Introduction and Open Stories Foundation Update

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 818

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome to a very special, very, very special it's always special, but it's very special today, a very special interview on Mormon stories podcast. It's November 1, 2017. I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween for those of you who celebrated it, and I am just jumping out of my metaphorical chair with excitement to have on Mormon Stories, one of the first non Mormons ever. Now we have had a few non Mormons, if any of you remember, we once did the Three Interfaith Amigos where we had a rabbi along with an imam and a priest. Which sounds like a joke, but we have had a few non Mormons in the past. But today we are going to be having Acclaimed author Tova Mirvis. This is her most recent memoir. It's her book. It's entitled the Book of Separation. It's an amazing, incredibly relevant memoir about her experience as an Orthodox Jew, marrying an Orthodox Jew but then losing her faith and what that did to her marriage and being in a mixed faith marriage as an Orthodox Jew and then eventually losing her faith and having to end the marriage. I'll just give you a small sampling of what my experience with this book has been like so far. Here is a page if you guys can see it. Here's a page in the book and it shows you how relevant the book is for me. That's just one sample of the page, but I think liberal, progressive and post Mormons are going to find this book incredibly relevant. And today we're going to talk to Tova about her story. And we're not going to cover the book fully intentionally because what we're going to do is kick off a new round of Mormon Stories Book Club. We're going to invite everyone to read this amazing book. And then like in a month we're going to have Tova back and we're going to dig into the book in depth. But this interview is to capture her story, capture a lot of background, and then talk about it in a month. So go right now, right now, go buy this book, start reading it and in a month, you can participate with us. And we hope to bring Tova to Salt Lake City to do a live interview with her. So before we actually jump into this interview, I just have a few very quick announcements. I think we want to make sure everyone understands that we've opened a new Patreon account. So if you are not a Mormon Stories donor right now, you have a couple options of ways to donate. You can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. You can pick 10, 25, 100 bucks a month, whatever works for you. And you can donate that way by becoming a recurring donor. We're going to have you join a private Facebook group called Open Stories Foundation Donors, where we're going to do lots of cool, special things. But most importantly, you get to support the Open Stories foundation and its mission to support people experiencing a religious faith transition and those impacted by that transition. But we also opened up a Patreon account. You just pay a dollar per interview. It's a low barrier to entry. And you can go to patreon.com mormonstories and join there. And either way, what we're going to do now is we're going to release our interviews early for donors just to give them a little bit of a special experience. So again, if you're already a Mormon Stories donor over the past, let's just say 12 months, you can go to Open Stories Foundation, Facebook, Open Stories Foundation Donors Facebook group, join that group and we're going to have some special things for you there. Or you can join Patreon Mormonstories and we'll get you early versions of the interviews there. We're just releasing the D. Michael Quinn interview today in this way, and we just released the Mike Norton interview last week. And so lots of cool things coming up really quickly. We do have a few events coming up. The next Mormon Stories workshop will be in San Francisco, November 9th through 10th. We just had an amazing workshop in Lehigh, Utah, rated 4.9 out of 5. People said it was really useful to them. So if you want to be a part of the Mormon Stories workshop experience in San Francisco, join us November 9th through 10th. We're also going to have a full day Mormon Stories Workshop November 17, again in Utah county in Lehigh. People are saying it's really useful in helping them navigate their faith crisis, navigating their mixed faith marriages, helping them communicate with believing family and friends, helping them raise kids who are unorthodox or post Mormon. So many useful things come out of these workshops and retreats. So Please join us. And of course, the Mormon Stories Cruise is next fall 2018. You can go to register for all these events@mormonstories.org events. So those are the announcements for today. And without any further ado, I want to introduce to you Tova Mirvas. Tova, thank you so much for joining us. All the way from Are you in Massachusetts?

Introducing Tova Mirvis and Her World

Tova Mirvis [00:06:09] I am in Newton, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston.

John Dehlin [00:06:13] Yeah. It is such a thrill to have you on Mormon Stories.

Tova Mirvis [00:06:17] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:06:17] I'm going to read the little blurb in your book. It says, 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, and poets and writers, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts at tovamirvis.com what's it like to be on a Mormon themed podcast? Tova?

Tova Mirvis [00:06:46] Well, you know, it's two things at once. On one hand, it's so funny. It feels like I grew up so steeped in an Orthodox Jewish world where that was the entire world. And so on one hand, it feels very far away. And yet one of the things I've learned, I think, through writing about religion is how close some of our communities are. And I think especially with Mormon communities, I've heard so many times that there's such a sense of commonality in what it is to grow up in my community and in your community.

John Dehlin [00:07:14] Yeah. Have you ever had Mormons reach out to you about your books that you're aware of? Do you have any Mormon friends? I have.

Tova Mirvis [00:07:22] You know, it's funny, just this past week, two people on Facebook who are both former Orthodox Jews told me that the way they found out about my book was that a formerly Mormon friend told them to read it. And so, you know, I've heard over the years that I think people in the Mormon community read the Ladies Auxiliary, which is about the Orthodox community in Memphis where I grew up. And it's very much about social propriety and what it means to be an insider and an outsider. And actually I had a very close Mormon friend in college. I met one of my roommates by chance, was Mormon, and I was in a room with myself and another woman who was an Orthodox Jew. And at that time, I think I had that first moment of realizing that people who come from strict religious communities share a lot in common, even if the particulars differ. I felt like we were really coming from the same world and navigating at the same time. The question of what it means to be in the larger, outside, secular world for the first time.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] Yeah, yeah. Have you by chance been following the Leah Remini series about Scientology?

Tova Mirvis [00:08:26] No, I haven't.

John Dehlin [00:08:27] Have you heard about it?

Tova Mirvis [00:08:28] No. Tell me.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Oh, no, no. It's a series on. On her experiences as a Scientologist and interviewing other Scientologists. And honestly, what came to my mind just now is, is it even offensive? Would it be offensive for you, for me to even invoke Scientology? As we talk about Orthodox Judaism, I'm not easily offended.

Tova Mirvis [00:08:47] Don't worry, I'm good.

John Dehlin [00:08:50] Well, awesome. So I want to just dig right in. But before we actually get to your story, I guess, number one, I want to thank all of our live listeners who are joining us on Mormon Stories Live. Lots of cool friends are already there, and we want to encourage our listeners to post questions and comments there because that makes these interviews more interesting. We're gonna try and do a three hour interview, maybe a two and a half hour interview, as long as we can. Tobi, you just need to tell us when, like, you've got five or ten minutes left. Cause.

Tova Mirvis [00:09:20] Okay, sure.

John Dehlin [00:09:20] As my listeners know, we can go for several hours.

Tova Mirvis [00:09:23] Okay, sure.

Overview of Orthodox Judaism and Its Diversity

John Dehlin [00:09:24] So before we actually dive into your story, I'm gonna ask you to do something that you may not feel prepared to do, which is to give us a little bit of background on Judaism and let me set it up, if that's okay.

Tova Mirvis [00:09:36] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] So I've been in love with Judaism for a long time, and let me tell you why. When I was in college, I read a book by an author named Kaim Potok called My Name Is Asher Lev.

Tova Mirvis [00:09:48] I love that book.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] Okay, so you've read it. You know who Kaim Potok is?

Tova Mirvis [00:09:50] I love it. Yes. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:09:52] So Kaim Potok introduced me to this idea that there isn't just a monolithic Judaism, which at the time I would have not known. And then I went on to read the Chosen, the Promise, and Davida's Harp. In addition to. My name is Asher Lev. And this was like 13, 14 years ago, right as I was experiencing my Mormon faith crisis. And what was really powerful for me was just this idea that once upon a time, maybe there was sort of. There probably never was monolithic Judaism, but maybe there was more monolithic Judaism at one point. But then at some point, maybe after World War II and the Holocaust, and it even started in the 19th century, Jews started sort of confronting modernity and realizing that a lot of just say, ultra Orthodox sort of thoughts and beliefs and Maybe even behaviors didn't fit with modernity. And so they started becoming these branches of Judaism. And I just love that. So can you talk us through a little bit about, you know, the different branches of Judaism today and just a tiny bit about their history? To the extent that, you know, it's so that we can know where your upbringing fit in the broader spectrum of Judaism?

Tova Mirvis [00:11:10] Sure. When, you know, people talk about belonging to the Jewish community or being Jewish, it really spans a very wide range of practice and belief. And so Orthodox Judaism believes in the idea that the Torah, the five books of Moses, are given by God, written by God, and given by God to Moses. And in addition to that written law, there is an oral law that was also given by God to Moses. And that law wasn't written down for many centuries, but was passed down from by word of mouth, essentially, and eventually was codified into the Talmud. And the Talmud became the basis for Jewish law. And the Talmud is a series of interpretations, and each generation built upon those laws. Asking questions about, the Bible says to observe the Sabbath. Well, what does that mean? How do we observe it? And then Rabbinic law or the oral law steps in to define those categories. And so I think what really defines Orthodox Judaism is a belief in the divinity of that law. So that even the Rabbinic laws, the sort of. The question of, can you do this or not do this? Even those are believed to be divine. And Orthodox Judaism, I think there's never been monolithic Judaism, but that was sort of normative Judaism for many years. And then as. As history moved forward and the Jewish world confronted modernity, there became a, you know, really what you're describing, a sense of, how do you meet traditional religious ideas with the concept of modernity and Alsace philosophy? And in response to that, there was a. It was called the Haskalah, the Enlightenment period, where people began to question the notions of these beliefs in the divinity of the Torah and the Oral law. And there was sort of a creation of a secular Judaism. I'm going to sort of skim over a lot, you know, Jewish history, so vast.

John Dehlin [00:12:58] But wait, what. What century was that or what decade? About the Haskala.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:04] I'm tempted to Google it, because I don't want to get it wrong, but

John Dehlin [00:13:06] I believe it was 18th century.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:07] I think 18th or 19th century. Okay, okay, that's right. I could be wrong, so I want to just qualify that. But. But I think, you know, was it happening in Germany?

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Was it happening in New York?

Tova Mirvis [00:13:19] Do you have a sense it was European? It was European based, not in New York yet, you know, but there were always Jews who deviated. Let's say spinoza in the 17th century was a philosopher who was of Jewish upbringing, who became, who was actually excommunicated for his non belief and for his radical ideas at that time. So I think there's all the notion that there's always been one way to be and that we all do it is of course never true in any kind of historical, historical community because you know, whenever you have lots of people, you're always going to have a divergence of belief. And even within Judaism, even within Orthodox Judaism there's a great division, you know, maybe I'll from Orthodox Judaism.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] Well, let me just. Oh no, no, no, sorry. I went ahead and googled it. It looks like it's 18th and 19th century, so you're spot on. It is Europe. It mentions Moses Mendelssohn as somebody who maybe was an important part of that. Just really quickly, do you have a sense for how the Haskala evolved into these different branches? And I don't expect any super accurate, you're not a historian. Just to give us a sense for like, okay, so there was all this intellectual awakening and enlightenment. How did it turn into different branches?

Tova Mirvis [00:14:43] So I guess one of the questions became if you no longer believed in the divinity of the law, in the no that you had a God given obligation to eat this or not eat this, what was your Jewish identity like? Could you still partake of Judaism? And the Reform Jewish movement began really in response to this and you know, true to its name, it was idea of reforming the early notions of Orthodox Judaism and became a more secome, less sort of traditionally religious. And you caught yourself, you didn't want

John Dehlin [00:15:17] to say more secular. You said, exactly why did you do that?

Tova Mirvis [00:15:20] Tell me why. It's so funny. When I was growing up, I thought that the word Orthodox Jew was synonymous with religious. It didn't occur to me. I thought, well, you know, if you're Orthodox, you're religious. It was the same thing. And if you're religious, obviously you're Orthodox. It didn't occur to me until I went to college that you could not be an Orthodox Jew but still be religious. It was one of those moments that shook my whole worldview that oh, there are other ways to still be religious, but not in the way I was raised. And I think maybe we all have those moments when our small worlds are forced open. And for me that was one of those. So you heard that slip of, you know, that Reformed Judaism is not secular Judaism. It's Still a branch of religion, religious Judaism. But it's certainly different than what I grew up with, this idea of rules given from God, and therefore you're obligated to follow them because they are God. Given.

John Dehlin [00:16:11] Was secular kind of a bad word growing up.

Tova Mirvis [00:16:14] Like, secular was just like the other end of the planet. It was just secular Jews were, you know, they weren't even called secular. They were not religious. You know, like, oh, I don't think they're religious. How you would sort of refer to someone as. It just.

John Dehlin [00:16:27] I love it.

Tova Mirvis [00:16:28] It was far, far away. And just to say, with the Jewish movements, you know, in response to Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism was created. And so it's sort of ironic that, you know, growing up I was always like, why are they called conservative? Because they seem so far left from Orthodoxy. But it was conservative in response to Reform that wanted to create sort of a middle ground position between these two supposed extremes.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] Okay, so we've got Orthodox on the far right, Right. Except not because they're Hasidic. Right? Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:17:01] Well, so what, you know, maybe this is part of the Jewish world where every world can be subdivided into multiple worlds. Within Orthodox Judaism, there's also a race. And so, you know, if you were just to divide it from right wing to left wing, or ultra Orthodoxy, which would include Hasidic Judaism to Modern Orthodoxy, which is how I grew up. And I think the main difference between Ultra Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodoxy is the relationship to the outside world and to the secular world. And so many Ultra Orthodox Jews believe in the idea that you have to be separate from the outside world, that reading secular books, going to secular college, participating in any secular activities or communal activities is dangerous, that it threatens your ability to be who you are. And as you move leftward in the Orthodox world toward Modern Orthodoxy, you arrive at the idea that you can be two things at once. You can participate in secular culture, you can go to college, you can read books and yet still maintain your strict religious identity. And so I was raised in this world with the idea that you were to take what you learned in the secular culture and somehow integrate it with your religious identity. And that you didn't have to be threatened by going to a secular college. But somehow you could live on this dividing line between these worlds and hold them all together. And of course, because there's always an, you can always subdivide further. You know, one of the things that's been interesting to me in recent years is actually two phenomenon. One is that the modern Orthodox world has moved to the right. There's been an increasing of stringencies even in the so called liberal leaning world. And yet at the same time there has been a smaller group that I think has become farther to the left, certainly around social issues and women's roles and participation. And that group now calls itself Open Orthodoxy. And there's of course multiple tensions and infighting and back and forth about what constitutes authentic Orthodox Judaism.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] And then where does reconstruction is it Reconstructionist? There's something else over on the Reform side, Right, right.

Tova Mirvis [00:19:13] Reconstructionist is I think, another movement, a newer movement. I don't know as much about it. I'm actually very curious and learning more about it. But I think Reconstructionist is an idea of similar to maybe Jewish renewal, this idea of trying to infuse greater sense of spirituality into practice and reshaping the notion of what it means to be Jewish.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] So basically making Reform a little more spiritual, but still secular.

Tova Mirvis [00:19:41] I think so. Still not secular. I'm not going to use, now that you've called me out, I'm not going to use that word. But more, but not maybe more consistent or that can speak more to modern sensibilities.

John Dehlin [00:19:54] Okay, so I should not use the word secular, is that right? Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:19:57] Because there's also secular Judaism, which is the notion that I can participate in Judaism from a cultural perspective. I am part of a history, I'm part of a tradition, but I don't partake of religious rituals. So that would be secular Judaism.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] So Reformed Jew would not call themselves secular?

Tova Mirvis [00:20:15] No, not necessarily.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Okay, that's really interesting, huh? So Secular Judaism is sort of like atheistic, non practicing cultural Judaism?

Tova Mirvis [00:20:28] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] Okay, interesting. All right, so that is fascinating. So my understanding is Reformed Judaism is the largest branch of Judaism in the United States. Is that right?

Tova Mirvis [00:20:40] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] And then right now, where do you put yourself in the spectrum?

Tova Mirvis [00:20:46] Well, it's interesting, you know, for so long my identity was I'm an Orthodox Jew. I don't think that when you live inside a world that is so that really shapes every part of you. I don't think that it's just something you practice on Saturdays or something you do sometimes. I think it was the most central fact about me. And when you leave something, I don't think you leave that sense of identity very easily. And so I think there's that in between stage, that place of unbecoming before you can become something else. And as soon after people started knowing that I was no longer Orthodox, someone asked me, well, are you conservative now? Are you Reform? And I was like, no, I'm in this unshaped state, I'm in this sort of desert space between places of not needing to define my Judaism or not being able to. And in some ways, I think maybe that identity that fits me the best is, you know, I used to be Orthodox. It still feels like that identity. And I think we need to honor the space between places and be willing to live in that undefined place for a long time. And I think I would still place myself there.

John Dehlin [00:21:51] Is that liminal? Is that the word?

Tova Mirvis [00:21:53] Yeah, exactly. That liminal place. Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] Go ahead, keep going.

Tova Mirvis [00:21:58] Yeah, yeah. That idea that you can. That you don't have to define it, that in leaving something, you don't have to move towards a new definition that quickly.

John Dehlin [00:22:06] Okay, so do you. You don't use the term post Orthodox or ex Orthodox or anything like that?

Tova Mirvis [00:22:11] I mean, those are the terms used people use. Ex Orthodox, formal Orthodox, I guess, you know, ex Orthodox would probably define it well. Or formerly Orthodox or still trying not to be who I always was Orthodox. There are lots of ways you could describe it.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] Awesome. Okay, so now we're gonna jump in. This was super helpful. Thank you for that overview. I actually learned a lot. So let's talk about your. Your parents really quick. So do you have a sense for your parental genealogy? Kind of, you know, the ancestors, where they came from and just sort of. Yeah, just a bit about your. Your parents.

Tova's Family Background and Upbringing

Tova Mirvis [00:22:52] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:22:52] And your ancestors.

