The Book of Separation

by Tova Mirvis

  Now, a separation comes earlier than it otherwise would. There is the need, according to our team of therapists and the stack of divorce books I’ve checked out from the library, to remind the kids that even though their parents don’t love each other as they once did, their love for their children remains permanent and unchanged. But despite every reassurance that I can offer, I cannot shelter them or any of us from the pain. There are areas of their lives to which I have little access, as though when they’re not with me, they cease to be mine. Suffering now from my own form of separation anxiety, I have the urge to cling to them as they sometimes do to me.

  In the sukkah, this temporary hut that is half sheltered, half exposed, we are supposed to feel the impermanence of our lives. We leave our secure houses and go outside, where we dwell more vulnerably in God’s hands. The God part, I’m no longer sure about, but this year I need no reenactment of impermanence, no reminder that everything seemingly fixed can topple.

  Not Ours

  After the onslaught of Jewish holidays, the last thing I want is another celebration, but Halloween is a week away.

  “Why can’t we trick-or-treat?” Josh asks.

  “It’s not a Jewish holiday,” I answer automatically—the standard Orthodox explanation, as though this year were no different than any other and my kids would still do as I’d once done, wait with bated breath for the doorbell to ring, then hand out candy to the costumed kids. This was as close as my siblings and I could get to a holiday that—my mother explained—wasn’t ours.

  “Neither is Thanksgiving, and we celebrate that,” Josh shoots back.

  “It wasn’t something we did as kids,” I say.

  “But didn’t you want to?” he asks.

  “It never seemed like an option,” I say, and I tell him how each October, my elementary school principal sent home a letter detailing the pagan origins of Halloween and stating unequivocally that Jews shouldn’t participate. Despite the letter, a few of my not-exactly-Orthodox classmates did go trick-or-treating, and though it was never acknowledged outright, there were murmurings the next day in school about costumes and candy. Having taken to heart the admonitions of the letter, I found it hard to imagine some of my friends, usually dressed in their regulation school uniforms, costumed like ghosts or witches and let loose in the night. Halloween was nearly as foreign as Christmas, when our neighbors’ houses twinkled with lights, and we sometimes drove around to see the most elaborate displays. There was always a sense of loneliness to these outings and to the season. We were surrounded by something that had nothing to do with us.

  “Ask Daddy,” I say when the Halloween disputations continue unabated, afraid to allow them to go trick-or-treating—one more change for which I will be responsible.

  Though I sometimes write Aaron long e-mails in my head, I don’t know how to broach the complicated subject of our religious differences. There can be no calm conversation between us. 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. There are no provisions in the separation agreement currently being negotiated for who retains the rights over the kids’ observances and beliefs, but even so, I worry about the Orthodox expectation that I will cede all decisions of observance to him, that though I am noncompliant, I will teach my children that Orthodoxy is still where the truth resides.

  Confusing for the kids. I hear my mother’s voice in my head, but a larger threat looms.

  “Are you worried a judge could hold not being Orthodox against you?” she asked me a few weeks earlier when we talked, as we always did, about the final divorce hearing, which is in December.

  My mother is right to be worried. We both read an article about a woman in an ultra-Orthodox enclave in New York who ceased to be Orthodox and then lost custody of her kids. I hear about children purposely alienated from a parent who is no longer religious, community members hiring lawyers on behalf of the still-Orthodox spouse, claiming that they are merely acting in the best interest of the kids. 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. You are allowed to leave as long as you surrender your children at the border. To your kids’ questions, you should offer answers you don’t believe. Agree to a daily, sometimes hourly, enforcement of rules that feel like iron bars.

  “I live in the United States of America,” I proclaimed in response.

  “I don’t want you to be so angry,” my mother murmured. You weren’t supposed to be angry—this was a flaw that would invalidate any complaint. But then and now, I am angry—at this presumption that religious rules trumped even a parent’s love and presence. A parent or child could be bound and sacrificed, if necessary, on its altar. You are harming your children if you say what you really believe. You are taking them off the one true path. No matter how often I tell myself I have left, these Orthodox edicts continue to live in my head, unwelcome guests who will never shut up. In all my years of fantasizing about leaving, I hadn’t understood that you could go yet remain stuck inside. You can partake of the pleasures, but you will never enjoy them. Now when I think about that Chasidic tale my friend told me, I hear not merely a warning but gleeful satisfaction. It wasn’t the actions that held you tightest but the imprint they made in your mind. I’m realizing that this was an intentional part of the design, like one of those invisible dog fences installed at the edge of a yard. Others might have the illusion that you could run free, but born to this, you always knew where the electrified boundary lay.

  Josh asks his father about trick-or-treating, as I suggest, and later reports back that Aaron said that if they were with him on that night, they wouldn’t be allowed to go, but because Halloween falls on my night, the decision is mine, a response that makes me feel surprised but grateful. We are like rulers of neighboring kingdoms—we have no jurisdiction beyond our own borders. Our children are dual citizens. I have the urge to check the calendars to see how the next decade of Halloweens will fall. Is this how all decisions will be made? Though there can be no open discussion between us, his response makes me wonder if he is as uncertain as I am about how to parent with someone who has different beliefs.

