The Book of Separation Quotes

“Be good, said this teacher. be good, the community said. Be good, my name reminded me. But could the inside of your mind be made to conform as readily as your body could - your thoughts covered with the equivalent of a long skirt? I knew without needing to be told that an indispensable part of being good was a willingness to hid what you really thought. There was one way to be good and there were infinite ways to be bad.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“Before I left, as they did at the end of my wedding, as they did at the conclusion of divorce ceremonies hundreds of years ago, the rabbis wished me a mazel tov.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“People bustled around me, in a Manhattan hurry, but I stopped walking. I stared at my reflection. It was hard not to rip off the hat right there, not to strip down on Broadway to the person I sensed waiting below. A voice, stronger than I knew I had, whispered in my head: This is not who you are.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“I tried to pray, but my mind kept wandering. Under all these brims and bows, what were people really thinking? There were few clues, only the fantasies I spun out. Did any of these women ever worry, as I did, that too much thinking might unravel their lives? You were supposed to believe that this way of life was the only true one. You were supposed to tell yourself that the rituals and restrictions were binding and beautiful. And if you felt any rumblings of dissatisfaction, you were supposed to believe that the problem lay with you. My own discontent, I hoped, remained well hidden. It wasn't the sort of thing I would have shared with my mother-in-law or sisters-in-law, who sat beside me wearing hats of their own. Along with the actual rules, there was another set of laws, equally stringent yet more unforgiving, enforced not by a belief in God but by communal eyes that were just as all-seeing and all-knowing. Inside my head, a voice constantly whispered: What will they think?”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“I wanted to be moved but it was a performance I'd seen too many times. Here is the part of the service where you sit. Here you stand. Here you bow. Here you proclaim unwavering belief. I stared into my prayer book, hoping my face gave nothing away, but just in case, I pulled the brim of my black silk hat lower - as constricted as I felt by it, at least it provided a place to hide. I counted pages, averaged how many we were covering per minute, and calculated when we would be done - the same game I'd played as a child when time had passed unbearably slowly.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“every single note of the shofar—all one hundred blasts—in”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“For better or worse, they will have known from early on that there are multiple ways to live. They will know there is a choice and that it’s one they are allowed to make.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“I remember how, when he was a baby, the days used to feel so long, yet every change in him seemed to happen so quickly.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“It made me sad to realize that my experience of Judaism had become reduced to whether or not I followed the rules.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“he told me how he’d once had a customer who traveled to rural towns for business where he was nervous about wearing a yarmulke. John had crafted a small circle of dark hair that his client pinned to his own;”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“On blogs, I read about parents terrified of seeking divorce for fear that they will lose their children to a more religious spouse. And it’s not only among the ultra-Orthodox. I hear about a Modern Orthodox husband suing his ex-wife for full custody because she wasn’t sufficiently observant.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“There are no provisions in the separation agreement currently being negotiated for who retains the rights over the kids’ observances and beliefs,”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“There are no provisions in the separation agreement currently being negotiated for who retains”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“Among our failures as a couple was that we couldn’t agree on a worldview or navigate the hardest of issues as a team, and now we need to do what is even harder: navigate them when we are increasingly estranged.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“Think of life as a board game,” a teacher told us. “Would the inventors of Monopoly have created the game and neglected to give you the rules?” The Torah was a rule book as authoritative as the instruction pamphlet in a fresh set of Monopoly,”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“We might have been the king’s daughters, but God, the rabbis, and all the men were the kings.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“how we appeared to those on the outside—the sense that no one could really understand what it meant to live in this way—but I had believed that there was room for portrayals that showed the varieties of experience within Orthodoxy. I had wanted to reckon with the ways people lived not only within the sanctioned positions of the law but inside all the human possibilities between. I had wanted to write about the small transgressions and religious compromises people make and yet remain inside—that wily inner sphere that surely existed here as it did everywhere. But apparently, here there was no doubting, no desiring”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation: A Memoir

“The Sheva Brachot, the seven marriage blessings, are being recited now, but my mind is spinning and I think not of the words praising God who created the groom who rejoices in his bride. Instead, I think of the Sharon Olds poem 'I Go Back to May 1937' - hardly good wedding material - about her parents' disastrous marriage.

I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it - she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do

I still want to go up to her, my bridled, bridal self, and plead with her one last time: Please. You are barely twenty-three, so much younger than you realize. Please. You know so little of the world. You know so little of yourself.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“As we talked, I watched her eat - an act that for her was innocuous and for me would have been a sin. For her, Jewishness had nothing to do with whether she ate this muffin. Unlike me, with my family's six generations in Memphis and my all-Orthodox world, she was from a family of mostly secular Holocaust survivors. For her, Judaism was about history and memory and trying to sort out what it all added up to. It made me sad to realize that my experience of Judaism had become reduced to whether or not I followed the rules.