Tova Mirvis [00:22:54] So I'm a sixth generation Memphian, which is not what people expect when they hear that I'm an or, you know, as part of an Orthodox Jewish community. But my mother's family went to Memphis in 1873 from Germany. And they went to Memphis because Memphis is on the Mississippi river and it was a trading center. And so they went there and they stayed. And they, you know, were always part of this very new, at the time, Jewish community. And my mother's family, originally tracing back through the people who came in 1873, were Jewish, but they were not Orthodox. My grandmother on this side married my grandfather, whose parents were immigrants from Poland, and they got married and she became Orthodox when they got married. My father's family is actually from Hampton, Virginia. And so growing up, my father was always referred to as the northerner in the family, sort of ironically was viewed as being, you know, at least north of here. And that side of the family, my great, great grandparents emigrated to the Baltimore area from Grudno, which is part of Poland and Russia and Lithuania areas. And they were immigrants. They opened a grocery store. My grandfather was born in America and became A rabbi and moved to Hampton, Virginia, where he was the rabbi of a small synagogue.

John Dehlin [00:24:13] Okay, so Mom's ancestors are from Germany and Poland. I'm curious to hear that they came to the United States. That some of them came to the United States not Orthodox. Do you know anything about that? About why they would have left, you know, more. More Orthodox Judaism and what would have led them out? Do you even know?

Tova Mirvis [00:24:35] Well, they were part of. They were. The ones who came in 1873 were German, and they were part of a secular Jewish world. I think they probably for opportunity. I think that regardless of whether you're Orthodox or not, there was always the specter and fear of antisemitism in Europe. And I think that was probably also part of why they came.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Yeah, just the idea of people having a faith crisis in, like, the 18th or 19th century and then moving and calling themselves or thinking of themselves as less orthodox and more secular, it's just kind of really fascinating to think that these things that Mormons and other religious groups are experiencing right now in the 21st century, people were dealing with back in the 1700s.

Tova Mirvis [00:25:25] Right, right, exactly. I think I certainly grew up with the idea that we are part of a chain of tradition and every link in that chain is exactly the same. And now there's you. And are you going to be the one to sever it? But of course, it's always more complicated. You know, when you look at human beings, it's never that is the same and it's never that everyone observed and only you are changing it. I think that even, you know, you think about the biblical Book of Job, you know, there are crises of faith all along. And I think anytime you have a religious community, you have the question of faith and whether you believe. And, you know, I think the doubt has to be part of any conversation about faith. It's always there as a possibility. And, you know, the idea that, you know, we can look back at history and it's easy to look at it as sort of being uniform, but when you delve into those individual stories, it wasn't like that at all.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] We have a request from Jeralee, one of our dear listeners. She's saying that sometimes your camera's moving when you move. So she's saying, can you put it on a table or something?

Tova Mirvis [00:26:27] Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. You know what? Do you mind walking? You're going to take a break?

John Dehlin [00:26:29] No, not at all. Not at all.

Tova Mirvis [00:26:30] I'm going to walk to my house. I'm going to keep the screen very close to Me. So you don't see the mess.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] No, we're loving this. We're loving this.

Tova Mirvis [00:26:37] Okay, I'm going downstairs. You're right.

John Dehlin [00:26:40] So as you're moving, can I ask you another question?

Tova Mirvis [00:26:43] Sure.

Faith Crises Through History and Early Childhood

John Dehlin [00:26:44] Okay. So I love this idea that faith crises aren't new, that it's. Anytime you've had religion, you have people who've been doubting or questioning. And that totally makes sense, although I think we forget that. Okay, and so at some point, your not Orthodox ancestors married into Orthodoxy, and so were both your parents raised Orthodox?

Tova Mirvis [00:27:09] My parents were both raised Orthodox. It's interesting. Both of my grandmothers became Orthodox when I got married. My father's mother did the same thing. Her husband, my grandfather, was the rabbi of this small town synagogue, and she was living at home and they met and she, her family was traditional. They attended the synagogue. They may not have been strictly Orthodox, but when she got married, she became more Orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] Okay, so your dad was raised Orthodox and your mom was raised Orthodox.

Tova Mirvis [00:27:36] They were.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Okay, so what do you know, where they met and how they met?

Tova Mirvis [00:27:41] My parents met in New York City. My father went to Yeshiva University, which is an Orthodox Jewish college, and my mother went to the women's branch of that college called Stern College, which was in midtown Manhattan. And, you know, it's one of my favorite stories. My parents tell it a lot, how my father was with a group of friends and they were supposed to go to a movie, and they. They missed the movie. So they went to hang out in the lobby of the girls dorm, which was apparently how people met. And as they joke about it, one of my mother's friends was down there and called up to the room and said, there are boys down here. And so they went down there. And I think they were both Southerners, my father being from Virginia, my mother being from Memphis, and that is how they met.

John Dehlin [00:28:22] There are so many parallels. I'm just thinking that Mormons have our own version of Yeshiva University. It's called Brigham Young University. It's in Provo, Utah. And I'm just, I'm 100% sure that if we dug into what it's like to go to Yeshiva University, we'd find so many similarities. It's kind of like the Notre Dame. The Notre Dame. You know, I don't want to minimize your experience by comparing it to ours.

Tova Mirvis [00:28:46] I think there's so many comparisons. You know, for me, in high school, one of the first times I ever had an awareness that my world was comparable to others was when I read this anthology. I happened upon the bookstore called Catholic Girls, and I devoured it, and I was like, oh, my God, it's exactly like my world. And of course, it was so different, but it just spoke to me that same sense. And I think it's where I really learned that idea that it's nice to know that religious communities share a lot or that leaving them or struggling with them, that you have a lot in common, not just with those who struggle from your own world, but from those who struggle from other worlds as well, that you. You know, I think when you're part of a community, one of the pleasures of belonging is you have this sense of community. We all believe this. We. We are all this way. And when you leave, it's so lonely to feel, you know, am I the only one, you know, to stand in synagogue and look around you and think, am I the only one who doubts this? But I think when you realize that people from other communities, other religious faiths share that you create a different kind of community. You can find a sense of belonging across these lines.

John Dehlin [00:29:54] I love it. Okay, so your parents meet at Yeshiva University. They're married. Anything we should know about their life prior to your being born that would sort of help us understand your story?

Tova Mirvis [00:30:06] Well, my parents moved back to Memphis. That was very important to my mother, you know, having grown up there. And my older brother was born, and then my parents lived away for two years. So I was born in Bethesda, Maryland. I was the only one in my entire family born away from Memphis. And then they moved back to Memphis. It felt clear to my mother and I, you know, my father may be less excitedly or willingly, that they were going to live in this community, where they were, where my mother was from.

John Dehlin [00:30:31] So your dad went to med school, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:30:33] He did.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] So he was a physician. Was your mom a stay at home mom?

Tova Mirvis [00:30:38] She was for some years, and then she went back to school to get a degree as a child librarian. And she worked in different capacities running a teacher resource center and as a storyteller in schools.

John Dehlin [00:30:48] Okay, so growing up, what were the core beliefs? We'll do beliefs and then we'll do practices of your, you know, your experience with. With Orthodox Judaism?

Tova Mirvis [00:31:01] Well, I think the central belief, the sort of foundational belief, was the idea that God had given us the five books of Moses, the Torah, as we called it, and that this book was written by God and it was the instruction manual for our lives. It was the center and the idea as well, that rabbinic law, the oral law, was God, and that these were the rules and that we were to follow them. And while there could be different interpretations of some of the laws, really the unquestionable truth was that this was, this was God's word and this was who we were and who we were supposed to be. And I think also the idea that this, that we were, that this world was to be our center always, we were to remain inside of it and to follow it was really to be good. This is what it meant to be a good person.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] So, really quickly, so for Mormons, the Old Testament's got a lot more books than the Pentateuch. Is that what it's called? The five books? So all those other books, you know, in the Old Testament, Jews would not consider Scripture, is that right?

Tova Mirvis [00:32:11] Well, sorry, the full Old Testament I should refer to as that, you know, we studied most fully the five books of Moses, but the, you know, it was called like Torah, Neviim, the books of prophets and Ketuvim, the writing. So they were all considered from God.

John Dehlin [00:32:26] So not just the first five books.

Tova Mirvis [00:32:28] Right, that was sort of. The five books of Moses were considered the given. Yeah. Given to Moses at Mount Sinai.

John Dehlin [00:32:37] The five books of Moses, that's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. What? Numbers.

Tova Mirvis [00:32:41] Numbers. And Deuteronomy.

John Dehlin [00:32:42] Deuteronomy, yeah. Okay, so within those, that's sort of the high level now. Let's go one level deeper. Was a belief in the afterlife something important? Was there judgment? Was there an idea of, I mean, Mormons have this whole thing with Jesus and a savior and sins. So how did you guys look at things like death, like the afterlife, like sin, like repentance? Talk about your beliefs one level deeper.

