I’m going to lay it all out here: I loved this book. It’s one of my favorite books of the year, and the year is only half over and I read a lot of books.
If All the Seas Were Ink is a pleasure.
I don’t read much fiction and even fewer memoirs, but this was just a damn good story. Sure, it happened to a real person, but this felt like a great fiction read. I stayed up all night to finish, and I rarely do that since having babies. Ironically, I knew I would like this book because she started by explaining that it was simply the story as she experienced it, and that no one could write an objective memoir. That kind of intellectual honesty and attempt at kindness to the people in her memoir is unusual and much appreciated. (Whether anyone should write a memoir…or a blog…that involves speaking about other people is a question I’ve long struggled with.)
But why would I classify this book as Mother Culture?
This isn’t just a memoir about one woman’s divorce after making aliyah. It’s really more about her relationship with the Talmud. Yep, the Talmud. Post-divorce, she accidentally falls into learning Daf Yomi, the daily study of Talmud.
As someone less than experienced with the Talmud, this book was such a pleasurable way to get a kind of overview of the Talmud and some common and less-common stories from it. I would call this a living book for the Talmud. (If the concept of a “living book” is new to you, check out this podcast episode!)
I admit, it inspired me to do a little Daf Yomi myself. It only lasted about a month, but that’s a month of learning I wouldn’t have otherwise done. Nothing too crazy, especially as someone who is only a beginner learner of Talmud. I found a podcast with a 5-6 minute summary of each day’s daf (page): 5-Minute Daf Yomi with Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld. I continue to listen here and there, and maybe saying this aloud will make me take it more seriously. I really need to take my limmud (religious education) more seriously overall. It just gets so frustrating when my skills aren’t to the same level I can do in English with so many other topics. No adult likes feeling like a first grader again :/
But this book gave me back some of my passion for limmud, which has helped me stand up to that discomfort more often. It was an encouraging, enlightening, and engaging read. Definitely check it out!
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