If All the Seas Were Ink Quotes

“When I was single I learned over dinner, careful not to drip tomato sauce upon discussions about the sprinkling of blood on the Temple altar.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Rav Yehuda did not like to pray He preferred to learn Torah and say: “You may call my soul dirty But one day in thirty Is better than three times a day.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Rabbi Levi explains that everything in the world belongs to God until we make a blessing, but that once we bless something, it is on loan to us.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“The modern Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovitz wrote that a false Messiah is any Messiah who has already come. The messianic era is an aspiration and an ideal, rather than a stage of history.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Elijah explained that the Messiah was in fact quoting a verse from Psalms: “Today, if you will heed His voice” (Psalms 95:7). That is, the Messiah will come the very same day that people do God’s work in the world. This work seems to involve sitting among the sick and wretched at the gates of the city and the margins of society, helping them find healing. The notion of the Messiah, then, is a metaphor for the redeemed world to which we aspire. The world will not be redeemed when the Messiah comes; rather, the Messiah will come when we redeem the world.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Between any two words—or occasionally even letters—in the Torah, there are an infinite number of midrashim, or reinterpretations, that are possible. The Talmud in Sanhedrin captures this notion in an exegetical reading of a verse from Jeremiah (23:29): “Behold My word is like fire—declares the Lord—and like a hammer that shatters rock.” The sages comment, “Just as a hammer strikes innumerable sparks off the rock, so too does a single verse have many meanings” (Sanhedrin 34a). When studying and teaching Torah, we are meant to generate sparks.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“As a human record, this document is historically contingent: it was written at a particular historical moment, and reflects the biases of its time. This record has had to be adapted to later generations, both to changing historical circumstances and to evolving theological understandings. Those adaptations are known as midrash—the creative commentary that reworks and retells the Bible so as to render it ever relevant.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“the Talmudic sages extol the value of teaching, asserting that one who learns but does not teach resembles a fragrant myrtle tree in the deserted wilderness (Rosh Hashanah 23a)—perhaps the rabbinic equivalent of the Buddhist koan about the tree falling in the forest with no one around. In Sanhedrin the sage Reish Lakish—the one for whom our Shabbat quiche was named—asserts that anyone who teaches his friend’s child Torah is regarded as if he fashioned him (99b), since a person is shaped by the Torah he learns. And at the beginning of the next tractate, Makkot (10a), the Talmud cites Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s oft-quoted assertion that he learned much from his teachers, even more from his colleagues, and most of all from his students”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions that are chanted each Shabbat of the year (and sometimes combined). Each portion is in turn divided into seven aliyot—the plural of aliyah, Hebrew for “ascent,” since one person is called to ascend to the Torah for each aliyah.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Avivah Zornberg (whose classes on the weekly Torah portion I attended devotedly), Ruth Calderon (whose book about Talmudic stories I went on to translate), and Rabbi Benny Lau (whose classes I attended and whose books, too, I eventually translated).”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“God’s eternal glory could not be described even if the heavens were parchment, and the forests quills; if all the seas were ink, as well as every gathered water; even if the earth’s inhabitants were scribes and recorders of initials.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Just as we are supposed to eat three times a day, so too must we pray three times a day. While I’ve been tempted at times in my life to pray just when the spirit moves me, the effect was something akin to all-day snacking, with nothing filling or fulfilling.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Rather, it is the accumulation of many early mornings, afternoons, and evenings spent in prayer that ultimately results in a moment of transcendence.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“The rabbis teach (Berachot 32b) that prayer is one of four activities that require vigorous strength (the others are Torah study, good deeds, and the pursuit of a trade).”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“prayer is about taking the familiar—the same words we say day after day—and saying them with such concentration and fervor that it is as if we are renewing each day the miracle of their creation.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Studying Torah is about novelty. It is about conquering new territory, synthesizing more and more information, and coming up with insights that cast everything that came before in a whole new light.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“The Talmud in Niddah (16b) teaches that “all is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“I did not feel proud or proprietary about my editorial work. Certainly I could not imagine ever reacting like Rav Sheshet, who grew furious when his student quoted one of his teachings without attribution and hissed, “Whoever stung me in this way—may he be stung by a scorpion!” (Bechorot 31b).”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“In the wake of my divorce, friends and family members encouraged me to seek professional help, but I was resistant. I am dubious of the efficacy of therapy for me. It seems to entail a pledge of honesty that I have a hard time keeping. I am, by nature, a storyteller; when I chronicle the past I inevitably craft it. And so I don’t think I could commit to speaking truthfully in a therapeutic context—let alone in a courtroom.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Ultimately I believe in God because I cannot live my life any other way.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“The world will not be redeemed when the Messiah comes; rather, the Messiah will come when we redeem the world.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Perhaps there is an element of blind faith involved, but I believe that the more I live my life in accordance with God’s commandments, the more I will feel God’s presence. Conversely, the more I doubt and question and run away from the tradition, the farther away God will seem. And so just as each morning I wake up and lift up the shades to let the sun stream in to my bedroom, I also try, each day, to open the gates of my heart and let God in.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“A mitzvah is an opportunity to encounter the divine. Saying a blessing before eating is a way of involving God in the meal, and praying in the morning is a way of infusing the day with holiness. Whenever possible, I try not to pass up those opportunities.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Rabbi Yossi is commonly understood as suggesting that in order to learn Torah deeply and fully, you need to strip yourself of any preconceived notions and start anew. But I’m not so sure. To me it seems that the most meaningful way to study Torah is by searching for the interconnections and resonances between Torah and the rest of one’s reading, learning, and living. Torah cannot be studied in a vacuum.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Each time it rained, no matter where I was and how little protective gear I had with me, I tried to respond like the sage Nahum Ish Gamzu in tractate Taanit (21a), who would greet every calamity that befell him with the faith that “this, too, is for the best.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Tractate Taanit discusses the ideal study partnership and teaches that a person cannot learn Torah alone. “Rabbi Hama said in the name of Rabbi Hanina: Why is it written, ‘Iron and iron together’ (Proverbs 27:17)? Just as iron sharpens iron, two scholars sharpen each other’s teachings. Rabbi bar bar Hana said: Why is Torah analogized to fire? As it is written, ‘Are all my words not like fire? spoke the Lord’ (Jeremiah 23:29). To teach that just as fire cannot ignite on its own, so too do words of Torah not endure in the single individual” (Taanit 7a). Learning Torah, like falling in love, is supposed to set us on fire.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“It is impossible for any two people to learn the exact same Torah, because the moment someone internalizes what he or she has learned, that learning begins to assume his or her shape. In this sense, the vessel and the contents are inherently interrelated.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“In “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” Rilke describes standing before the statue of a Greek god and finding himself utterly in its thrall. The statue—although it is missing a head and eyes—seems to look back at him with dazzling intensity. The poem climactically concludes with the terrifying charge, “You must change your life.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“Eventually I began to think of “for good” as the English translation of l’tovah, for goodness, as in the blessing that we recite on the Shabbat before each new Jewish month: “May all our heart’s wishes be fulfilled for good.”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir

“I had to append an epigraph to my CV, it would probably be from Ecclesiastes, which is chanted on Sukkot each year: “The making of books is endless” (12:12).”
― Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir