How will her leaving affect them? How will she raise them with her still-Orthodox ex-husband, and how will they grapple with the fact that Mom doesn’t share their practices anymore? This is a memoir of deep feeling, of the necessity of living authentically and finding a way to navigate the difficulties that develop along the way. The weight of it all becomes too much for Tova, although now, she has three children to consider. Follow the line and you’re in, loved and cherished step outside, even a single toe, and people start talking. Marrying an Orthodox man doesn’t help Tova feels even more constricted than ever.īut in her community, questioning isn’t really accepted. And under all these restrictions, Tova chafed. She attended Jewish schools, sat in the women’s section of the synagogue, wore the clothing deemed acceptable for a Modern Orthodox girl, and almost everyone she knew was also Orthodox.

Tova Mirvis was raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish home in Memphis, Tennessee. Thank goodness for interlibrary loan so I could still knock this one out! Well… The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) had been on my list long enough that it was no longer available in ebook format through my library. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to read all those ebooks on my list. Through no fault of their own, they linger, unread and unloved, until finally, we get the kick in the pants we need to tackle them. Sometimes books we really want to read end up on our TBR and…that’s where they stay.

The book of separation tova mirvis