layers

IF ALL
THE
SEAS
WERE
INK

Excerpt from If All
the Seas Were Ink

by Ilana Kurshan.
Copyright © 2017
by the author
and reprinted
by permission of
St. Martin’s Press.

Ilana Kurshan teaches, translates, and writes about books in Jerusalem, where she lives with her husband and four children. She was awarded the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for her memoir If All the Seas Were Ink, published by St. Martin’s Press and excerpted here.

Iloved greeting my twin daughters at the end of the day, but I dreaded having to decide whom to pick up first. Sometimes I would be lucky — I’d arrive at their daycare and Tagel would still be sleeping, so I’d pick up Liav and spend a few moments alone with her before bringing her with me to wake her sister in the back room lined with cribs where all the babies slept. But other days I’d show up to find the two of them sitting on the floor, each eagerly crying “Emma, Emma” (they could not yet pronounce long vowels, so they pronounced the Hebrew word for mother, Ima, like the Jane Austen heroine). If only I could swoop them both up simultaneously, but they were usually on opposite sides of the room. I wished that I could perform a feat worthy of King Solomon — not to divide one child for two mothers, but to divide one mother for two children.

Whenever I found myself forced to choose between the two girls, I thought of the rabbinic principle that “One does not pass over mitzvot.” This principle, which appears in Pesachim (64b) and throughout the Talmud, means that if there is a commandment that is right in front of you, you should fulfill it before going to look for other commandments. Thus, when the priest walks over to the altar to sprinkle sacrificial blood on its four corners, he should start off with the corner that is closest to him, because “one does not pass over mitzvot.” I recited a version of this principle in my head: “One does not pass over twins.” Like the priest who may not walk past one corner of the altar to sprinkle blood on the next, I would not pass over one daughter to reach another. Inevitably that meant that her sister would burst into tears, and then I would have to set down one twin to retrieve the other, by which point they would both be crying.

Often when I described to my friends the challenges of parenting twins, I received expressions of sympathy and incredulity, of the “I-Don’t-Know-How-She-Does-It” variety. Even the Talmud seems to be wary of things that come in pairs, as we learn from the tenth and final chapter of tractate Pesachim. Unlike the previous nine chapters, which deal with the Paschal sacrifice, this is the one chapter that covers the ritual of the Passover seder: the four cups of wine, the eating of matzah and bitter herbs, the recitation of the Hallel psalms, and the Afikomen at the end. All is explained in a clear and orderly fashion until the middle of the chapter, when the rabbis seem to get drunk on seder wine as they break from the halakhic discussion of the seder to engage in several pages about superstition, demonology, legend, and lore.

The rabbinic discussion of the danger of pairs begins with the Mishnah’s statement that a person should not have less than four cups of wine at the Seder, even if he is so poor that he has to rely on communal funds. “Four cups of wine?” asks the anonymous voice of the Talmud. “How could the sages legislate something that is so dangerous? After all, we are taught that a person should never eat two of anything, or drink two of anything” (109b). The rabbinic discussion reflects a prevalent belief in destructive forces that we with our modern sensibilities would likely dismiss as superstitious. One such belief was the fear that doing things in pairs was hazardous. It was always safer to do something an odd number of times. But if so, how could we possibly be obligated to drink “two times two” cups of wine?

The sages offer various justifications. Rav Nahman suggests that since the Torah describes Pesach as “a night of vigil” (Exodus 12:42), we need not worry, because Pesach is guarded from demons and harmful spirits. Rava says that the third cup, used in the Grace after Meals, is a “cup of blessing” that serves as part of a mitzvah, and could never combine for evil purposes. And Ravina posits that since these cups are a symbol of freedom, they do not combine in pairs with one another, but each stands independently in its own right.

These explanations notwithstanding, the sages remain preoccupied with the danger of doing anything in pairs and go on to relate several stories about the lengths they would go to avoid such behavior. Whenever Abayey would drink a cup of wine, for instance, his mother would immediately hold out two more cups, one in each hand, lest he inadvertently drink just one cup more and become susceptible to demonic forces. If a person inadvertently stops after two cups and finds himself besieged by demons, the Talmud instructs that he should hold his right thumb in his left hand, and hold his left thumb in his right hand, and say: “You, my two thumbs, and I make three!” But even so, there is no guarantee that he will be protected.

The very same day that I learned about the Talmud’s fear of pairs, my friend Shira happened to forward me an article written by the parents of twins. The article, entitled “25 Tips About the Horrors of Raising Twins That You Will Never Learn From Movies and TV,” reminded me of the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, when orphan Anne is told that she will be sent to taken care of Mrs. Blewett’s two sets of twins. “Twins seem to be my lot in life,” Anne miserably laments. The article warned that with twins, the pregnancy is harrowing, the early months of the babies’ lives are more than twice the amount of work, and the first year is so exhausting that the parents don’t even remember any of it.

As I wrote back to Shira, I must beg to differ. Yes, parenting twins is exhausting and all-consuming. But the rewards are not double, but exponential. Each night after the girls were born I watched them fall asleep in a single bassinet. I lay them down beside one another, each with her head facing away from her sister and toward one side of the crib. But invariably within the first few minutes of settling into sleep, they would each turn so that they were facing one another, their noses just centimeters apart. I thought about the cherubs in the Temple which would face one another whenever Israel was doing God’s will, but turn away from each other when Israel had sinned. My angelic twins wanted all to be well with the world.

And then there was the reward of knowing they had one another. The article Shira sent recounted horror stories about mothers who could not go to the bathroom when they were home alone with their babies, or who went days without showering because they had no time alone. This never happened to me. When I needed time to myself, I lay the girls on their stomachs facing one another, with a few toys between them. Tagel amused herself by trying to catch Liav’s eye and cracking up any time Liav looked in her direction; Liav mostly ignored Tagel because she was intent on moving all the toys onto her section of the mat. Every so often I had to separate them because Liav did not realize that the “toy” she was yanking on with all her might was actually Tagel’s hair. But for the most part, they played together quite nicely, at least for long enough for me to run to the bathroom or jump in the shower.

As they got older, we were able to witness their increased interactions with one another. Tagel learned to crawl several months before Liav, so she scrambled around the house searching for books and toys to deliver to her sister. Once they learned to feed themselves, we sat them down in adjacent high chairs and they passed food to one another. Liav placed her sandwich on Tagel’s tray, and Tagel reciprocated with her cucumber slices. Yes, on one of those occasions when I took advantage of their camaraderie to run to the bathroom, I returned to find the two of them painting each other’s hair with strawberry yogurt. For a moment I began to wonder whether the Talmud was on to something in its association between pairs and demonic forces, but then I could only laugh as I took a wet washcloth and wiped the pink streaks out of their hair.

Throughout those early months Daniel and I were often beside ourselves with exhaustion, with food to cook, kids to bathe, diapers to change, and no time to work or sleep — let alone to enjoy a glass of wine. But the joy of observing our own pair grow and develop and interact with one another has been indescribable, and even if our cup is overflowing, we never doubt for a moment that it is a cup of blessing.