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The book of separation : a memoir /

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017Description: pages cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780544520523
  • 0544520521
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 813/.54 B 23
LOC classification:
  • PS3563.I7217 Z46 2017
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Holdings
Item type Current library Home library Collection Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Standard Loan Coeur d'Alene Library Adult Biography Coeur d'Alene Library Book B MIRVIS MIRVIS (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available 50610021068346
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world



Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family.



But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is. This will mean forging a new way of life not just for herself, but for her children, who are struggling with what the divorce and her new status as "not Orthodox" mean for them.



This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. To free the part of yourself that has been suppressed, even if it means walking away from the only life you've ever known. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

I stood before a panel of rabbis. I was dressed in the outfit of the Orthodox Jewish woman I was supposed to be: a below-the-knee navy skirt and a cardigan buttoned over a short-sleeved shirt that without the sweater would have been considered immodest. But no matter how covered I was, I felt exposed. What kind of shameful woman, I imagined the rabbis thinking, leaves her marriage; what kind of mother overturns her life? Yet a month shy of my fortieth birthday, after almost seventeen years of marriage and three children, I had upended it all.      On one side of the conference room, the rabbis, in beards, black suits, and dark fedora hats, huddled together to examine the get  ​-- ​the divorce document I was waiting for them to confer upon me. It was black ink hand-scribed on beige parchment, written on behalf of my husband the prior week, when he had come before this same group of assembled men. It didn't matter that I was the one to end our marriage. Jewish law dictated that only a man had the power to issue a divorce.      It also didn't matter how I felt about being in this conference room before this religious tribunal whose job it was to enforce the very rules that I had long felt shackled by. My role was to remain silent as I followed the careful choreography of this ancient ceremony in which no deviations were allowed. A misspelled name, and the document could be nullified. Any tiny irregularity in the ceremony, and the validity of the divorce might one day be called into question.      To ensure that the court had the right woman, one of the rabbis had been deputized to verify my identity. On my cell phone the week before, I'd confirmed that I had no nicknames, no aliases or pseudonyms. My father, I answered, also had none. This kind of scrutiny wasn't new to me. I'd lived my life among the minute rules of Orthodox Judaism. Until now, I'd complied even when I questioned them ​-- ​pretending when necessary, doing anything in order to stay inside. I might have fantasized about leaving, but it was never something I thought I'd actually do. If you left, you were in danger of losing everyone you loved. If you left, you were in danger of losing yourself.      When every letter of the document had been deemed correct, the rabbis stood. I tried to keep my face impassive, to pretend that nothing here could touch me.      One of the oldest of the rabbis read the document out loud, in Aramaic, dated the year 5772 from the creation of the world, in the city of Boston, by the Ocean Atlantic.      I, Tova Aliza, was released from the house of my husband.      I, Tova Aliza, was permitted to have authority over myself.      The words might have been ancient, but the freedom they promised seemed radical.      The piece of beige parchment was carefully folded into a small triangle, and I was given further directions: One of the rabbis would drop the parchment into my hands and I was supposed to clasp it to my chest to show I was taking possession. Without saying a word, I was to turn and walk from the room. As soon as the door shut behind me, the divorce would go into effect.      The rabbi who had been appointed as my husband's emissary came over and stood directly in front of me. The other rabbis remained behind the table to witness and thus validate this act. I stood silently before him as instructed, but I knew that I had arrived not just at the end of my marriage but at the edge of the supposed-to-be world. Until now, this had been the only world that existed. Here was the way the world was made, and here was the way the world worked. Here was what I was to do and here was who I was supposed to be. Every decision I'd made up to this point had been stacked on top of these truths. But once the foundation had started to shake, everything else did as well. One by one, the pieces had begun to fall.      The rabbi dangled the folded piece of parchment from his fingers. I cupped my hands and waited.   PART I   New Year, New You   It is September, the first Rosh Hashanah since the divorce, and I've set out on my own.      My three children are with their father, at his parents' house, where I'd spent the past decade of these holidays. My parents, sister, and grandparents are at home, in Memphis, where they will observe this celebration of the Jewish New Year in the Orthodox synagogue I attended every week of my childhood. My friends are in their homes, cooking for family gatherings. My brother, along with four of his eight children, has traveled with throngs of fellow Breslover Chasidim, an ultra-Orthodox sect, to Ukraine, the site of their spiritual pilgrimage. And I am fleeing to Kripalu, a yoga and meditation retreat in Western Massachusetts.      