Orthodox Jewish Beliefs, Afterlife, and Kosher Laws

Tova Mirvis [00:33:14] Okay, well, so some. What's interesting about Orthodox Judaism is that it's very action based. And so something like the afterlife, let's say there are notions of an afterlife. There's a term called olam haba, the world to come. But those weren't really part of the day to day conversation. Those were, you know, different Jewish sources could debate what that means. Exactly. There was no clear, single, definitive definition of those. What was much more important was the day to day practice. And so while, you know, the notion of what happens to your soul after you die could be debated and uncertain, you know, how to keep a kosher kitchen was central, that there was no debate about and that we knew what to do. And so Judaism was, I think Orthodox Judaism is very much about the here and now and the practical belief systems. And then there are of course, the larger values.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] So I just. This is so weird because from a Mormon perspective, Mormon theology is like the whole purpose of life is to become a God someday in the afterlife. And so what you need to do now is marry in the temple, because only Mormon temple marriages get you to become gods in the afterlife. And you need to be super righteous because there'll be this judgment and then that's what gets you into the super special VIP heaven, as some jokingly like to refer to it. And so, so much of life right now, even baptism and all these ordinances are your, even the temple ceremony, you learn these signs and tokens and it's all oriented towards helping you get to the right place in heaven and what you're telling. And then all the sin, you're like trying not to sin because you want to be with your family in heaven. And what I'm hearing you say is that that's not. And a lot of post Mormons think, well, you can't really have religious observance or even community without this fear of a bad heaven and this promise of a really good heaven. And what I'm hearing you say is there's a lot of super devout Jews that aren't even really thinking about the afterlife.

Tova Mirvis [00:35:10] I mean, it's there as this sort of like vague sense. You know, I used to worry as a little girl, like, if I did something wrong, was God gonna punish me? Maybe I worried more like in the here and now, is God gonna punish me? But the notion of afterlife certainly is a concept that exists in Jewish writings and Jewish teachings. And certainly, you know, there's such a vast range of Jewish philosophy on these things. But in terms of how it's lived day to day, that wouldn't be what you wouldn't hear, you know, keep the Sabbath because you're going to pay one day. It was, you know, maybe a little bit, but you know, my experience of it was much more about on this earth how to, how to be a good person or what it meant to be an Orthodox Jew. And there was certainly a notion of reward and punishment and repentance. And then, you know, I grew up with the idea of God, you know, counting my sins. We used to draw pictures of in nursery school, the divine scale, before the high holidays. And it was this picture of the scale. And on one side our good deeds were stacked, and on the other side our bad deeds were stacked. So it was there. I just, I don't feel like it was the central guiding impetus for behavior.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] I love it. Okay, so you talked about keeping kosher in the kitchen. Can you tell us what that means?

Tova Mirvis [00:36:21] Sure. You know, Kosher for, you know, when you grow up keeping kosher in an orthodox way, it's, you know, for me, it's second nature by now. But it's not just. There's sort of the broad notions of kosher, which are certain foods are forbidden. Let's say shellfish and any kind of pig meat is forbidden. Meat would have to be slaughtered in a particular way. And meat and milk can't be mixed. So any kind of meat product can't be mixed with dairy products.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Like a cheeseburger. Like a cheeseburger.

Tova Mirvis [00:36:47] Exactly. Cheeseburger is a. No, no. Unless you use vegan cheeseburger, especially a bacon cheeseburger.

John Dehlin [00:36:51] That's a super no.

Tova Mirvis [00:36:53] You're as far out as you can go with that.

John Dehlin [00:36:54] That's like Jewish mass murder. Is a bacon cheeseburger.

Tova Mirvis [00:36:57] Exactly. It's funny, people always assume, you know, what was your big rebellion? Did you have a cheeseburger? And I'm a vegetarian, so I was like. My big rebellion was I had tofu. Like, you know, not, you know, not kosher.

John Dehlin [00:37:07] Is tofu not kosher?

Tova Mirvis [00:37:09] Well, tofu is kosher, but it wasn't cooked in a kosher pan. So I feel like these rebellions. I know I'm out there. It's sort of the irony that, you know, these small rebellions, you know, from the outside, they're laughable. For me, at the time, it felt enormous. It felt. Because part of the laws of kosher are not just this sort of, you know, you can. Some people, you know, keep kosher. And what that means is they don't eat shellfish or they don't eat ham or they don't mix meat and milk. And that's sort of, you know, people refer to it as kosher style maybe, but from an orthodox perspective, keeping kosher means that, you know, everything I buy, every food product has a kosher certification on it. So, you know, if you ever look at your packaging and, you know, many, many foods have it and you wonder what that little O with a U in it or a circle K, that's a kosher certification. And so I don't. Wouldn't buy anything that's not certified kosher and wouldn't cook. You know, I would have two sets of dishes. I would have dishes that I cook meat in and dishes I cook milk in, and I would never mix them. I wouldn't use the same sponge to wash the meat dishes as I would to wash the milk dishes, or I wouldn't cut something with the same knife. And so it's, you Know, or if you keep strictly kosher, you would never eat in a restaurant that was not certified kosher. And so it's really, you know, an enormous amount of rules that become second nature. But it's not like, oh, I just sort of only, you know, I won't have the bacon in my salad. It's far more complicated than that.

John Dehlin [00:38:36] So your kitchen's, like, rigidly divided or segmented. Talk about that. And what happens if. Oh, my gosh, I used the wrong knife? Like.

Tova Mirvis [00:38:43] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:38:44] What happens so people.

Tova Mirvis [00:38:46] I mean, if you use the wrong knife, you know, it's funny. Growing up, it would always be placed on the top of the oven. It was, like, put out of use for. You know, I think, you know, I'm a little fuzzy on this. There are ways you can. It's called kosher. Like, you know, you put it in boiling water. Ways to make something usable again. But certainly, you know, if you messed up, it was a problem. It wasn't like you just said, oh, whatever, you know, no big deal. There was the feeling, because there was the feeling that the laws were from God. And so if I washed the meat pan with the milk sponge, I had done something that was not just wrong in the moment, but it would sort of corrupt my kitchen. And so it had to be separated out.

John Dehlin [00:39:23] So was that a sin to violate kosher? Is it like a sin?

Tova Mirvis [00:39:27] Yeah. You know, it's funny. The term sin wasn't necessarily you. I mean, it was used. It was sort of.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] What's your equivalent? What's your equivalent to the word sin?

Tova Mirvis [00:39:35] That it was against law, against Jewish law. It was. You broke the law.

John Dehlin [00:39:40] Okay, so.

Tova Mirvis [00:39:41] But sin. Sin certainly works.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] Sin works, but you didn't call it sin. So if you were to confess, is there confession? Do you go to a rabbi to confess or your parents or.

Tova Mirvis [00:39:53] There's no formal confession in that way. I mean, there's the concept of the high holidays of repentance, where you can repent for your sins. And, you know, one of the big parts of the high holiday service is a series of listings that you do. It's, you know, for this sin, I have sinned before you. And there's a. In this prayer book, there's a list, you know, for speaking harshly, for wanton eyes, for wayward thoughts. And so people, you know, that's sort of a time of reflection and taking stock of one's sin. And I guess there's no external confession, but there's certainly internal guilt. And that sense that people, I think, are taught to carry around Them this feeling of I've done something wrong, or which I think, you know, in a religious community so easily becomes, I'm a bad person. The notion of badness, I think, is easily handed out to people. The feeling of, I've done this wrong, you know, I'm bad. I'm bad because of it.

Sabbath, Modesty, and Defining Orthodox Observance

John Dehlin [00:40:50] What are some of the other key sort of behaviors that define one's Orthodoxy, in addition to keeping kosher and ways that they can be broken? So I know Sabbath observance is huge.

Tova Mirvis [00:41:02] Sabbath observance is huge. I would almost put that as central. You know, one of the ways you can describe yourself as an Orthodox Jew is you would say, I'm Shomer Shabbat, which means I observe the Sabbath. And that is sort of a way of saying I'm Orthodox. And so Sabbath observance, you know, isn't just that you have a Friday night dinner with your family or you light the candles as women do at sundown, but it's again, it's a world built of rules, of so many minute rules. And so Sabbath observance, you know, is everything from I don't cook on the Sabbath. I don't turn on the oven on the Sabbath. I don't turn on a light switch on the Sabbath. I don't carry objects from one house to another unless there's something called an aruv, which is like a rabbinic loophole to create a private domain. I don't use my computer. I don't write with paper. I don't. I mean, you could just go stricter and stricter. I don't open the refrigerator if the light's going to go on. And so Sabbath observance is really. Just.

John Dehlin [00:42:02] Don't you turn off the light bulb or something?

Tova Mirvis [00:42:04] Exactly. You turn off the light bulb so that the light in the fridge doesn't go on.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] And you can't drive your car. Right, no. Yeah. Your book opens with your anxiety about potentially driving on the Sabbath.

Tova Mirvis [00:42:15] Right, right, right. Driving on the Sabbath. For me, you know, if you told me 10 years ago I would drive on the Sabbath, I would think, no, no, no.

John Dehlin [00:42:21] And Sabbath is Friday night to Saturday night, is that right?

