HaLapid-Spring Summer 2019

love story, or spend the next few days
arguing loudly in one’s own head
about how these two sophomores
should live their lives in the greater
context of the world.
Either way, the book stays with you,
long after the love story ends.
[Disclosures: I received a copy of this
book in exchange for a fair review.
After this review was written, but
before it was published, my fifth novel
was accepted for publication by the
same publisher.] — Claudia Long
Claudia Hagadus Long is the secretary
for SCJS. She is the author of four
novels, including “The Duel for
Consuelo” and “Chains of Silver,”
about crypto-Jews in Colonial Mexico.
Her next novel, “My Name Means
Remember,” will be published by
Kasva Press in Fall of 2019.
Me’ah Berachot -
Life as a Spanish &
Portuguese Jew
in 17th-Century
Amsterdam
AUTHOR UNKNOWNi
While time
machines
are still
beyond our grasp,
books can
occasionally serve
as an alternate
way to find
ourselves in a
different era and
place. One such
book, which I just procured for a
customer, is Me’ah Berachot, Orden de
Bendiciones, a comprehensive prayer
book in Hebrew and Spanish printed in
Amsterdam in 1687.
This Siddur was intended to be as
comprehensive as possible, with
prayers and rites for all occasions and
holidays of Jewish life. The intended
audience was the Jewish community of
Amsterdam, composed mostly of
former emigrants from Spain and
Portugal. The prayers and instructions
were in Hebrew and Spanish
throughout, and the contents reflect
what life would have been like for
these Jews, living a new life in a new
land, and most of whom had very little
knowledge of Hebrew or Judaism.
Among the more traditional prayers
that would be familiar to any
practicing Jew today, you can find
several which have thankfully become
obsolete. Appearing in the book are
special prayers to recite when
purchasing a slave, and prayers at the
circumcision ceremony of a new slave.
The emigrant’s fear and connection to
those persecuted by the Spanish
Inquisition can be seen from the
several prayers to be said for both
males and females that were to be
burned at the stake by the Inquisitors.
In the prayer book, one can also find
the local recipe for haroset used in the
Haggadah seder,
as well as a full
detailed order of
purification of a
dead body in
preparation for
burial. A prayer
to recite when
one might see
the pillar of salt
(which was the
wife of the
biblical Lot) is found in the book as
well. For the benefit of users, the
measurements of the Amsterdam
mikvah were noted, as well as a calendar
with future dates of Jewish holidays,
measurements for the separation of
challah, and the rules pertaining to
deeming an animal non-kosher.
— Israel Mizrahi
Israel Mizrahi is the owner of a used
bookstore, containing over 180,000
titles, located in Brooklyn, New York.
He is a descendant of ancestors who
fled Spain and went to the Balkans.
The Weight of Ink
By Rachel Kadish
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017
The Weight of
Ink” by
Rachel
Kadish is a deep
and complex
historical novel
that delves into
the heart of the
conflict between
one’s inherent
nature and one’s
obligations to
society. The book works like a
metaphysical coin-flip; one face says
“sacrifice,” and the other says
“survive.” Between these antithetical
poles lies the fate of the crypto-Jew,
either to be consumed by history or to
become history’s documentation.
Like the flipped coin, both faces are
understood, but prediction is impossible.
The discovery of a mid-17th century
genizah [sacred cache] during the 21stcentury
renovation of a 350-year-old
house in London draws two academics,
Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a
love of Jewish history, and Aaron Levy,
an impatient but charming American
history graduate student, to
investigate the papers hidden there.
As the genizah papers are translated,
the story of Ester Velasquez, a young
Sephardic woman and ward of Rabbi
Hacoen Mendes with a hunger for
study and truth, emerges as she
struggles against the strictures of her
time that forbid learning and discourse
to women. Parallel to her story is that of
continues on page 44
38 HaLapid - SPRING / SUMMER 2019 / 5780