Tova Mirvis > Quotes

“She remembered a story she had once heard: a woman had gossiped about her neighbors and later regretted what she said. She went to the rabbi and asked how she might take back her words. He instructed her to take a feather pillow to the top of the highest hill and tear it open, letting the feathers fly every which way. Then, the rabbi said, she should return to him and he would tell her what to do. She did as he said and when she returned, he told her to go outside and gather the feathers. But that's impossible, she cried. They're already scattered all over the village. He looked at her and smiled. The same is true of your words, he said.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary

“A different son might have been able to say something. A different father might have been able to hear it.”
― Tova Mirvis, We Would Never: A Novel

“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

“When we were teenagers, we would imagine that when we had daughters of our own, we wouldn't be so strict. We would give them room to explore, let them decide for themselves if they wanted to follow this way of life. But once we were in the parental role, it wasn't as simple. We wanted our daughters to grow up and get married, to have Jewish homes and raise Jewish families. We wanted them to pass on this tradition to their children and to their children's children. We didn't want them to be exposed to bad influences, ones that might make them steer from this path that had been set out for them since birth. We wanted them to avoid the confusion of the modern world, where no one seemed to believe in anything anymore. We wanted them to always feel rooted in their tradition, to be close to their families, their community, and God. And we didn't know how to do that if we made no ground rules, set down no boundaries.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary

“If someone like Batsheva wanted to be Orthodox, there was surely something to it. Not that she doubted it (or at least she didn't ever really and truly doubt it), but it was nice to have outside validation. Whenever Mrs. Levy heard about people who left Orthodoxy, she felt a pang of insecurity. Did they know something she didn't? Were they smarter than she was? Did they now look at Orthodox Jews as silly, backward, superstitious? But with Batsheva choosing it on her own, she could breathe a little easier.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary

“He sprinted away, but no matter how fast he ran, he would never be able to escape his own self.”
― Tova Mirvis, We Would Never: A Novel

“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

“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

“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

“It was better to say nothing than to have your excitement met with indifference; better not to talk than to find you were talking to yourself. In”
― Tova Mirvis, Visible City

“Naomi remembered all the times she had decided to daven because she saw someone else with an open siddur, when she had made a bracha before eating because someone else did.... She couldn't imagine how hard it was to do these things on your own. But at the same time, there must be a certain freedom that came with it. You would know that you were doing the mitzvot because you wanted to.”
― Tova Mirvis

“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

“Tomorrow Grandma and I are going to plant magic flowers in the garden.”
― Tova Mirvis, We Would Never: A Novel

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“There are no provisions in the separation agreement currently being negotiated for who retains”
― 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

“I just didn’t have the strength to keep everything. All I thought about was getting through each day.”
― Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary

“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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