  At the pluralist Jewish day school that Noam and Josh attend—itself a departure from what was expected of us—the teachers talk of how different families do different things. We had nervously visited the school when, years before, Noam was unhappy at the local Modern Orthodox elementary school. It never occurred to us that our children would go anywhere else, but every afternoon when I picked Noam up, I saw how unhappy he was. On that first visit to what would eventually become Noam’s new school, I’d stood in the back of the room used as a synagogue. The boys and girls sat together as a female rabbi played the guitar and another teacher beat a bongo drum. I wasn’t supposed to be so moved by what I saw—this, after all, was wrong—yet I felt disappointed that this pluralist, progressive community couldn’t be ours. If we sent our son here, how would we ensure that he remained Orthodox? How would we navigate the complications of people who didn’t practice as we did? Though we worried what our community would think, we decided to make the change because Noam was so unhappy. And it worked—he looked forward to going to school each morning and came home excited about what he had learned. It was his first experience of being with people who didn’t observe as we did, but he proudly wore his yarmulke and understood that others believed differently. For me, as well, the school became a place where I felt at home. There was no single way to be. Engage and wrestle with the differences, the school taught. Be willing to have conversations with other families about what they do. But for us now, that message needs to be taken further. Inside our family, we do different things. Inside our family, we are different fa
milies.

  “There’s not one good thing about being Jewish,” Josh declares angrily as I tuck him into bed at night. His resistance to religion has been steadily mounting. For a number of years before the divorce, he hadn’t wanted to go to synagogue. For the past year, he has complained about having to study Jewish subjects in school and has refused to wear a yarmulke.

  “Not one good thing?” I ask.

  “Chanukah,” he concedes. He means, of course, the presents, as opposed to any theological affinity with the holiday that celebrates a small band of Jews who fought for religious freedom from the Hellenizing Greeks. But that doesn’t forestall his critique of Judaism, which begins with the problem of believing in the existence of God due to the reporting of miracles, in particular the notion that God spoke to the Jews on Mount Sinai.

  “If I had a megaphone, I could lie and say, ‘I’m God, listen to me,’” he says. The Egyptians, he reasons, drowned in the Red Sea because they were in chariots.

  Before I can offer him one of the proofs that the rabbis pre-­sent to insurgent questioners, he tears up.

  “Do you know how many things I can’t do that I care about, all because of something I don’t care about?” he says.

  He can’t play on basketball teams that practice on Shabbat. He can’t eat nonkosher pizza like his non-Orthodox friends from school. Once, a year before, he went out for nonkosher pizza with those friends, but he had done so knowing it wasn’t allowed.

  “Do you really believe God cares about pizza?” he presses me.

  “I don’t,” I admit.

  “Then why do I have to?” he asks.

  Curled up next to Josh in his bed, I hear in my head the script I once would have followed, lines that would indoctrinate Josh with the belief that we are special and separate so he would accept that he has all he needs right where he is. If that fails, I’m supposed to select words that will wield guilt and instill fear.

  “I’m forced, all the time,” he says. “Do you even know how that feels?”

  “I do know,” I say.

  He sits up in bed, trying to see me better. He looks as though he is contemplating the farthest reaches of existence.

  “I’ve been Orthodox my whole life and now I’ve decided I don’t want to be,” I tell him.

  “Have you ever . . .” he starts, but then he pauses, apparently deciding whether he dares to venture further. I await the rest of his question nervously.

  “Have you ever had nonkosher pizza?” he asks. He lies back down. As I put together my response, his eyes are trained on me, his hand on my arm as though he needs to hold me here in case I float away.

  “I have,” I admit.

  He doesn’t ask for details—for now, it’s enough to simply absorb this new fact about me.

  “Will you take me for pizza?” he asks a few minute later, his voice softer and heavier with impending sleep.

  I murmur that I will one day but I worry what Aaron would think if he heard this conversation. I’m unsure of what else to say. I hug Josh as he drifts off to sleep, not sure anymore how much of myself I can share with my own children, equally unsure where the separation is between the kids’ stories and mine. In motherhood, all of you is demanded, but sometimes that means giving your children the parts of you that are uncertain and unresolved.

  Instead of hurrying to finish the bedtime routine, I linger, aware that the era of cuddling is waning. Josh is half little boy, half preteen; each time I look at him, a different version greets me. One day, surely, I will wake up and, seemingly overnight, new boundaries will have been set in place; snuggling with his mother will belong to the distant past.

  When I think he’s fallen asleep, I try to extricate myself, but as I disentangle my arm, he surprises me, still awake.

  “God,” he announces softly but vehemently, “is a poop-head.”

  I take Josh and Layla trick-or-treating; Noam has other plans and doesn’t want to join us. We go with non-Orthodox Jewish friends who don’t believe that by asking for chocolate, they are becoming pagans or idolaters—they regard this as an American tradition that doesn’t need to mean more. Their neighborhood is a short distance from the center of the Orthodox community, those few blocks assuaging my fear that we’ll knock on a door and a former fellow Orthodox congregant will answer. It crosses my mind as the kids assemble their costumes that the best way for me to hide would be to wear one as well.

