The Book of Separation

by Tova Mirvis

  I sat down at my desk. The words rushed out of me. There was a conflict, a terrible one. To write required freedom, but I didn’t think you could create freely with the admonitions of Orthodoxy looking over your shoulder. Did you have to show your rabbi any potentially controversial scene and ask whether it was permissible—here, too, were you subject to inspection? What did it mean to write knowing you’d be viewed suspiciously by your community if you pushed past the comfort zone? What about stories that didn’t confirm the official public version of Orthodoxy—what about stories that wanted to challenge or subvert? Even though what I’d written didn’t overtly cross any line—there was no attack against Orthodox doctrine, no open disavowal of the rules—I knew that I had become willing to walk closer to the edge.

  “I know what I’m supposed to say, but I hate writing something I don’t believe,” I told Aaron. I showed him my new responses as I debated whether to send them. By now, the uncertainty I used to see in his eyes had started to look like fear—not just of what I was saying but of who I was becoming. By growing into a stronger version of myself, I was endangering us.

  “I don’t know if I can stay inside much longer,” I said softly to Aaron. I still carried the residual sense that I was bad to feel this way, but I was exhausted from cloaking what I really thought, for fear of being too much of myself. Now when I confided in my mother, the words I’m done erupted out of me, but I couldn’t possibly mean anything by it. “I’m done,” I still said to Aaron when we fought, but I told myself I didn’t mean that either. I had stood in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah the prior year and pulled my hat low over my face so I could continue to hide, felt like I was shrinking myself into smaller and smaller boxes, felt as if my head, my whole body, was being compressed. All this, yet I did nothing. Nothing could change, not me, not him, not the laws around us, not the feeling between us. The story we had once told about how we, so young and so innocent, had fallen in love now felt like a cautionary tale.

  “I know, but I want to be Orthodox anyway,” Aaron said pleadingly.

  I hit Send on my e-mail before I could stop myself.

  Would you be willing to speak at the conference? one of the organizers asked me in an e-mail a few weeks after I’d sent in my revised responses. He was appreciative of my willingness to be so honest and I agreed to come—I didn’t want to feel that the only way to remain inside was to hide what I thought. There were Orthodox writers, of course, who didn’t feel the conflict as I did, but I could no longer say what I didn’t believe. If I was going to stand before this group, I was going to say what I really thought—even to do this seemed a transgression. And yet it seemed so clear to me, so true and necessary, to say out loud that here and everywhere, people lived and loved and doubted and despaired; people strayed and people wandered and people believed and people did not. All protestations of contentment to the contrary, this lay inside Orthodoxy as well. This was my personal truth, but this was also one of the truths of this world.

  The conference was held at Yeshiva University in New York City, in a hall that happened to be housing the student art show. Behind the speaker’s podium, a large banner proclaimed THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. Waiting for my turn, I observed the other women in the room, the minority by far. I looked around—I was the only woman not covering her hair. Out of respect, I had worn a skirt, but I couldn’t make myself put on a hat.

  I’d given so many book talks that I could usually speak before a crowd without trepidation, but this time I was nervous. It was too late to turn back—the rabbis had my responses in front of them, so I summarized what I’d written. I quoted Cynthia Ozick that to be a novelist was “to seize unrestraint and freedom, even demonic freedom, imagination with its reins cut loose.” By the time I finished speaking, the mood in the room had tightened. A slew of hands awaited me. In a closed world, the borders had to be protected, but sometimes the invaders came from within.

  Was I saying rabbinic authority did not apply to me?

  Was I saying I didn’t believe that fiction needed to fall within the acceptable norms of Orthodoxy?

  Was I denying that every art form came with its own limitations? Was I saying that there could be no boundaries at all?

  Should we not concede that, based on what I was saying, all was lost—there was no possibility of art and religion coexisting, and we should all just go home?

  I looked out at them, rabbis from synagogues in which I had prayed, from schools that I had attended. These men were the deciders and enforcers of the law, and they were right to be bothered by what I was saying. I didn’t believe in their ultimate power. I wouldn’t submit my artistic freedom to their rules.

  I find what Tova Mirvis is saying to be incredible, one rabbi said.

  Praise! I thought. Acceptance!

  Then he continued on. A doctor has to ask a rabbi. A lawyer has to ask a rabbi. An accountant has to ask a rabbi. But not Tova Mirvis. If you wanted to run a brothel just because you had a talent for it, would that be okay as well?

  There was a chuckle and a small gasp of surprise. I grew calmer. As though I’d rehearsed this moment, I spoke in a voice long in coming with words that had slowly collected. I spoke, at last, with what felt like all of myself.