Until this year, I celebrated every Rosh Hashanah the same way I had the one before. To spend this holiday anywhere but in the long solemn hours of synagogue would have been unfathomable. Now, without the rules wrapped tightly around me, I no longer know what to do. Dreading the arrival of this year's High Holy Days, I'd considered pretending they didn't exist and decided to go to Kripalu only because yoga and meditation seemed to be the obligatory way of moving on. ("I assume you're doing yoga," an acquaintance said upon hearing the news of my divorce.) I've told few people where I'm going for the holiday because to do so would be to admit that I'm no longer Orthodox, something that I'm still unsure of myself.      Kripalu is three hours from my house in the Boston suburb of Newton, a highway drive that until recently would have been impossible for me unless I'd studied the maps in search of easy back roads and plotted a route that felt sufficiently safe. For almost a decade of living in the Boston area, I'd been gripped by a fear of driving, steadfastly avoiding rotaries, bridges, and tunnels, driving only when I had to, wishing I could still be in a driver's-ed car equipped with a passenger-side brake and someone who could stop me if I went too fast or too far. I was terrified of getting lost, most of all terrified of the highway. I couldn't bear the sight of those green signs announcing the Mass. Pike or I-95, couldn't merge into the stream of speeding cars. I had nightmares of making a wrong turn onto a wrong street that would lead me to an entry ramp that would take me onto a highway from which I'd never find my way back.      Yet I'm now on the Mass. Pike; the cars are passing me, too many and too fast, and, still shocked that I'm driving on the highway, I clutch the steering wheel, worried about getting into an accident. The biggest fear, though, is not of any injury I might sustain but of the fact that then people will know I'd planned to spend Rosh Hashanah at some suspect retreat center instead of praying in synagogue for a year of blessing, a year of goodness. At the start of all other years, I knew exactly what sort of goodness I was supposed to be praying for, but on this new year, there is no ready prayer, even if I could bring myself to utter one.      It's not just where I'm going for the holiday, but when ​-- ​I'd left too late and now the sun is setting and the clock on my dashboard reminds me how close it is to the deadline of exactly 6:08 p.m. that, until recently, would have divided my day into unalterable domains of allowed and forbidden. It's forbidden to drive on this holiday, and it still feels unfathomable each time I break one of the religious rules prohibiting the use of electricity, against riding in a car. Every transgression feels like a first, each one new and destabilizing.      I speed up ​-- ​better to break the laws of Massachusetts than the laws of religion that are still binding in my head. If I go faster, maybe I can make it to Kripalu before driving becomes forbidden. But the sun is sinking lower in the sky, and no matter how fast I go, I won't arrive before Rosh Hashanah officially begins. The only option now in accordance with Jewish law would be to pull over by the side of the road, knock on someone's door, and ask to stay for the next forty-eight hours, as though I were a hiker stranded in an unexpected blizzard. If this were a Jewish fairy tale of the sort I'd been raised on, I'd wander in the forest of Central Massachusetts until, in a clearing, with just minutes until the holiday began, I'd come upon a small cabin bathed in golden light and inside, lo and behold, a nice Jewish couple, probably childless, with the holiday candles ready to be lit, an extra place at their table waiting just for me. Excerpted from The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Novelist Mirvis (The Ladies Auxiliary) has fallen out of love with both her husband and Orthodox Judaism-and is struggling not only to articulate what that means to her but also how to define such disconnection. -Mirvis is not in limbo throughout this book. As she begins her memoir, she documents what it feels like to leave her husband and religion; her only hint at what caused the break is that she can no longer "shape myself into a form that felt too tight." The author has shared custody of three -school-age -children and a budding romance, both of which she negotiates with gentle aplomb. Her interior narrative voice draws readers in, asking if she can be loved for who she is, not who she was, especially in her withdrawal from her natal religion. VERDICT A soothing picture of personal and religious divorce.-SC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Novelist Mirvis (Visible City) intimately chronicles her divorce and her separation from modern Orthodox Judaism in this bold memoir. After a lifetime devoted to religion and her family, she decided to navigate the secular world for the first time. She became a single parent, sharing custody of her three children with her ex-husband Aaron, whom she met as an undergrad at Columbia University. Throughout, she reflects on both the psychological tension and joy of choosing a new lifestyle, one in which she drives on Shabbat and celebrates new holidays such as Halloween. Her children, too, go through their own transformative relationship to religion: her oldest son, Noam, remained Orthodox, while the middle child, Josh, like her, chose to explore a freedom outside of Orthodox Judaism. He eats nonkosher pizza for the first time and has late-night discussions about whether he believes in God. Mirvis's account focuses less on the oppressiveness she felt within the religion and more on the emotional impact of separating and starting over. Hers is a story of grief and rebirth. She is compassionate and judicious in her portrayal of Orthodox Judaism, even as she describes its repressive attitudes toward women; she also discusses the diverse Jewish lifestyles, from Hasidic to secular. Her personal journey makes for an introspective and fascinating story. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