  My mother had called as we were heading out, and I didn’t mention our plans for the evening. “Can you call me later?” I asked. Surely at the age of forty, I’m too old to be hiding Halloween from my mother, but I wanted to get off the phone before I gave anything away.

  By early evening, families are out in groups, the mood friendly and neighborly. I hadn’t realized how communal this night would feel, like an evening block party. As the kids and I walk from street to street, I self-consciously scan for any configuration in which adults don’t come two by two. I steal glimpses into people’s homes. From this vantage point, everyone else’s life seems neatly ordered, pleasant, and intact. I should know better, yet I fall for the illusion every time.

  “Happy Halloween,” we call to witches and princesses, Red Sox players and vampires.

  “Happy Halloween,” I say as a man hands a chocolate bar to Layla, who is dressed like the Tooth Fairy.

  So this is how you do it in America, I text William as we walk. William, of course, went trick-or-treating every year with his kids and finds it funny that this ordinary event is so foreign to me.

  My mind searches for a familiar correlative in order to ease the disorientation that makes me feel like an immigrant in my own town. Though the holiday of Purim, with its costumes and baskets of candy, is the obvious comparison, I think longingly of a ritual the night before Passover, when we made our way through a dark house, candles in hand, on a scavenger hunt of sorts, searching for any remnant of bread, which was forbidden once the holiday began. Each time we came upon one of the cubes of bread my mother had placed on bookshelves and dressers beforehand, we shook our heads in mock surprise. Bread the night before Passover! Using the light of the candle, my father swept the piece of bread with a feather—carefully, carefully, so as not to leave behind any crumbs—into a wooden spoon and then deposited it in a plastic bag. The next morning, the pieces of bread were burned in a small foil pan in the driveway as we recited a blessing declaring that any forbidden food still in our possession—knowingly or unknowingly—should be like the dust of the earth. Anything we had was no longer ours.

  When the three of us arrive home from trick-or-treating, Josh and Layla dump the candy on the living-room floor and the initial gorge ensues.

  “I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this my whole life,” Josh declares.

  “We went trick-or-treating,” Layla gleefully informs my mother, who calls back as the candy binge reaches its sugary height.

  I get on the phone with her for only a few minutes and say little. When I hang up, I pilfer some chocolate, wondering if my kids and I have newly laid claim to a holiday, and a world, that is slowly becoming ours.

  Between This Day and All Others

  “Is it a Mommy Shabbat?” Layla asks as I drive her home from nursery school on a November Friday afternoon.

  Though she’s not entirely sure of the days of the week, the schedule is fixed in her mind, the days divided into Mommy and Daddy. Next to me in the car is the picture of the two of us that she made that day in school, a figure with wild brown curls holding the hand of a smaller figure with equally wild yellow curls, crowns on both our heads. In life, too, her blond curls make a halo. Her imaginary world is thick and fully formed, the real effortlessly intertwined with the pretend. She dwells in a kingdom of fairies and princesses and she sings of a Disney version of true love—but has the idea of happily-ever-after already been upended?

  “It’s a Mommy Shabbat,” I tell her, relieved that I don’t have to be apart from the kids for two days. Even so, fear about Shabbat
looms—I worry the kids will feel both the divorce and the religious divide more acutely on this day. For me, Shabbat now comes every other week, on the weekends I’m with the kids, as though God too is subject to a custody agreement. Shabbat, we are taught, is the most beautiful day of the week, yet for me it’s not the day of rest but the day of discomfort. I’m burned through by it, soured and used up by all the years of feeling trapped. Just the word Shabbat makes my body tense and my throat tighten—a late-onset allergy.

  And yet, even so, half an hour before sundown—in November, this is a little after five o’clock—I’m in my kitchen cooking Shabbat dinner. The kitchen in my house is still strictly kosher; the rules are so ingrained in me that I follow them without having to think about it. In this regard, my guiding mantra is to do as I have always done, with the same level of meticulousness, in order to ensure that my family will still eat in my house.

  I pull out ingredients, and the countertop grows crowded with the food I’m preparing—a large Shabbat dinner, though not the same dishes I once made. When I unpacked in this house, I’d stored my most frequently used cookbooks on the highest shelf, next to the recipe binder I’d compiled when I was newly married. It contained recipes I’d copied from my aunt, whose beautiful Shabbat meals I aspired to make, apricot-glazed chicken and carrot kugel and sweet pecan-crusted noodle ring.

  A few minutes before Shabbat officially starts, the air becomes thick with prohibition. I’m not yet finished cooking, something that once would have caused me to anxiously race to finish in time. I would have a list in my head of all that I needed to do before the exact moment Shabbat descended. Had I remembered to preheat the oven, since it was forbidden to turn it on? Had I remembered to turn off the bedroom lights, since I wouldn’t be able to do so later?

  “Shabbat’s in five minutes,” Noam calls to me from his room, the one pocket of this house where Shabbat exists as it always has.