If All the Seas Were Ink

A Memoir

By: Ilana Kurshan

Narrated by: Dara Rosenberg

Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

**WINNER of the 2018 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the 2018 Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature**
**2018 Natan Book Award Finalist**
**Finalist for the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies**

The Wall Street Journal: "There is humor and heartbreak in these pages...Ms. Kurshan immerses herself in the demands of daily Talmud study and allows the words of ancient scholars to transform the patterns of her own life."

The Jewish Standard: “Brilliant, beautifully written, sensitive, original."

The Jerusalem Post: "A beautiful and inspiring book. Both religious and secular readers will find themselves immensely moved by [Kurshan's] personal story.”

American Jewish World: “So engrossing I hardly could put it down.”

At the age of 27, alone in Jerusalem in the wake of a painful divorce, Ilana Kurshan joined the world’s largest book club, learning daf yomi, Hebrew for “daily page" of the Talmud, a book of rabbinic teachings spanning about 600 years and the basis for all codes of Jewish law. A runner, a reader and a romantic, Kurshan adapted to its pace, attuned her ear to its poetry, and discovered her passions in its pages. She brought the Talmud with her wherever she went, studying in airplanes, supermarket lines, and over a plate of pasta at home, careful not to drip tomato sauce upon discussions about the sprinkling of blood on the Temple altar. By the time she completed the Talmud after seven and a half years, Kurshan was remarried with three young children. With each pregnancy, her Talmud sat perched atop her growing belly.

This memoir is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriage and motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turning page after page. Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tour of the Talmud, shedding new light on its stories and offering insights into its arguments - both for those already familiar with the text and for those who have never encountered it. For people of the book - both Jewish and non-Jewish - If All the Seas Were Ink is a celebration of learning - through literature - how to fall in love once again.

©2017 Ilana Kurshan (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Published by arrangement with St. Martin's Press.

Great book, iffy performance

The narrator consistently mispronounces the Hebrew/Aramaic words, names, and titles of Talmudic tractates--and some of the English names and words too! The poets Keats and Yeats both make an appearance, and no one ever told this poor narrator they do not rhyme. I still enjoyed the book, but as a rabbi who knows a lot of the Jewish content found here I found the errors distracting.

Disappointing Narrator

The narrator does not know how to pronounce many of the words in the text that are in Hebrew. This is very distracting. Audible did not do it's homework in finding a narrator who speaks the foreign words that are integral to the story.

Self-indulgent but still a worthwhile read

Overall, while I have some significant gripes, I did enjoy the book. I feel like I learned a lot about Talmud and I was very charmed by the descriptions of living in Jerusalem (I also once discovered a pigeon in my Jerusalem apartment). But I felt like the constant quotations of poetry were less additive to the story and more an opportunity for Kurshan to prove how learned and well-read she is. The whole thing felt extremely self-indulgent to me as she kept delving into all her academic accomplishments and ascetic piety in a way that felt judgmental of those who don’t achieve the same way. However, I think it is powerful and important that women take up space in male-dominated spheres- men have been writing self-indulgent treatises to prove how smart they are for millennia, so it’s high time women do too!

The narrator captured the character of the story well, but her Hebrew pronunciation was really poor. She said “Daf yoooomi” instead of “Daf Yomi” every time and struggled with word stress and guttural sounds. I am less frustrated with her than I am that no one thought it was important to provide her with coaching.

Great book, inadequate reader!

While the book is wonderfully written, the reader mispronounces key words throughout, which diminishes significantly from the enjoyment of the book. How could the author have permitted the choice of this reader, and what about quality control from Audible and the publisher?

Interesting

I found the book interesting and liked how the author interwove descriptions of her topics of study with details of her life she felt were related to these topics.

Wonderful!

Fabulous story interwoven with inspiration from the Talmud.

Only negative: the narrator does not have the background the author describes, and her pronunciations were completely off. I could get used to Daf “Yumi” if it were mentioned once in the book, but 200 times! Not to mention pronunciations of most Hebrew words and of course, “Isreal”.

Started out interesting, but flagged badly

I just started learning Daf Yomi with this cycle of Shas, and happened across an article by the author that mentioned her book. I was excited to find it on Audible. I started out enjoying it greatly; the author is highly literate and makes many comparisons between the Talmud and classic literature. When the book begins, she is heartbroken over her divorce and begins to fill the void in her heart with Talmud. Drawing lessons from the Sages, however esoteric, and making them relevant to her own experience was quite interesting. However, to make my own literary allusion, “all happy families are alike”; when she meets and marries her current husband, the loss of tension and conflict in the narrative greatly reduces its appeal. It’s great that she’s so happily married now, but listening to her endlessly gush about how wonderful her husband is quite literally put me to sleep. The relevance of the Talmud to her daily life begins to feel like more of a stretch, and for one tractate, she phoned it in, giving the entire volume no more than a few sentences. If you’ve just started studying the daf, however, the book is still a worthwhile read/listen.
The narrator, on the other hand, is just awful. She mispronounces many words both in Hebrew and English (and even one term in French as a bonus)—most egregiously, the very phrase “daf yomi” itself. I’m not talking about Sephardic vs. Ashkenazic pronunciation of the Hebrew; I’m talking about flat-out mispronounced words. This is highly annoying, and for the life of me, with the resources of the internet available, I cannot understand how audiobooks get released with so many mispronounced words. It’s the auditory equivalent of typos and grammatical errors.

If Aa The Seas were Ink. Personal and Learned

I really enjoyed how the author made Talmud relevant to her life. Fun to read.

Easy listening

A nice heartfelt story one most people can relate to. I really enjoyed it ! Maybe I’ll start Daf Yomi