Spanish Jewish history repeats itself

Two Jewish women who lived hundreds of years apart are the core of Daniella Levy’s debut novel, By Light of Hidden Candles. Contemporary Alma Ben-Ami, from a Sephardi Jewish family, is newly enrolled in a program in Iberian studies at New York University. One of her ancestors is Miriam, who lived some 500 years before.

Alma has an unusually close relationship with her grandmother, with whom she lives in Manhattan. As the novel opens, Alma has just transferred to NYU and has moved in with her.

Helping out in the family Judaica store, she meets Manuel Aguilar, a relatively recent immigrant from Spain, who wanders into the shop and gets roped into schlepping boxes of books. Manuel is also a student in Alma’s Iberian studies program and a relationship between the two begins to grow.

The chemistry between Alma and Manuel is immediately obvious to the reader, even if the pair seems oblivious at first.

Ultimately, both realize that, despite their mutual attraction, their relationship could never become romantic, because Alma is a traditional Jew and Manuel is a Roman Catholic. Their growing romantic tension forms a core theme of By Light of Hidden Candles.

The contemporary story line is told in first-person chapters that alternate between Alma’s perspective and Manuel’s.

Tucked in between the chapters that detail their burgeoning romance is the 500-year-old story of Miriam. The beautiful, pious, 16-year-old Miriam is the only child of spice merchant Abraham de Carmona.

The widower father and his young daughter live in the Jewish Quarter of Lorca, in the southeast of Spain.

Miriam comes of age during the Inquisition, and Levy illustrates the dangers to the Jews of the time through the lives of Miriam and her father. Abraham supplies kosher wine to the Conversos of their region, the Jews who outwardly converted to Christianity but who secretly kept selected Jewish practices.

Miriam is not a fan of her father’s risky actions and, indeed, the wine he provides to Conversos under the watchful eye of the officers of the Inquisition does eventually put their lives in danger.

The Miriam story line, whose chapters appear in a different font, is interspersed with the Alma and Manuel story, so the reader is simultaneously inhabiting past and present. It is not until the final chapter of Miriam story’s that the reader fully understands how the interwoven time lines come together.

Levy gives both of her central female characters the same basic challenge: Both are faced with a choice between a man and God, between a relationship with a non-Jew and remaining true to their Jewish heritage.

Most readers with a cursory knowledge of Jewish history will intuitively understand that Alma and Manuel are going to resolve their challenge long before the solution presents itself. Easily anticipated by most readers, the resolution is the weakest part of the book. It plays out too neatly and ends the dramatic tension a bit too abruptly.

Levy wrote two scenes of incredible coincidences that bring the story lines together and help the book conclude in an otherwise satisfying manner. While Alma and Manuel are making a last-ditch effort to conduct genealogical research in Spain during a semester abroad, they are handed a single fortuitous finding that closes a circle.

The second dramatic turn of events occurs for Manuel after Alma leaves Spain for a family emergency. Manuel unexpectedly meets a distant relative in the cemetery where his maternal grandparents are buried. From there, he learns a piece of his family’s history that will ultimately change everything.

Levy uses a light touch with Alma and Manuel. Their dialogue is romantic-comedy cute and their personalities, especially Alma’s, are endearing. As their relationship develops, it’s easy for the reader to hold out hope that they will find a way to end up together, without either having to compromise on their individual heritage.

Perhaps because she lived in the 15th century, during a time when Jews from the Iberian Peninsula were imperiled, Miriam is a much more serious character.

There’s little humor in her story. In Miriam, Levy presents the reader with a young Jewish woman who has neither mother nor siblings and who lives in a perpetually dangerous time in Jewish history.

She and her father are obviously close, and perhaps that’s what gives her such strength of character. It is her final act, standing seaside, moments before being smuggled out of Spain by non-Jewish benefactors, that reveals her true greatness.

It is also that single act that creates the arc of the entire novel.

The way Levy set up the novel, Alma’s dilemma echoes that of her ancestor Miriam’s. The story succeeds in making the history of 15th-century Iberian Jewry both real and completely relatable. By Light of Hidden Candles is an altogether pleasant read that deftly avoids the heaviness of some historical fiction.

Spanish Jewish history repeats itself

Daniella Levy’s debut novel tells the tale of two young Jewish women who lived 500 years apart