If All the Seas Were Ink
Page 27
Even so, I could not have told you where my life was heading, and it wasn’t just because I had one broken foot. I did not know if I would ever advance in my job, or fall in love again, or become a mother, or stay in Israel. All the big questions were still unanswered. Indeed, part of the reason I began learning daf yomi in the first place was as an attempt to shore up against a terrifying future in which nothing seemed certain except that I was getting older. By the time I finished the cycle, I’d be thirty-five. This seemed terribly old to my twenty-seven-year-old self. If I hadn’t had children by then, I thought, then surely I never would. And if I hadn’t reached a satisfying place in my career, I thought, then surely it was all over for me professionally. All future Yom Kippur observances would be full of regret at missed opportunities, and I would never be able to forgive myself.
Returning to Yoma for the second time, after seven Yom Kippur holidays have elapsed in the interim, I see it all in a very different light. The night before Yom Kippur the young priests were responsible for ensuring that the high priest did not fall asleep, lest he have a seminal emission and become impure. If he started to drift off, they would beat with their middle fingers and tell him to stand up and then lie himself down on the cold floor so as to jolt himself awake (19b). These priests were also charged with determining exactly when the sun rose on Yom Kippur morning by looking out at the sky in the direction of Hebron, at which point they would announce “Barkai”—the sun is up (28a)!
This is not unlike how Matan spends his early mornings. Daniel taught him that he is not allowed to wake up until the sun rises, and we leave his shade open a crack at night so that he can make this determination for himself. Then he bounds into our room in his furry one-piece pajamas and announces, “Sun is up! Time to play! Get up, Ima!” Before I can listen for the morning traffic on Hebron Road or even open my eyes, he is beating his fingers on a puzzle box, encouraging me to come help him. No sooner have I gotten out of bed than I hear the girls clamoring for attention in their cribs, eager for me to come in and take them out. The rest of the morning unfolds in a tired blur of diaper changing, nursing, dressing the girls in their pink (Liav) and purple (Tagel) outfits, and reheating the French toast that I fried in a pan the night before, first dipping leftover challah in egg and milk and then scooping in some cinnamon with my middle three fingers.
These days I have significant doubts and insecurities about how I spend each “today.” I wish I could say that when I drop off the kids at gan, I forget about them until pickup. But in fact I continue to think about them as I edit and translate books in my office across the street. My work is stimulating and challenging, but I would not say that I have discovered my true calling in life or that I am engaged in divine service. From the moment the high priest immerses himself in the ritual bath for the first time on Yom Kippur morning until the people of Israel accompany him to his home at the end of the day, the Talmud details every single step he takes. As such, tractate Yoma is a model for what it means for all our steps to be directed toward the service of heaven. In this sense I have a long way to go.
On the other hand (and I do not take my two hands for granted), while I can’t say I’m satisfied with how I spend each and every “today,” many of the larger questions of “someday” seem to have resolved themselves. The Talmud speaks in Yoma of the lotteries conducted to assign the various priestly duties, and there is no doubt in my mind that when I married Daniel, I won big time. I could not imagine a kinder, wiser, more loving life partner, even if I rarely have time to tell him that anymore. Our children are beautiful and beaming, though not a day passes when I don’t worry about the one who refuses to feed himself or the one who still hasn’t learned to walk. From the back window of our home in Jerusalem we can see the Temple Mount where the high priests once performed the Yom Kippur service. If given the opportunity to enter the Holy of Holies and offer only a short prayer, as the high priest was instructed on Yom Kippur (52b), I would use those precious moments to thank God for my many blessings.
It took two cycles of daf yomi, but I feel that I have finally learned the lesson of this tractate, namely that Yoma is about the convergence of both meanings of hayom. It is about that day when “today” is “the day,” the most important day on the Jewish calendar. But it is also about realizing that this convergence happens every day. Our lives at this moment are not merely prelude to a future someday, but this is it, Barkai, the sun is up, Ima! No sooner does this realization dawn on me than I get out of bed, extend my arms to embrace my son, and step forward into the rest of my life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Talmud (Berachot 54b) teaches that there are four types of people who are obligated to bring a Korban Todah, an offering of thanksgiving—one who walks through the desert, one who is healed from sickness, one who is released from prison, and one who goes down to the sea. The Babylonian Talmud is often compared to a sea because of its vastness and depth, and so after over a decade of daily Talmud study, I count myself among the seafarers duty-bound to offer thanks.
For putting the wind in my sails, I am indebted to my beloved agent, Deborah Harris, my devoted editor, Elisabeth Dyssegaard, and to Laura Apperson and Alan Bradshaw at St. Martin’s Press.
For staying my course and offering feedback on early drafts of this manuscript, I thank Rebecca Bardach, Ilana Blumberg, George Eltman, Misha Feigenson, Rachel Furst, Rabbi David Golinkin, Miriam Goldstein, Debbie Greniman, Debra Kaplan, Ayelet Libson, Peggy Samuels, Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Paola Tartakoff, Ron Wolfson, and especially Tammy Hepps and Jason Rogoff. Thanks, too, for the longstanding support of Susan Weidman Schneider and Naomi Danis at Lilith magazine, always a favorite port of call.
