new religious language. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures the word faith is synonymous with trust, usually trust in the wisdom and justice of the divine but with no content beyond that. For Paul, Faith is a quantity of a substance one receives from God and proclaims in words provided by Paul. He calls it Grace and preaches the word of faith, which, according to Paul, is not a word at all but a mystical entity, a symbol, which occurs in no other vocabulary, called Christ Crucified. The Eastons’ ancient Jewish house is being ‘re-purposed’ as an art gallery with abstract symbols to be displayed in every room.

Paul transforms faith from trust in the traditions handed down for generations into an intellectualised belief and its tribal acclamation. From this, Paul formulated a command which he claimed replaced all commands of the law: “Believe on the Lord Jesus” (Acts 16:31). Paul, of course, abolishes the sacredness of language along with the law. For his followers, language becomes a tool, largely of propaganda and revenge, against those for whom it remained what it had been, a divine gift through which they were to make their way in the world. Language becomes a kind of ad hoc bricolage justifying the new regime. The incongruous Victorian addition to Eastons’ house are a physical manifestation of the new concept of language.

The ancient Hebrew trust in language is nothing like Paul’s unconditional belief. There is nothing intrinsic in language to believe in at all. Dare I say that a primary principle of Hebrew thought is argument. What that argument is about is most frequently what words mean, as proven by the detailed, seemingly endless, discussions in the Talmudic and Mishnaic commentaries! Quite appropriately therefore, the central mystery of Kadish’s story is the identity and fate of the elusive scribe, self-identified as Aleph, which is also the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The researcher’s argue about Aleph continuously. Appropriately, Aleph, the letter, has no sound; it is an unvoiced preparation for speech.

In fact the entire narrative is really based on complete confidence in Aleph as a person as well as a copyist. The language of the law and Aleph is laconic. It is the silent preparation for further thought. The details must be filled in by imagination. Such imagination is the driving force of the book’s protagonists (who in good Talmudic fashion don’t agree on anything). This is precisely how language must be trusted… and how sacred scripture gets written and rewritten with invented material inspired by the previous writing. The contents of the genizah live even when they appear dead because they provoke diverse interpretations.

In theological terms, the Hebrew language (by implication every language) is iconic, it is meant to point elsewhere, beyond itself - if it is allowed to. In Christianity, language is subservient to faith and quickly turns idolatrous, words are confused with reality, and then form the de facto objects of worship in fragmenting creeds and confessions. Paul’s contradiction of Jesus is paradigmatic for the continuing conflicts within Christian society as well as between Christianity and Judaism. The genizah is also iconic, pointing to yet another important trove in the house with enormous historical significance beyond Judaism, a light to the Gentiles as Isaiah suggested.

So the genizah by its existence is an affront, an offence, an unwanted reminder to a Christian culture which considers something/someone superior to the gift of language and its divine directives. It is what the Christian scriptures, as well as the Eastons, would consider a stumbling block, an impediment to progress in faith. The house had been built by a Jewish merchant but had been subsequently acquired (or probably usurped) by English Christians when protection of Jews was withdrawn by the Crown.

But within it remained this historical core of Judaism that is getting in the way of re-wiring of the place, that is to say, it’s source of power. It is this Jewish core of powerful language which foils the work of the electrician, the plans of the Eastons, and the way in which the house fits into local suburban society. Kadish’s book expands the potential scope of that impediment to confront the global increase in anti-Semitism .

The contents of the Eastons’ genizah are literally haunting because they implicitly abjure and renounce the Pauline discontinuity that is buried in the Eastons’ culture not just in their abode. It is pure human arrogance to believe that anyone can dominate language, even in the name of religion. All of us are subject to it. But this discontinuity is precisely what Paul was selling. Yet it is clear, even to a child, that the source of sin in the world is not the absence of Pauline faith, but the distortion of language to justify our wanting something - wealth, reputation, influence, that is to say, power. There are, of course, no children, no genetic heirs, in the Easton household. The house, its wealth, not its significance, will be passed on but the Pauline discontinuity will be repeated. It will remain without tradition.

Like any allegory worth its salt, The Weight of Ink has a number of sub-themes that swirl around in it, allowing for limitless interpretation. But all these themes - disappointing relationships, religious uncertainty, professional rivalry, misogyny - have their resolution in the fate of the genizah and its contents. Each of the main characters discovers or has revealed to them his or her hidden neuroses, some equivalent to an unacknowledged discontinuity under the stairs. All these, in one way or another, are linguistic in nature - misunderstandings, incomplete explanations or outright lies. A certain maturity is achieved, even in the old, when these are recognised and addressed. Pope Pius XII once famously said that he considered himself a spiritual Semite. Taking him at his word, perhaps that was the first step to address Christianity’s obsessive repression of Judaism. Or was it his form of allegorical misdirection?


* Apologies to adherents of other religions as necessary; but let me explain. Ecclesiastical Latin was never a sacred language but at its best a universal means of conveying the sacred; and at worst an elitist attempt to control discussion about what the sacred meant. Classical Arabic, the language of the sacred Koran, is not itself sacred, simply untranslatable. The English of the King James Bible is not sacred, merely archaic. The ritual Vedic Sanskrit is considered the language of the gods, but, again, not in itself sacred. Some incantations in the Buddhist Pali, are believed to have supernatural powers, but this puts them in the domain of the magical rather than the sacred. And not even Tolkien considered his elvish language of Valarin anything more than a means of facilitating divine gossip.

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