  What about the messy reality of people’s lives that differed from the mandated story? What about stories that claimed that people didn’t always know, didn’t always believe, didn’t always observe; stories about people who weren’t always content, about marriages that weren’t always happy, about children who didn’t always follow the path?

  What about art that wasn’t interested in making people see the beauty of Orthodoxy?

  What about art that could unsettle you, change you, unleash you?

  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 live, 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.

  “You can’t create freely if you’re always aware of where the borders of permissibility lie,” I said.

  “We can’t tell our kids ‘Think outside the box’ as a slogan but not really mean it,” I said, gesturing to the words on the royal-blue felt banner behind me. Pad the box, decorate it, disguise it, enlarge it—but no matter how small it felt, bend arm over leg over neck to remain squarely within it.

  This moment, standing in 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.

  The next Shabbat, we finished dinner; the blue-and-white china dishes waited to be cleared, the remnants of soup and roasted vegetables needed to be parceled into containers and put into the fridge where the light was taped shut so it didn’t turn on when I opened the door. 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 th
ought, as I always did, about my mother and 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?

  All through dinner, Aaron had looked worried; he knew something was wrong but didn’t ask what it was. I’d told him about the Orthodox Forum, but we’d both assumed that I would back down, as I always did. I might be upset, but it was impossible that I would ever act on those feelings. This was one of the truths of our marriage. I don’t think either of us thought I would ever do anything about what I felt. We both believed that I was too afraid. But the feeling of standing before all those rabbis at the Orthodox Forum replayed continuously in my head. There, I hadn’t hidden what I thought, and now it felt hard to do so anywhere. I couldn’t sit at the Shabbat table, not this night, not any night, if I had to pretend.

  I went upstairs to the bathroom, my phone smuggled in the pocket of my sweatshirt. Even with the door closed, I could hear the kids talking and running around, the bedtime routine waiting to be done, all of them in need of me to keep the night in motion. Somewhere buried in the basement was a one-time favorite toy of the kids, a set of plastic gears on a magnetized board, all of them needing to be in contact with the middle gear, the sole one turned by battery power. Watching the kids assemble the gears so that each of them was connected to that center gear, I’d always felt a sense of kinship: that one gear couldn’t stop moving without the rest of them coming to a stop as well.

  In a few minutes, I would go back downstairs, but right now, I made sure the bathroom door was locked. I stared at my phone. Could I actually break a rule of Shabbat, or would the forces of taboo and guilt, if not actual belief, hold me back? And if that failed, maybe the entwined loyalty to my marriage would keep me inside.

  But no, I knew even more strongly now. No, I would no longer pretend. No, I could no longer hide myself away.

  I turned on my phone—my first official desecration of Shabbat.

  One sentence played in my mind, and this time I wasn’t as afraid.

  I do not believe it is true.

  For the first time, I could face those words without flinching.

  I can no longer live a life I don’t believe in.

  One sentence set free another sentence.

  My marriage works only if I am willing to hide away the truest parts of myself.

  My marriage works only as long as I agree not to grow.

  I sat quietly with these words and allowed them to fill me with a sadness so large I felt like I could walk around inside it. Everything I was supposed to believe was cracking, a world I had wanted to think was vast and true suddenly small and breakable, a glass-domed object I held in my dangerous hands. My marriage and my Orthodoxy had been intertwined from the start. Leaving one would make it possible to leave the other.

  It was terrible to think this, and it would be even more terrible to act on it, but I had arrived nonetheless at this moment of knowing. Until now, those words I’m done had been one more fantasy I didn’t have to act on. They hadn’t moved me toward action but consoled me and kept me inside. Nothing can change, my mantra of so many years. Nothing can change. All this time, I saw it as a prison, a curse, but I hadn’t realized that it was also a crutch, an excuse, a prayer. Change felt as alarming as anything I might have done—so afraid of falling, so afraid of finding myself severed from all that was secure. All this time, I’d preferred to stay unhappy rather than take a chance on what was unknown.

  I flushed the toilet to cover any sound that might escape the pink-tiled walls of the bathroom. I checked my e-mail, went on Facebook, read the New York Times. This might have seemed like an insignificant trespass, but if you were stitched inside by so many small rules, maybe you needed to undo them one at a time. I knew that leaving didn’t happen with a single transgression, but if nothing else, it was a declaration to myself.

  I felt oddly calm. This doubt had been here for so many years and now it emerged with a force that surprised me—this, the price to be paid for all those years lying in wait. I sat a while longer, flushed the toilet again to cover my prolonged absence, leaned my forehead against the cool tile of the wall. In the years in which I’d lain awake plotting escapes, I’d imagined some dramatic moment of departure. But sometimes leaving happens more quietly, not with any grand proclamations but with a single, still action.