The Orthodox traditions of Judaism, explains Mirvis, enact and memorialize divorce through the preparation and ceremonial presentation of a get, an Aramaic word that can be translated as a book of separation. In her memoir titled for this process, Mirvis chronicles both her separation from her husband of 17 years and the long journey of separation from the Orthodox family, community, and worldview in which she was raised. Looking both backward and forward, Mirvis recounts with candor and close observation the social, psychological, and spiritual travail precipitated by leaving her narrow but well-known world and entering a more secular, unfamiliar territory. Her tale revisits the seeds of doubt that first troubled her as a young, Orthodox woman as well as the upheaval she feared and resisted while those doubts matured into an irresistible urge to depart from all that was intimately familiar to her. Sharing the personal details and drama of her journey, Mirvis recounts the arduous path so many must take to emerge into their own, true identities.--Dworman, Ross Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A novelist's account of how she broke away from Orthodox Judaism to make a new life in the secular world.Mirvis (Visible City, 2014, etc.) grew up in an observant Jewish family that believed "without God there is no meaning. Without the Torah, there is no goodness." Though outwardly obedient to the tenants of her faith, she privately questioned the truth of what she was taught. After graduating from high school, the author went to Israel. For one year, she immersed herself in the study of Jewish religious texts and prayed to be forgiven for her willful ways. "I used to be a little bad," she writes, "but now I was becoming entirely good." When Mirvis began attending Columbia University, she "made few friends who weren't Orthodox." By the end of her senior year, she had married a fellow Orthodox Jew who had none of the dramatic "hard edges" other crushes had possessed in abundance. Fearful of her own rogue impulses, Mirvis strove to be a model Orthodox Jewish wife. She kept Shabbat and a kosher home, and she covered her hair and body according to traditional rules that governed married women. But the inner voice that had caused her to question her faith as a young girl and the self that could not fully reconcile her feminism with Orthodox teachings would not be silenced. Her first "rebellions" consisted of wearing pants and uncovering her hair. They became more pronounced when she began telling stories about Orthodox characters that "wrestled, doubted, and strayed." Realizing she needed freedom to express a truth that had been trapped within her, she began the difficult journey that led her out of her marriage and away from Orthodox Judaism. The author's sensitive thematic treatment of belonging and individuality and her candor about the terror she experienced leaving the only community she had ever known makes for moving, inspiring reading. A thoughtful, courageous memoir of family, religion, and self-discovery. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

TOVA MIRVIS is the author of three novels: Visible City , The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary, a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various publications including the New York Times , the Boston Globe Magazine , the Huffington Post , and Poets and Writers , and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR.

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