Tova Mirvis [00:42:24] It is, yeah. It's 25 hours.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] Sunday, five hours. Okay. And what about, like, I hear this something about elevators in New York City where they, like, stop at. You can't push a button, so you

Tova Mirvis [00:42:38] can't use any kind of electricity. So you can have the lights left on, or you can use a timer to turn your lights on or off. But, you know, once these Rules meet the modern world. You have a question? Well, how do you live in a modern world where, what if you live on the 35th floor of your building? And so I, you know, many, many times have walked up, you know, 15 flights of stairs, 20 flights of stairs, you know, going to someone's apartment who lived on a very high floor. But there's also, you know, I'm curious if you have this in Mormonism as well. But there's the rabbinic loophole. There's sort of the way around the law. And, you know, one of them is the idea that of, you know, the Shabbos elevator, where it can be programmed to stop on each floor. And I guess the idea in that is, you know, I can't push the button, but if it's already pushed for me and I don't have to do anything, then I can go in the elevator. And that's. You serve as this way around the rule.

John Dehlin [00:43:34] Would there be some Orthodox Jews that are okay riding in a Shabbos elevator and then others that think that that's going too far?

Tova Mirvis [00:43:42] Yes, of course. Of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You could ask that. Right? But any question, you could give that answer, like, you know, for any law, there will be people who want to be more strict and people who are more lenient, and there's varieties of practice depending on community and rabbinic opinions people follow.

John Dehlin [00:44:01] So what do you do if you. Like what. If you. What do you do, for example, if you don't turn the light bulb off, but then the Sabbath starts, and then you want to open the fridge, but the light bulb is going to go on if you do.

Tova Mirvis [00:44:14] This is like the central drama of my childhood, if this ever happened. So, you know, in a similar, like, loophole fashion, you can't ask someone to turn on, you know, to turn your. Open your fridge for you. I can't say, john, you know, my fridge is. I can't open it because I'm a Jew. Could you do it? But I can hint to you. So what I would do is, I would say, you know, John, it's such a shame, you know, the light in my fridge is on, and I can't open it, you know. Hmm. And I can prompt you, hoping you'll say, oh, do you want me to come over and turn that on? And I would be like, if you want to. And so it's sort of this way around, this way of me not directing you to do it, but still getting that fridge open.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] Wow. And I'm laughing, but was it funny or was it, like, super stressful?

Tova Mirvis [00:45:05] Well, it depends what it was. I mean, growing up, it became this joke in my family growing up that my mother would go to our neighbor and the first few times she would hint and say, the microwave is closed and I left the green beans in there and sort of wait to see. And then eventually she knew, of course, my mother would show up at the door and she would know exactly what she needed her to help her out with. And so it was a way, I guess, of trying to observe the laws, but still, you know, recognizing that sometimes you. You needed to have that refrigerator opened. But it was, it was. It was just part of the language of childhood and this world. It was just one of the things that happened that, you know, knowing that the laws. The laws were binding. They weren't. They weren't fungible and they weren't something. They weren't negotiable in any way. Certainly, I'm sure people. There might have been many people who would say, you know, no one's looking. I'm just going to open the fridge. But I think, you know, for many people, the laws are not. Are not something that you can negotiate with or bend because it's not just about other people watching, but about a notion of God watching. And so when you feel, you know, when you really, you know, for those who believe in it, you know, I think it's a very. Probably a powerful experience to feel that God has an opinion about what I do right now. And I can't do this because of God, God's rule and God's law. And I think when you believe in it, that has a lot of power.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] So I'm giving people a teaser for this amazing book that everyone needs to go out and buy. The Book of Separation. Talk about the hangnail. I was blown away by the hangnail dilemma that you talk about in this book as a child.

Tova Mirvis [00:46:44] Right. I think childhood is where it's so easy to feel the religious laws written on you because it's an age before question for some of us, before questioning or before cynicism. And I think in childhood, those rules feel like the rules of a parent or the rules of a teacher. It feels like they define your world. And I was raised to be a good girl. I was raised to do what I thought, and it was sort of my natural inclination was, you know, I was like the teacher's pet, you know, through, you know, early elementary school. And I took very seriously what I was taught, and I took very seriously the notion of God's eye watching me and Judging me. And maybe the same way I wanted to please a parent, I wanted to please God. The sense that I was up for evaluation. And it's funny, I have such a clear memory of sitting in synagogue next to my mother and to this day am like a nail picker. I'm always picking at my nails. I'm very fidgety. And, you know, I knew that you weren't allowed to bite your nails on the Sabbath because you can't tear things. You can't tear a piece of paper. You can't tear, you know, so tearing your nails would be an example of like, you know, something that was forbidden. But I'm fidgety. And so I would always try to, like, not, you know, play with my nails, not bite them. But it was hard to. And certainly for me, having a hangnail was that feeling of how can I not, you know, pull it off? Or, you know, I would play with it. And I remember so clearly that dilemma of, you know, wanting. I couldn't pray in synagogue like I was supposed to because I was so distracted by this hangnail. And so on one hand I wanted to just pull it off, but I knew I wasn't allowed to. My mother always hated when I would bite my nails. She would kind of hold my hand gently. And I knew it was, you know, in this case, it was not just because it was a bad habit, but also because it was forbidden. And I remember that maybe it was one of the early moments of grappling, not just with the day to day. You know, I didn't grapple with the fact that I wasn't going to have meat and milk together. That was just the way the world looked. But maybe one of those early moments of grappling with, you know, what does it mean to believe? You know, in what do I believe and what do I really think about this? And I felt like I had this daunting theological quandary that by not ripping off the nail, I couldn't pray because I was completely distracted by it. But if I ripped it off, I would be, you know, breaking the laws of the holiday and the Sabbath. And I knew that wasn't allowed. And, you know, I remember this. It felt to me like an enormous question. And it weighed on me. And then finally I ripped it off. And, you know, I think about those moments. You know, maybe sometimes we have lots of moments where we rip off the hangnail and it seems tiny. I mean, it's funny, it's so small of a transgression. But I think we learn something about Ourselves when we realize, I can rip off the hangnail. I have it in me to turn the light switch off, you know, on or off on a Sabbath, I can bite into that tofu that is, you know, just over the lines of kosher. And I think, you know, that for me, was one of those moments when I feel like I remember the moment because it taught me something maybe about who I would become one day.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] You know, I love how you're framing it in such an empowering way, but I'm also stuck with that little girl that's just got this painful hangnail, and she's been taught she needs to just suffer with the hangnail, and then if she pulls it off, how much guilt she's likely gonna feel just for doing something that is pretty normal and actually alleviating of suffering, you know?

Tova Mirvis [00:50:39] Right. I mean, I think that idea of badness is something that, you know, shapes me. And, you know, I'm curious. This is common across religious communities, that feeling that it was so ingrained in me that, you know, if you observed you were good and, you know, to observe was to be loved. It was love and goodness and observance were all tied together in one package. And so the good girls, you know, to be a good kid meant that you followed the religious rules as well as your parents rules and the school rules. You know, to be good was to be offered all the rewards of family and community and approval. And, you know, the bad kids were the ones who didn't want to observe the rules in the same way. And, you know, one of the things that I wanted to write about in my book, one of the things I felt like was so important to me was to really investigate this question of what does it mean to be good? Because I found that, you know, the irony is that my name, Tovah, means good in Hebrew. And so in some ways, I couldn't have had a better or worse name. But it really defines that question of what happens when you no longer identify with these rules, of what goodness means. Do you have to set. Do you have to let go of that idea of being a good person? Are you bad? And that term badness, oh, she's bad. That I felt like, followed me on my path out, and I really had to wrestle and really ask myself, you know, is observance the same thing as goodness? You know, just because you observe these laws, are you a good person? And just because you don't, are you really a bad person? Is to really take apart those assumptions. But they're formed early on, those messages are part of a religious upbringing in my experience.

John Dehlin [00:52:22] Yeah, that's. That's certainly relevant and in some ways a tiny bit triggering for me and probably for many of us, right.

Tova Mirvis [00:52:29] It. Because goodness, the idea of good, you know, that word is, you know, even my name. Sometimes I cringe at my name now because the idea of, you know, it's hammered into you. And, you know, for me as well, that idea has been enormously triggering that sense of, you know, I can hear in my head still that voice, that internal critiquing religious voice that tells me that I am bad. And, you know, it's the voice that I fight against the most and that I hope people can fight against because it is. It's. I. What? It's embedded so early on.

John Dehlin [00:53:05] It sure is. Let's talk about sexuality really quickly. What types of messages do children and teens get about sex? And what are the rules in orthodoxy around sexuality? Let's just say, you know, Mormons, there's a huge issue around even an epidemic around pornography and masturbation. But then there's also just normal teenage exploration of sexual. What was it like for you?

