Ilana Kurshan
By Ilana Kurshan
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Life In quarantine, daily Talmud study is keeping me afloat
I began learning the Talmudic tractate of Shabbat against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis, in Jerusalem, as I gradually realized that people all over the world were being asked to accept upon themselves an extended period of resting, retreating, and desisting from labor. Here in Israel, the Ministry of Health issued increasingly stringent guidelines…
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Life Why Does Judaism Have So Many Different Words For ‘Sin’?
In Sarah Perry’s masterful novel The Essex Serpent, set in 1890s England, a young boy asks the local parson to explain the nature of sin as the two are standing on the banks of a river by the ruins of an old ship known as the Leviathan. In response, the parson instructs the boy to…
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Life Why We Should Teach Our Children Talmud Folk Tales — Instead Of Grimm’s Fairy Tales
A few weeks ago, I bought tickets to take my kids to what promised to be an exciting performance at a local Jerusalem theater. “Aggadot L’Yeladim,” the advertisement read – legends for children. The Hebrew word used for legends, Aggadot, is the term used in Talmudic studies to refer to the literary parts of the…
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Life Why Are Jews So Obsessed With The Study Of Halacha, Religious Law?
I am not particularly interested in halacha. I enjoy studying Talmud because the emphasis is on the questions rather than the answers; I am less interested in how Jews are supposed to practice, and more interested in the values and considerations that animate the discussions about Jewish religious observance. I think of Talmud and halacha…
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Life Learning To Forgive Our Children, As Rosh Hashanah Approaches
As soon as I learned to read, I became a bookworm. I spent much of my childhood immersed in novels and generally oblivious to the rest of the world. One day in high school, as I made my way down the hallway absorbed in a book, I accidentally walked straight into a brawl and got…
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Life Studying Talmud As A Woman Is Often Lonely. But It Doesn’t Need To Be.
When I first started studying Talmud regularly, I attended an otherwise all-male class taught by a rabbi in a local synagogue in Jerusalem. I sat in the back corner of the room, but the walls of the classroom were transparent and I was conscious that everyone walking in or out of the main building of…
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Life What Jewish Tradition Tells Us About Helicopter Parenting
I am a much better parent in public. When I am home alone with my children, I am quick to anger and slow to forgive. When my son spills his water for the second time during dinner, I grow exasperated and yell at him instead of helping him find a better place for his cup;…
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Life Learning To Chant The Torah Has Changed My Life As An Observant Woman
It was a Thursday evening in the winter, and the sun was sinking as I waited at a bus stop in Givat Shaul, practicing to chant my Torah reading from photocopied sheets of paper. Moses was late in coming down the mountain, and the bus was late in coming to our part of Jerusalem, so…
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