  “Do you believe the marriage to be irreparable?” the harried, black-robed judge asks as Aaron and I stand before her and our marriage is officially brought to an end.

  It’s a little late for this question and the ones that perfunctorily follow.

  “Is there any reasonable chance of reconciliation?”

  “Have you entered this agreement of your own free will?”

  Yes. No. Yes. A few more questions, a cursory glance at the agreement, and it’s over. There is still a ninety-day waiting period before we will be officially divorced, but that’s only a formality. We walk out of the courtroom, Aaron and me and our group of lawyers, to the mezzanine, where we awkwardly confer over how we will transfer the outstanding credit card debts.

  It’s over and it feels like it will never be over. You can leave a marriage but you can never leave a divorce.

  For one quick moment before we both depart from the courthouse, Aaron and I look at each other. All I want to do is avert my eyes but all I can do is keep staring. Here finally is the sadness I had long feared, but after all these months, it’s a little easier to face. There is no choice, anyway—the sorrow stands in my path, no passage granted until I can cross through it to the other side. The anger has been a fire that raged and burned; it was a fuel pack strapped to my back, propelling me out. The sadness was the smoke that hovered afterward. After all the fighting and all the accusations and all the terrible anger, the sadness coats the barest of facts. It surrounds the truest of sentences. Once we were married, and now we are not.

  The Freedom Trail

  “It’s a Daddy Shabbat,” I tell Layla.

  When Aaron arrives to pick up the kids, I hug Noam and Josh goodbye and lift Layla over the snow that has been piled by the curb for weeks now. Not wearing a coat, I shiver as I buckle Layla into his car and whisper that I love her and will see her on Sunday.

  “I always miss you,” she says into my ear.

  “I always miss you,” I whisper back as my heart clenches. Here is the pain, the price still to be paid.

  It’s getting close to Shabbat by the time they drive off. On the weeknights when they go to Aaron’s house, a longing for them sweeps over me, but even more so now, before Shabbat, when there will be no way to reach them. For this one day, I feel as if my children—my parents and sister too—are sealed off. With phone use forbidden, they are out of range, as though they are, or I am, in the farthest reaches of the wilderness.

  When I go back inside, I don’t light the candles. I haven’t bought challah. Without the kids, there is no Shabbat. I’m still unaccustomed to being in the house when they’re not here, and I quickly gather my things to leave as well. Before I go, I dart into each of the kids’ bedrooms and begin what has started to feel like my own ritual. I straighten their rooms and make their beds, a guilt offering and a wish to create order. Then, when everything is in place, I turn off the lights and gently pull shut the doors to their rooms.

  I drive to William’s apartment, a few minutes away. The street he lives on is heavy with traffic, as it is on most nights at this hour. Though I drive on Shabbat whenever I’m not with the kids, I’m still aware of the routes I take, wary of being seen. But now, alongside the fear there is also relief—seemingly so simple yet still immense to me, the fact that I’m not trapped inside my house, not stranded inside my own life. I can get into my car and drive. On this day, the automobile feels newly invented.

  I let myself in and wait for William to come home from w
ork. In his apartment, there are no traces of my kids or the past to fill me with longing, only pictures of his children, whom I’ve yet to meet, and a recent picture of the two of us, arms around each other, smiling. When I am in this apartment, I slip out of one self and into another—every time I walk in, I feel like I’m arriving somewhere new, but like a modern city in an old land, it sits on the ruins of what came before.

  “Where do you want to go?” William asks when he gets home from work, energetic and eager to shake me from my lingering melancholy over missing the kids.

  “Up,” he says playfully to me as I lie on the couch. “Up, up, up.”

  We decide to take advantage of the night and go to the North End, the old Italian neighborhood downtown. Boston still feels like a place I’m getting to know—I’ve spent nearly a decade in Newton but I’ve rarely ventured into Boston itself. For all the years we’d lived here, I’d thought of Boston as a place that belonged to Aaron.

  William drives through Coolidge Corner, the epicenter of the Brookline Orthodox community. On these four or five blocks, where there are several kosher restaurants, a kosher bakery, a kosher butcher store, two Jewish bookstores, and an Orthodox synagogue, people are walking home from synagogue, on their way to Shabbat dinners. I’m both inside the car and outside, looking at myself through multiple sets of eyes. It feels possible we might pass an old version of me walking as well.

  “Did you have to go this way?” I ask William, half joking, and I tell him about a friend whose family drove on Shabbat but didn’t want their religious neighbors to see; if the neighbors were outside when they drove past, they all crouched down—from the outside, it must have appeared as though the car piloted itself or was guided along its forbidden Shabbat journey by a phantom crew.