Gender Roles, Sexuality, and Women in Orthodoxy

Tova Mirvis [00:53:34] So we were taught an idea that the Hebrew term is shomer nagia, which means like a guardian of the touch. And what shomer negea means is that any touching, any sexual contact until you're married is forbidden. And so a handshake is considered forbidden in the more right wing orthodox circles, certainly a hug. So any touching of boys for me was, you know, talk about what it means to be bad. That was as bad as you could be, you know, any physical contact. And so a bad girl was someone who was not shomoniguilla, who did not, you know, who touched boys or vice versa. And so my whole teenage experience wrapped around this question of were you good or were you bad? You know, did you touch boys or did you not? We were in a very small all girls school and there were very few boys, so it made it very easy to be Sharma Nigiya because there were no boys to be seen. But it was this intentional segregation of the sexes. And anything co ed was always fraught by this idea of touch. And did you touch? Did you not touch? And, you know, for me, it created this internal sense of a police state. You know, oh, I hugged him. Oh, I'm very bad because I hugged him. And, you know, I remember my, you know, when I was 18, I kissed my camp boyfriend. I thought I was, you know, I thought I was like, as bad as you could possibly be. I was like, I am so, so bad. I am, you know, a terrible person for this very innocent 18, you know, as an 18 year old, and I'm talking about like as a 13 year old, you know, as an 18 Year Old having a first kiss in summer camp. And the idea that, that sexuality, I think, is where those terms of goodness and badness were most loaded. And I think what it did for me was it created the notion of a secret second self. And so, you know, there were always these, you know, in my modern Orthodox world, I think this extends, I'm sure, not just the modern Orthodox world, but in more strict communities as well, the sense that outwardly, of course, we would never touch, you know, no, not me. I'm, you know, I'm good. I would never do that. But privately, it's a different story. And so this sense that anything sexual, I don't even mean sex, like any kind of sexual contact, had to be secretive and you had. There was a sense of shame always attached to it. And I grew up in college, I went to a secular college, but I was part of this very tight knit Orthodox community. And so any small, low key sexual experimentation was cloaked in a sense of shame and secrecy. And it contributed to that sense of being bad, that there was no better way to be bad than to experiment sexually in any way.

John Dehlin [00:56:07] Do you have a sense that Orthodox Jewish teens would do something like masturbate or would that. Would it ever have even been discussed?

Tova Mirvis [00:56:16] So masturbation was never discussed with the girls, ever. It was discussed with the boys. It was considered a biblical prohibition against the spilling of seed was the term that was used. And so it was taught that it was completely forbidden. I would say that Orthodox Jewish teens are like teens everywhere and like people everywhere. And I'm sure this is not upheld in any way, but I think the problem of it is that it again creates that sense of wrongdoing. Where the official rule is taught this is forbidden. And yet someone's private experience is, of course they are experimenting with this, of course they are doing this. And so it steeps it in shame and it seeps it in a feeling of guilt. And I think that is where the greatest damage is done. The feeling that I'm doing something that's human. I mean, come on, it's human. But I have to feel bad about it because of religious teachings and that, that to me is where people are, people's sense of selves are forced underground and where we learn that parts of ourselves that we ourselves are forbidden in some ways, that we are, you know, again, that we're.

John Dehlin [00:57:28] Yeah. What would messages about women and let's just say feminism be like in an Orthodox home? Growing up

Tova Mirvis [00:57:40] in the modern Orthodox world, there was a notion that you could be an Orthodox feminist. I think as you move rightward, that would not be a notion. But I certainly grew up with the idea that I could be an Orthodox feminist. And what that meant was I could take the ideas of feminism and apply them to my Orthodoxy in some ways. And in the Orthodox Jewish world, in the modern Orthodox Jewish world, there have been enormous changes in the past 30 or 40 years for women where women have taken on a greater role.

John Dehlin [00:58:07] Like what?

Tova Mirvis [00:58:09] Well, so one aspect was, for many generations, women were prohibited from Talmud study. Women were allowed to learn those parts of the law that applied directly to them. So, for example, how to keep a kosher kitchen or how to run a home. But the actual debate of Jewish law and the Talmud was considered prohibited. And that has undergone an enormous sea change in the Orthodox community. You know, as you go really more towards the liberal edge of Orthodoxy, there have been. There's been a movement to ordain women as rabbis, which is not accepted by the vast majority of the Orthodox world. A move to have women be deciders of Jewish law, to create prayer services, either special separate women's prayer services where women can lead the prayers. You know, in an Orthodox synagogue, men and women sit separately and men lead the prayers and have all public roles. So a move to change that, that's one pocket of the Orthodox Jewish world.

John Dehlin [00:59:01] But those are movements. But that's not the reality of the lived Orthodox experience. Right, right.

Tova Mirvis [00:59:05] You know, when I was part of those movements, I thought that was like the mainstream. But, you know, when you're. It's easy to forget that's one small sliver of the Orthodox world that's at the most liberal edge of Orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:59:16] So in traditional Orthodoxy, women and men are sitting separate. Only men are rabbis. Is that right?

Tova Mirvis [00:59:22] Yes. Men recite the prayers. Women are either, you know, a more liberal synagogue will have a side by side divider. So women are, you know, next to the men. A more traditional synagogue would have women upstairs in a balcony or behind. But women would not play a public role in leading the prayers or being a rabbi or reading from the Torah scroll during the service.

John Dehlin [00:59:45] Okay. And then are women encouraged down a certain path generally? And men like girls down one path and boys down a different path in terms of life choices?

Tova Mirvis [00:59:56] Well, I think for women, there's a very strong sense of family and marriage at a young age. You know, I Even being part of a modern Orthodox world and being in a secular college. I got engaged when I was 22, after 12 weeks of dating to my first real boyfriend.

John Dehlin [01:00:09] So warm. And

Tova Mirvis [01:00:12] at the time it seemed like, you know, maybe it was a little quick for my modern Orthodox world, but totally, like, totally fine. And the idea that, you know, you get married young, you know, for me, I think I was afraid of uncertainty. I was afraid of not knowing what my life would look like. And marriage felt like a way to seal that in place. It felt like a way to please the sort of communal eyes, of doing what I was supposed to do. But certainly young marriage and having children is in modern Earth. Actually. Women have careers, women are professionals and even in the right wing world as well. But the idea that family and marriage comes first, I think is central to the Orthodox world.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] Okay, so are most orthodox sort of mothers stay at home moms then?

Tova Mirvis [01:00:57] I think there's a huge fluctuation. I think certainly in the modern Orthodox world, you probably find a similar spread to a secular world. You know, part of it's just in the right wing Orthodox world, there's a notion of men engaging in full time religious study while the women support them. So in those worlds, you actually have an interesting phenomenon where the men are the ones who are somewhat less educated or less involved in a secular world because they are considered the ones who are obligated to study religious studies all day. And then the women go out and work and take care of the kids in order to support the men's study.

John Dehlin [01:01:31] Wow, that's interesting.

Tova Mirvis [01:01:34] Yeah. I certainly feel like for all that, people want to reframe and reshape Orthodox Judaism and make it sound more feminist. You know, certainly men are at the center of the Orthodox world.

John Dehlin [01:01:44] Sure. What are the messages around being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender within Orthodoxy in your lived experience?

Tova Mirvis [01:01:54] Right. I mean, growing up, you know, I think there has been a sea change in, at least in the modern Orthodox world around this issue. I think certainly growing up, there was the sense that it was forbidden. There was a biblical verse that was, you know, trotted out anytime anyone needed to prove that point. And it was just, you know, for me, growing up, it was just one of the assumptions of the world. It was like, oh, right, that's just what, you know, the Torah says that. And part of taking ownership of your own beliefs is saying, well, do I actually think that, you know, what are the moral implications of what I'm presuming to believe in? I think, you know, my sense within the Orthodox world is that this issue has come into the forefront and forced people to reckon with what it means to be opposed to homosexuality and to have, you know, a tremendous sense of homophobia in a community. And I think that it's an issue on the table. Table in the Orthodox Jewish world. And maybe it's put in the same way in the secular world where maybe at one point it was easy to pretend like, oh, no, not in my family. No. And I know. I think as people become more open, people are forced to realize, this is all of our families, these are all of our children, these are all of us. And it forces people. I think it's very easy in the abstract to say, oh, well, I'm sorry, but, you know, I'm Orthodox. This is forbidden by my law. You know, sorry, I can't accept this. To say that when it's in theory, when it's someone, you know, when it's your child, it's very different. And I think maybe that has forced people to really reckon with this question, but it's certainly one of the hot button issues in the Orthodox world right now.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] Did you know any LGBT youth growing up or the people that you think back now might have been or that you suspected to be.

Tova Mirvis [01:03:30] It was so not talked about. It was just, you know, I grew up in. I was born in 1972, so let's say the 80s were my, you know, young upbringing. And then, you know, not until I went to college, you know, growing up, it just never even entered my world. There was like, a cousin who had a friend who he lived with, who was male, and, you know, they were, you know, people would refer to him as, you know, their friends. And, you know, maybe people would say it was, you know, question mark in their eyes, but it just wasn't part of my world.

John Dehlin [01:03:58] You didn't talk about it?

Tova Mirvis [01:03:59] I didn't even know to ask the question.

