If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

About a hundred years ago, Daf Yomi was invented. “The world's oldest book club,” my rabbi called it, before adding sardonically “except the [torah portion of the week]. I'm not totally sure why we need two.” The goal is reading a page of talmud a day. At that breakneck pace, it only takes 7.5 years to complete. I tried it picking up in the middle of last cycle (13) and lasted about a month of dense discussion about where birds would be sacrificed in the temple before giving up. Ilana Kurshan was on the leading edge: this is her autobiography about the 7.5 years of her life doing the 12th daf yomi cycle from ~2005-2013. I wanted to read it because I committed to cycle 14, which began this January. Unlike cycle 13 (and very unlike cycle 12), apparently the idea of progressive daf yomi has ripened. There are facebook groups and slack channels filled with women and heterodox Jews of all strips.

But Ilana Kurshan did it before us. Back when it was shockingly unusual for a non-Orthodox Jew or a woman to do it. Back when there was no framework for how to do it outside of a bet mikdash. So Kurshan shows us how to take the talmud, learn from the nearly impenetrable mutterings about fruit growth and apply it to modern life. The talmud bridges her from her divorce to her second marriage, and the births of her children. She tells us about her studying on planes, in labor, in Jerusalem, in New York, in the times where she had no idea where her life was going. It's a deeply vulnerable and relatable memoir.

When people ask me about the Jewish calendar, I point out that yes, it's a lunar calendar but also inextricably linked to the solar seasons. Unlike Islam, we always celebrate holidays at the same time of year, born out of the fundamental agricultural underpinings of the religion. We always celebrate Passover in Spring, and the High Holidays in fall, and the holidays resonate with seasonal themes. At 7.5 years the daf yomi cycle is unmoored in time (honestly, I think the tannaim & amoraim would be horrified). It was unsettling to me when she read a tractate strolling through the Jerusalem shuk in summer that I'll read in Philadelphia winters. I struggled with this a lot when I started daf yomi - who knows what the context of my life will be when I read any particular tractate? Kurshan set the example of how to choose to set each page within the firmament of her life.