If All the Seas Were Ink

I think the only book that I kept putting down and picking up and putting down and picking up that I ever finished was Uncle Tom's Cabin. I'm not sure what it was about Ilana Kurshan's memoir If All the Seas Were Ink that took me so long to get through it.

A neighbor of mine had received the book from her daughter, read it, only liked it, but thought it might be something I'd be interested in. I agreed that it sounded interesting so borrowed the book. It was around the time of the Jewish New Year (September). I was still (vaguely) content to sit outside, birdwatching and reading at the same time. And the concept of Daf Yomi, what  the memoir is focused on, was intriguing. It made me more connected to the fall Jewish festivals that we were celebrating untraditionally, alone, at home. The holidays ended and my reading tapered off. It wasn't until right before Passover that I picked it up again. That holiday ended and my reading once again took a pause. A little over a week ago we celebrated another Jewish festival, Shavuot, perhaps the final holiday I'll be celebrating at home, alone, and I decided it was time to finish the book!

What's Daf Yomi, you ask? It's kind of sort of like a Jewish book club, but instead of reading some juicy fiction or interesting non-fiction, you're reading a page a day (exactly what daf yomi) means, front and back, of Talmud, the Oral Torah and commentaries. At the rate of a double-sided page a day, you're able to finish reading the entire Talmud in about seven and a half years. Everyone who is reading Daf Yomi is reading the same page on the same date. Kind of cool. As my neighbor expected, I thought the whole concept was pretty cool. But wow, what a commitment someone has to read to complete the cycle. I guess that's why there's a big celebration at the end.

Kurshan is an avid reader, makes her living doing various things related to books. And her love of books shines through. That part, I really enjoyed.

I had mixed feelings, though, about how all the tiny details of Daf Yomi translated into Kurshan's memoir. I found the personal bits - the aftermath of her divorce, her running routines, her relationship to the synagogue, her second marriage, motherhood, being an American living in Israel - those are the bits that I found extremely interesting. Where she gives a bit too much information about a particular section of Daf Yomi, I would have preferred a more abridged edition. I liked the way she was able to connect what she was reading to what was going on at different points in her life. But once she got past the connection, I wanted more personal stuff.

I'd definitely recommend this for someone who is interested in learning about what it's like to participate (I'm not even sure if that's the proper word) in Daf Yomi from a personal angle. Or someone interested in reading the memoir of an American who is now making a life in Israel. You don't need to be religious or Jewish to understand what the book is all about.