John Dehlin [01:04:03] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. thank you very much.

Tova's Parents and Childhood Religious Experience

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 819

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Okay, so let's go to your lived experience in your family. How did you. And it's sensitive to, I'm sure with the memoir, it's so hard. How do you talk about your parents when they're still alive? How do you talk about your siblings when they're still alive? I get the sense that your parents were kind of cool. At least that's the sense I get from what I've read so far. Almost like your mom was like this yoga kind of hippie mom, and your dad was this doctor by day, but an expert chef by night. Right, Exactly. So maybe it's easier to talk about your parents, but talk about what your parents were like and how the religion sort of informed their parenting.

Tova Mirvis [00:01:21] Sure. My parents were part of the modern Orthodox Jewish community in Memphis. I'm actually going there tomorrow morning to the next stop of my book tour. And my parents really, you know, they are fully part of this world. I think that they believe in it, and this is the world they've shaped us in. And, you know, it's interesting. I think my parents probably had the experience of what happens when a child is not like you. I think they had that experience with my older brothers. Maybe they were practiced in it by the time they got to me. So even though we were raised in this modern Orthodox world, my brother, after college, eventually gradually became part of a Hasidic Jewish community in an ultra Orthodox community in Israel. And so, you know, from the outside perspective, maybe that difference doesn't seem so vast, but from within it, it felt very big. It felt like he was changing from who our family was. And I think in that my parents had to reckon with what happens when a child doesn't choose who you are, when they choose something different. And so that was sort of the first taste of it. And then, of course, they have me now. And I think by the time I made this change when I was around, when I was about to turn 40, and so maybe, you know, we were ready to talk about it, you know, and they were able to, you know, my parents I think were able to accept that, you know, there was sadness for them. I think particularly for my mom, this idea that I wasn't the person maybe she would have wanted me to be or I wasn't going to have. Wasn't going to believe in the same things she believed in.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] But before, before, sorry, before we get to that, when you're like 12, 13, what, what are they like and what's your relationship with them like? And we'll, we'll follow the chronology now.

Tova Mirvis [00:03:01] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:03:01] But what I want to do is dig into the chron of your lived experience. So what types of parents were they when you were a child and a young teen? And how did their Judaism affect who they were? And then how did their Judaism affect how they parented?

Tova Mirvis [00:03:18] Sure. You know, it's interesting, growing up in Memphis, the Jewish community there, the Orthodox community, was probably slightly to the right of my parents. So it's a more right wing, sort of ideologically conservative community than my parents. And my parents are more liberal politically and liberal on social issues. And they're also. My mother is very arty, as you said. You had the perfect description of her. And so I think for my parents, their own experience, not to speak for them too much, but my sense of it as a child watching them was that they themselves were seen as so called radicals in their own community. They were on the liberal edge. And so they, I think, had the experience of not fully fitting in or not belonging to the community that they were a part of. And that experience changes you. It affects you when you feel I don't fit into everyone around you or I'm different in some way, even though I want to stay part of it. You know, it's wanting to be different and want to leave. But what if you're different and you want to be part of it too? So I grew up, you know, as a little girl being aware of that in my parents that, you know, many girls in my high school were not allowed to wear pants. You know, girls wearing pants is a huge thing, but I was allowed to wear pants. And so I knew that we were more, we were more liberal or my mother's family is more right wing than us. So I was like, you know, I would be wearing jeans to a family event and you know, a cousin once said to me, you know, that's not modest. And so I always had that sense of, you know, jeans. Jeans are, you know, taboo. Jeans were like the formative notion of rebellion for me could be encompassing a pair of blue jeans. And, you know, that idea that we were and yet we weren't, we somehow didn't quite match. And that feeling of being inside and outside at the same time I think shaped my sense of my parents as part of this community and maybe it was part of my own identity as well, you know, growing up in this world.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Yeah, so I love the description, you know, you give the example. Your mom takes Tai chi classes, she's a storyteller, she adheres to self help philosophies, you know, her art forms or the Jewish folktales. You talked about your dad being a chef. So someone would say, oh, well then they're liberal, loosey goosey, sort of like secular Jews. Right. So talk about how they were still very Orthodox.

Tova Mirvis [00:05:44] Right. So they were liberal in terms of their ideology, their sort of personality, very artistic, but they were strictly observant. I mean, growing up it wasn't like, oh, the Sabbath starts, you know, around 7 o', clock, we'll start, we'll start that. You know, the sabbath started at 7:02 and that was when it started. And we did nothing after that that was forbidden or, you know, something. And again, like within there's always range of practice. And so some people who might affiliate as Orthodox might quietly do things on the side that are not necessarily like done by everyone. You know, an example people often use is, you know, it's called eating out, where, you know, yes, I keep strictly kosher, but you know, maybe we'll quietly go get fish, you know, in a restaurant even though it's not certified. And that I think is within the umbrella of Orthodoxy. But we never did that. We were strictly Orthodox. And so there are laws within Orthodox Judaism that there's issues of definition and they pants is one of them, that people who are modern Orthodox do wear pants. But observing the Sabbath is a deal breaker. You either do or you don't. I'm sure people quietly do their own thing, but at least in terms of what people say about their own. So we were strictly observant in all those regards.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] So kosher Sabbath, anything else where your parents were just completely strict Orthodox?

Tova Mirvis [00:07:04] We observed all the holidays, we. Oh, there's so many rules. I mean, you know, I could think of the smallest thing that, you know, if you, if you buy new dishes, you have to immerse them in the ritual bath before you can use them. So that's like an example of something so minute, like, so we would do that or on Passover, you know, the rules of kosher become even more strict where it's not just the food that has to be certified kosher. But the toothpaste, the aluminum foil, but, you know, every detail. So we observed in that very strict way. It wasn't like, oh, we're doing some of the laws and not the other. It was, you know, it felt like observance was the central piece of our lives.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] And did you get the sense that your parents really believed it, that they didn't just. There's this idea of Orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Right. Obviously, Orthodox Jews or orthoprax. Did belief come into it with your parents where you could get a sense for whether they were literal believers, that Moses actually existed, that there literally was a God versus, like, I don't know about whether it's true or not, but we follow. You know, we follow things.

Tova Mirvis [00:08:12] Right. That, for me, was like, one of the questions I was, I think, as I got older, was fascinated by. Like, I would sit in synagogue and look at the women around me and think, do you really believe it? Like, do you really, truly believe? And, you know, you're right about this. There's a difference between observing the laws and truly believing. And a lot of people within the Orthodox world might say, you know, you don't have to believe. Just observe them and that's enough. You know, for me, that answer feels empty. I feel like if I don't, you know, I want to belong, I want to have friends, I want to be invited for Sabbath dinner. But if I don't believe in the foundation of it, and I have to pretend that I do, I mean, for me, that creates this gaping hole. And so growing up, I felt my mother especially did believe. I think my mother believes and believes deeply, and it's something maybe I've come to realize about her. Even more so as I realized that I don't believe. And, you know, my father, I don't know, I wondered sometimes if he did. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] Okay, so you wondered a little more. Okay, so you had two siblings, is that right? Talk about them just really briefly.

Tova Mirvis [00:09:21] Sure. I'm the middle child, so my older brother was always someone who I also felt believed. He was always very serious about Jewish prayer and Jewish studies, and he felt that this was his world. I also have a younger sister who's three years younger than me, and we were always very, very close growing up, and very similar and are close to this day as well.

John Dehlin [00:09:44] Okay. And then in terms of your relationship with your parents and the religion, when you broke a commandment or a law, when you disobeyed, how did they treat you? And it may have been different, but your mom versus your dad, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:10:00] Well, it's funny. I was such a good girl. I mean, I was really. I think the worst thing I ever did in high school was I had a youth group advisor who liked to talk to us about belief and observance and, you know, that we shouldn't wear pants, we should only wear skirts, we shouldn't touch boys. And I really liked a lot. I like talking to him. And I once stayed out too late because I was talking to him and my dad was really mad at me that I was out too late. And so I feel like when your biggest infraction as a teenager is talking too late to the youth group leader, you know, what kind of good girl you are. So I was really. I mean. Oh, I look back, I think, what was that about? Like, I was so, you know, maybe the worst thing I did was in high school, I would wear, you know, like, rules for modesty are very, very important in the Jewish Orthodox world for women. And so what's modest?

John Dehlin [00:10:48] What's. What's modest? What's immodest? Because that's a huge problem in Mormon.