For helping me navigate the journey, I am deeply grateful to my parents, Neil and Alisa Rubin Kurshan, my siblings, Naamit, Ariella, and Eytan, and their spouses and children.
To my co-captain, Daniel Feldman, and to our children, Matan, Liav, Tagel and Shalvi—may we merit to immerse ourselves in words of Torah for many years to come.
NOTES
Introduction: One Day Wiser
1. Biblical translations are my own, but heavily influenced by the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003).
2. Yehudah Marks, “It’s Question Time at Daf Yomi Kollel: Jews from around the world can get instant answers—in English—to their questions on Gemara, halachah, and many other areas of Jewish interest,” Hamodia 24 (May 2012), pp. A30-31.
ROSH HASHANAH—The Book of Life
1. Sándor Ferenczi, Further Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psychoanalysis, translated by Jane Isabel Suttie and others (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1927), pp. 174–77. Quoted in Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 10.
2. Pinchas H. Peli, On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik (New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 2000), pp. 97-98.
3. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim (New York, Schocken Books, 1991), p. 219.
TAANIT—Two by Two
1. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), p. 71.
MEGILLAH—Who Knows?
1. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied” in Collected Poems (New York: Harper Perennial, 2011), p. 562.
YEVAMOT—Lentils in My Pot
1. D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (New York: Bantam, 1983), p. 30.
2. Ibid., p. 68.
KETUBOT—I Am a Jewish Man
1. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Boston: Mariner Books, 1989), pp. 27–28.
2. Ibid., 44.
3. Ibid., 43.
4. Ibid.
5. Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, translated by Nicholas de Lange (Boston: Mariner Books, 2005), pp. 24–25.
6. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, p. 8.
SOTAH—A Still Unravished Bride
1. Billy Co
llins, “Taking Off Emily Dickenson’s Clothes,” in Picnic, Lightning (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), p. 74.
2. Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet (New York: HarperOne, 1984), p. 211.
KIDUSHIN—Toward a Theory of Romantic Love
1. Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds (New York: Avon, 1979), front matter.
2. Kenneth Koch, “To You” in The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch (New York: Knopf, 2006), p. 80.
3. Robert Graves, “Love without Hope” in The Complete Poems (New York: Penguin, 2003), p. 227.
4. Jack Gilbert, “Waiting and Finding” in The Dance Most of All (New York: Knopf, 2003), p. 15.
BAVA KAMA / BAVA METZIA / BAVA BATRA—Suspended in a Miracle
1. Edward Hirsch, “Dates” in The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), p. 185.
2. Walt Whitman, “A Noiseless Patient Spider” in The Complete Works of Walt Whitman (Wordsworth Editions, 1998), p. 333.
3. Eliza Griswold, “Tigers” in Wideawake Field (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p. 39.
4. William Matthews, “Misgivings” in Search Party: Collected Poems (Boston: Mariner Books, 2005), p. 306.
SANHEDRIN—Another Lifetime
1. Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Eros Turannos” in Selected Poems (New York: Penguin, 1997), pp. 91-92.
AVODAH ZARAH / HORAYOT—Frost at Midnight
1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Frost at Midnight” in The Complete Poems (New York: Penguin, 1997), pp. 231–233.
BECHOROT / ERCHIN / TEMURAH / KERITOT / MEILAH / TAMID / MIDDOT / KINNIM—Poets & Gatekeepers
1. Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” in New and Selected Poems, vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), p. 94.
BERACHOT—Writing About Prayer Is Easier Than Praying
1. Leah Goldberg, “Teach Me, O God” in Poems, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1986), p. 154. See also “Poems of the Journey’s End” in Selected Poetry and Drama, trans. Rachel Tzvia Black (New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2005), p. 97.
2. Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning” in The Collected Poems (New York: Vintage, 2015), p. 71.
3. Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments (New York: Anchor, 2008), p. 116.
4. Stevens, “Sunday Morning,” p. 73.
SHABBAT / ERUVIN—A Pregnant Pause
1. Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses” in The Works of Lord Alfred Tennyson (New York: Wordsworth Editions, 1998), p. 162.
PESACHIM—Take Two
1. Robert Hayden, Collected Poems, ed. Frederick Glaysher (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985), p. 41.
Praise for If All the Seas Were Ink
“If All the Seas Were Ink is such a moving memoir. I was taken by the perfect balance Ilana Kurshan achieved between revealing her own story while describing her daily study of the Talmud. Her portrait of everyday life in Jerusalem enriches her recounting of connecting to centuries of intellectual curiosity and conversing with bygone generations. How wonderful to explore this great volume with such a sensitive and thoughtful guide.”
