If All the Seas Were Ink started as a series of blog posts that Kurshan wrote about her studies, beginning with limericks on the text of the day. Kurshan has always learned by writing poems; in high school, she wrote poetry about math that was published in magazines for math teachers. “Things resonate in an uncanny way, in light of the Gemara,” she told me. For her, the pages of the Talmud “mark milestones in my kids’ lives,” she said. The first birthday of her twin daughters fell at the time she began writing the book, for instance. When one of her twins got teeth before her sister and would bite her repeatedly, Kurshan said, “I was in the midst of the Talmud’s discussion of the shor muad, the ox which is known to have gored at least three times, and which the rabbis of the Talmud invoke to refer to one of four general categories of damages.” This understated sense of humor, comparing a 1-year-old biter with a goring ox, is typical of Kurshan’s oeuvre.I noted a review of the book here.
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