With each bite she took, my feeling grew larger. Not everywhere in the Jewish world did you have to live according to ideas you didn't agree with, offer explanations for observances you didn't believe in.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“The candles burned low and flickered before sizzling softly and leaving a trace smell of burn. When I'd lit them a few hours before, I thought, as I always did, about my grandmothers, who had also done this every week. I had no idea if any of them ever felt the way I did, only that they had lived and raised their families as part of this world. If I were to leave, would I be ceding my connection to them as well; would they have ceased to claim me as their own?”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“I feel a pang at Josh's absence, but more than ever, I'm aware of how each child need something different. My children won't grow up with the luxury, if that's what it is, of thinking that everyone is the same, that everyone believes as they do. They will make no belated discovery of the fact that there is no one way, no one truth. For better or worse, they will have known from early on that there are multiple ways to live. They will know there is a choice and that it's one they are allowed to make.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“I was surprised and moved by the sympathy in his voice. All these rigid rules, all these minute and unyielding laws. Yet here too was the recognition of human pain; here too was an acceptance of human experience. It was this wisdom from my tradition that I wanted to hold on to, even as I was leaving so much behind.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“We sing the order of the night, a tune which reminds me of being a little girl in a new dress that, because of the season, came with an Easter bonnet, which I wore as well. It reminds me of being so studious that I took to heart my teachers' promise that for each word of the seder we recited, we would receive divine credit for a separate good deed. Now, for me, there is no counting up good deeds, no worrying about ingesting every crumb of required matzo. It's not the same seder I used to attend but an alternate one being written in the margins. There is room for the pleasure of being here with my family, telling the story we have been imparting for generations. I am still part of this story, and the story remains part of me as well - its language, its rhythms, its customs all have shaped who I am. To the rabbi who once issued the warning about partaking but not enjoying, and to the wayward yeshiva student who tried to go, I want to offer my own ending: When participation no longer feels like it might be mistaken for capitulation, when there is acceptance of who have chosen to become - then it's possible to return and enjoy parts of what you've left. Not ever leave-taking had to be absolute and entire. Orthodoxy can remain my childhood home, a place I visit but where I no longer live.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“For so many years, I had been afraid of my own feelings, afraid of my unhappiness, afraid of change, but also afraid of traveling to new places, afraid of riding a bike, afraid of anything in which I would move too fast, in which I might careen and fall. It had never occurred to me that when the time came, I might actually welcome the sensation of falling - the rush of air, the feeling that my unencumbered body was awake and alert. I'd never imagined a falling in which I stopped wanting to remain safe at all cost, when I didn't want to grab hold of any last secure spot or didn't worry about where and how I would land.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“This moment, standing inf front of this room of rabbis, was the last time that I considered myself still inside. No, every part of me knew. No, I didn't believe in the same God whose will they invoked with such certainty and no, I wasn't willing to write in accordance with their rules, and no, I didn't believe, really believe, their rules contained the ultimate truth, and no, I didn't want to create the same kind of enclosures, and no, their limits weren't ones I was willing to accept, and no, I didn't want to teach my children to heed these lines, and no, it wasn't just about writing honestly and freely, it was about living honestly and freely, and no, I couldn't keep trying to tuck away this feeling, and no, I was no longer willing to follow without believing, and no, I was no longer willing to pretend in order to belong.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“I knew that in a highly codified world, the inner life posed a threat. I knew that these rabbis' mission was to keep people inside the bounds of the laws. They didn't believe there were other good or true ways to life, didn't want their children or their students or their congregants to think that there was a legitimate choice to be made. I understood it, of course - I too had lived it. There was openness, up to a point. A measure of freedom, until you arrived at the border. There could be questions, as long as you accepted the answers given. There could be some sort of journey as long as you returned safely home in the end. There could be art, as long as it didn't pry open too many doors. There could be stories, as long as they didn't offer a viable other way.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“Somehow, somewhere, in the past few months, Boston has become the place where I feel most at home—not the rooted feeling that my grandmother expressed [in Memphis], that where you live is where you must live, but the happenstance feeling of a transplant who knows that things change, that people move on and away. It is a city that reminds me we don’t always arrive where we once intended to go.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“If there was any sliver of meaning, any sense of God's presence, it lay in the feeling of being away from the rules, away from the official eyes.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“As my daughter nursed, I ran my hands over her tiny legs and silken cheeks, marveling at the mystery of such a small creature, the fact that inside her head, a world was awakening. Looking at her blue-green eyes and fuzz-dusting of blond hair was like waiting for a picture to come more fully into focus. So far, little had been imprinted on her but each moment, even right now, was shaping who she would become. It felt too late for me, but was I going to offer her words that would stick in my mouth as I tried to say them? Orthodoxy, or at least our small corner of it, had continued to evolve, changes forged by women I admired. Maybe my daughter wouldn't have to feel the inequalities and the constraints as viscerally as I did. But even then, would I have to teach her the tactics I used to remain inside? Don't say what you really think. Don't name what you really feel. It's not what it sounds like. It's not what it really means. I didn't want her to feel that she had to tuck away any dissenting part of herself. I didn't want her to feel that the only choice was to live with an endless sense of obligation and contradiction. Try not to be bothered by things that make you seethe. Try not to feel exhausted from walking against an ever-present tide, the current pulling your body, the sand slipping away beneath your feet.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation

“There are few aspects of my family not imbued with Jewishness; it is braided through every memory, part of nearly every conversation and every relationship. On every wall of this house, there is contemporary Israeli art. Books overflow onto every free surface - this is a house made not only of bricks but of books. On my parents' shelves, novels and volumes of poetry mingle with Jewish texts and books of Jewish folktales, books about Israel and Jewish spirituality and philosophical works by Modern Orthodox rabbis who advocate integrating secular ideas with religious ones. At least on these shelves, there is an easy commingling of disparate ideas.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Book of Separation