—SUSAN ISAACS, author of Long Time No See
“In this deeply personal and often hilarious story, Kurshan shows us how the Talmud’s thousands of strange and demanding pages, read at one page a day for seven years, become a conversation about how best to live one’s life in an imperfect world. Kurshan awakens us to our imperfect world’s hidden magnificence—and to the power of literature to inspire human resilience. A stunning, gorgeous memoir.”
—DARA HORN, author of The World to Come
“If All the Seas Were Ink is a book about passion of many varieties—romantic passion, religious passion, aesthetic passion, but above all else, passion for knowledge. The word scholarship is too tame to do justice to Kurshan’s wild passion for the written word, whether the word is found on a page of Talmud or in a sonnet of Wordsworth. The blend of her loves makes for a rich and fascinating life, which makes for a rich and fascinating book.”
—REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN, author of Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away
“With this memoir, Ilana Kurshan enters the exclusive club of daf yomi learners, a club that was, for generations, restricted to men. With sincerity, humor, and insight, she invites readers into her experience of studying Talmud as a young woman in Jerusalem. Hers is a stunningly original voice in the world of Torah and the world of literature. Go run and read this book.”
—RUTH CALDERON, author of A Bride for One Night
“Kurshan’s beautiful prose weaves the trials and tribulations of her personal seven-year journey together with the Talmud texts she’s learning. I applaud, and am awed, by this moving and remarkable memoir.”
—MAGGIE ANTON, author of Rashi’s Daughters
“An intimate and eloquent portrait of a young woman’s passionate loves and fears … Kurshan writes as a woman of (as she puts it) ‘Dickensonian sensibilities:’ clinging to her privacy while exposing her vulnerability, seeking the resonances between her mind, soul and body, and revealing an acutely sensitive intelligence, a wry self-awareness, and an active sense of the absurd … Highly recommended.”
—AVIVAH ZORNBERG, author of The Murmuring Deep
“When a woman as incredibly well-read as Ilana Kurshan commits herself to studying the Talmud daily for seven-and-a-half years, the results are mind-expanding, both for her and for readers of If All the Seas Were Ink. An utterly original book about the Talmud, long time students of Jewish texts will be reminded of precious Talmudic passages they had forgotten, and newcomers will gain a sense of how much wisdom there is in this ancient, but very vibrant, text.”
—RABBI JOSEPH TELUSHKIN, author of Jewish Literacy, Rebbe, and A Code of Jewish Ethics
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ILANA KURSHAN is a graduate of Harvard and has a Master’s in English literature from Cambridge. She has worked in literary publishing both in New York and in Jerusalem, as a translator and foreign rights agent and as the books editor of Lilith magazine. Her writing has appeared in Tablet, Lilith, Hadassah, The Forward, Kveller, The World Jewish Digest, Nashim, and The Jewish Week. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and four children. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Author’s Note
Introduction: One Day Wiser
A Note on the Talmud
I. THE ORDER OF FESTIVALS
YOMA—Alone in Jerusalem
SUKKAH / BEITZAH—Temporary Homes
ROSH HASHANAH—The Book of Life
TAANIT—Two by Two
MEGILLAH—Who Knows?
MOED KATAN—Trapdoor Days
HAGIGAH—Torah from the Heavens
II. THE ORDER OF WOMEN
YEVAMOT—Lentils in My Pot
KETUBOT—I Am a Jewish Man
NEDARIM / NAZIR—Ascetic Aesthetics
SOTAH—A Still Unravished Bride
GITTIN—Writing Divorce
KIDUSHIN—Toward a Theory of Romantic Love
III. THE ORDER OF DAMAGES
BAVA KAMA / BAVA METZIA / BAVA BATRA—Suspended in a Miracle
SANHEDRIN—Another Lifetime
MAKKOT / SHEVUOT—Sarah Ivreinu
AVODAH ZARAH / HORAYOT—Frost at Midnight
IV. THE ORDER OF HOLINESS
ZEVAHIM / MENAHOT / HULLIN—Holy Eating
BECHOROT / ERCHIN / TEMURAH / KERITOT / MEILAH / TAMID / MIDD
OT / KINNIM—Poets & Gatekeepers
V. THE ORDER OF PURITY
NIDDAH—A Folded Notebook
VI. THE ORDER OF SEEDS
BERACHOT—Writing About Prayer Is Easier Than Praying
VII. THE ORDER OF FESTIVALS (AGAIN)
SHABBAT / ERUVIN—A Pregnant Pause
PESACHIM—Take Two
SHEKALIM—Weaving the Talmudic Tapestry
YOMA—Encore
Acknowledgments
Notes
Praise for If All the Seas Were Ink
About the Author
Copyright
IF ALL THE SEAS WERE INK. Copyright © 2017 by Ilana Kurshan. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Grateful acknowledgment to Hadassah, Nashim, the World Jewish Digest, and Lilith magazine—independent, Jewish & frankly feminist—where excerpts from this book originally appeared in variant form.
Cover photographs: paper © Paul Taylor / Getty Images; pages © P Deliss / Getty Images
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