Tova Mirvis [00:10:51] You have modest. So modesty, it was very clearly defined. It was sent home in notes of the school book. You know, skirts. First of all, wearing skirts was key. You know, good girls wear skirts. It was just like, that was a given, and it couldn't. So, you know, it's because Orthodox Judaism is so delineated. It wasn't just any skirt. It could be, you know, it had to cover the knee when you were sitting. And there was a term, you know, there was a biblical measurement used of, you know, if how much of your knee could show. And collarbones were off limits, so a shirt had to go above your collarbone. Sleeves had to reach. You know, in more Orthodox circles, you have to wear sleeves below the elbows. We had to wear sleeves, I guess that approximated the elbow. There was probably an exact amount. Like, how many inches? I luckily think, thankfully, that has slipped my mind. I don't remember the exact measurement, but we couldn't wear shirts with writing on it. I remember sitting the first day of my senior year in high school where we were reminded that we couldn't wear shirts with writing on it. And I was wearing a T shirt that all my friends from the summer program had signed. Remember, like, you know, trying to hide because I was breaking the dress code. But we were always trying to get around the skirt rule. I was very, very good at wearing loose skirts that I could pull down on My hips, when the rabbi approached, that covered my knee. Or when we'd sit in class, we'd put a jacket over our legs so you couldn't tell that the skirt rode up a little bit, and so our knees showed. But body hearts for fair game for. I feel like religious identity was mapped onto, like, whether your neck, collarbone showed or not.

John Dehlin [00:12:16] Wow. Yeah, we don't have it.

Tova Mirvis [00:12:19] What are yours? What are your rules?

John Dehlin [00:12:21] Oh, right now, it's a big deal. There's this term in poster liberal Mormonism called porn shoulders. Because more and more, and this is actually Mormonism, orthodox Mormonism is actually getting more orthodox. And you kind of make reference to this at the beginning of our interview. Back in the 40s and 50s, orthodox Mormons, high school girls would have spaghetti strap kind of nightgowns or beauty pageants. They would wear kind of sleeveless or spaghetti strap dresses. But now showing your shoulders, there's this term called porn shoulders, because it's almost like it's becoming pornographic to show your shoulders. Within Mormonism, it's very sleeveless.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:02] Also. My mother, growing up in an orthodox world, everyone wore pants. The women, you know, they wore pants. They wore sleeveless. You know, I see these pictures of my mother in sleeveless, and, you know, then she stopped doing it. And that same sense that the rules became stricter, especially about women's dress, it became much more contested. And for me, wearing sleeveless was like the final frontier. Like, it took even after I stopped being orthodox, until I could actually wear sleeveless without bringing, like, a little cardigan with me for fear that I would run into someone. You know, that sense that your shoulders somehow were the most forbidden.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you were the good girl. How did your parents. Did they reinforce that goodness in you? Did you feel like your dad or your mom were just like, oh, Tova's so wonderful. She's such a good girl. How did they reinforce your goodness? Or was it just intrinsic?

Early Doubts, Rebellion, and Identity as a Teen

Tova Mirvis [00:13:50] I think it was intrinsic. It was taken for granted that I was not going to rebel. I think that I had a fascination with people who rebelled. I had a high school classmate who was sent to our school as a punishment. We always sort of used to laugh about the fact that, you know, our school was her punishment. But I went to a tiny high school. There were 18 girls in the whole school. It was called the Yeshiva of the south, which is like a term for a Jewish day school. And there were six girls in my class, and we were all very close with one another. It felt like there were so few Maybe if I had more opportunity to rebel, I would have been able to. But it wasn't particularly adventurous. I. I think that I lived inside my head. You know, I would sort of concoct these escape fantasies, and I would play this game with myself where I would imagine what my life might look like one day. And I would have these versions, some of which I was still orthodox, but many of which I was not. And it was, I think, for me, the way of rebelling was my mind and was asking questions quietly. And I felt that resistance. Every time we learned something, particularly about women's roles, I would feel this burden of anger. You know, I felt it physically in my stomach, and it felt like rebellion or resistance. And it just felt like this tightening feeling that, you know, this urge to say, no, I don't want this. But it was very. You know, it's so scary to feel that you think something that might make you outside your world. And I didn't want to know how much I felt it. I just wasn't ready to face the fact that there was this, you know, increasing sense inside me of resistance to it.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] When did it start? At what age did your serious doubts start? Or even your small doubts? When did the doubts start?

Tova Mirvis [00:15:31] You know, I had such a strong memory of being in, I think was fourth grade, which is. I have a daughter right now who's the same age, which is, you know, interesting for me to think about. But I remember we, you know, would study the Torah, the five books of Moses in school, and we were learning a passage about Adam and Eve. And the. The phrase in the Bible was, him, shobat, and he will rule over her. And I had to learn to translate it. We had to learn the vocabulary for all the words. And I was a very good student. I could memorize the words. I could spout them off. But I remember thinking, like, and he will rule over her. And I remember asking my mom about it. She came into my room while I was doing my homework, and I remember that sense of turning to her and just saying, how could this book that I am supposed to revere, I'm supposed to feel that this is God's word. How could it say that the man will rule over her? Because that means me. The man will rule over me. And it's. When you live your life according to it, it's personal. You are the woman in that text, or you were the girl in that text. And my mother understood the dilemma. She understood that sense of confusion and pain, I think, to feel that these words were turning against me. In some way. And part of the way Jewish study works is that you read Commentary. They're biblical commentaries that are printed alongside the text. And so we read one together that was sort of the most common of these biblical commentators who explained that the phrase he shall rule over her means in the sexual act. You know, as the fourth grader, I was like, huh, not quite sure what that means. I was like, does that make it better?

John Dehlin [00:17:15] Exactly.

Tova Mirvis [00:17:16] Does it make it worse? But I remember that feeling of knowing that I was supposed to be satisfied with the answer. You could ask the question. I mean, Judaism encourages questions, but you have to be happy with the answer.

John Dehlin [00:17:29] I didn't realize that second part.

Tova Mirvis [00:17:32] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:17:33] I've idolized Judaism. All they love doubt and question and skepticism.

Tova Mirvis [00:17:37] As long as you listen to the answer, like, you can journey all you want as long as you come home. So I'm not sure that's questioning. I also always feel that sense. So I remember that feeling of. It felt like mental gymnastics. I knew the answer had to make me feel better because, you know, it had to. The text couldn't be wrong and the rabbis couldn't be wrong and they couldn't be sexist because they were the truth. And, you know, how could I make this all work? I remember this attempt to try and shape the words. Felt like this attempted some kind of pretzel twisting inside my head to make it be okay, because I needed it to be okay, because what would it mean if it wasn't okay? You know, that idea that, you know. But I remember that feeling. It was that each time you add, I think, one more little piece to the pile of resistance. That was, you know, one of those moments of feeling anger and resistance but not being ready to touch it too way too young to touch it.

John Dehlin [00:18:39] We call that nuance, or we call that apologetics and Mormonism.

Tova Mirvis [00:18:43] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] Where we're trying to make. Twist ourselves into an intellectual or emotional pretzel to keep the wheels on the wagon.

Tova Mirvis [00:18:53] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] So how did that from that fourth grade girl, how did your doubt and questions, skepticism progress over time? Right. So there was that other issues. Yeah, right.

Tova Mirvis [00:19:03] So. And those would continue, certainly with issues about women and girls. You know, I had a bat mitzvah, which is like the girls coming of age ceremony. And a girl has hers when she's 12 and a boy has his when he's 13. And my brother and I are a year apart, so we had ours the same year. And so for my brother, what that meant was he read from the Torah and he led the services. He Made a speech from the synagogue and then we had a party. But because I was a girl, what it meant was we had a party because I couldn't participate in any of the religious service. And, you know, there are those moments you think, oh, like I, you know, we had a lovely party, but I'm not participating in a religious practice. You know, we're marking this without the sort of official religious sense. And, you know, I remember I studied something and I gave a talk. And at the time in Memphis, even having a public celebration of a girl's Bat Mitzvah was considered radical. You know, I was one of the first to have a party in a synagogue, as opposed to just something small in your house, like a little quiet private ceremony. And the idea is that boys come of age publicly, communally and with ritual, and girls come of age at home or with the party, they come of age privately. And so that was another moment of, you know, what does that mean for me? And then in high school, I think I felt it even more so that sense that, you know, because there had been these sort of changes in Jewish, the Jewish world and the Orthodox world, we weren't going to study Talmud. That was still forbidden. But we were going to study a little bit of the oral law, and it was Xerox for us. We were given photocopies of the oral law. I think we couldn't actually study the oral law itself from the actual books, but we could. The class was called Rabbinic Thought and Literature and we could learn some watered down version of it.

John Dehlin [00:20:51] Okay, wait, wait, I have to pause.

Tova Mirvis [00:20:53] You sure?

John Dehlin [00:20:54] What year are you in high school?

Tova Mirvis [00:20:55] Let's see. Okay, so I was born in 1972, so I am in high school in 1985.

John Dehlin [00:21:03] Late, you know, 80s.

Tova Mirvis [00:21:04] Yeah, like I graduated from high school in 1990, so 86.

John Dehlin [00:21:08] In the 80s. In Orthodox Judaism, women are forbidden from studying the Talmud.

Tova Mirvis [00:21:15] So it depends where. So in a modern Orthodox world and in New York, let's say by that point, in the modern Orthodox schools in New York, girls were studying Talmud alongside the boys. I mean, that was considered. That's one of the sort of changes that I was referring to in the Orthodox world. In the right wing Orthodox world, to this day, women would not be studying Talmud.

John Dehlin [00:21:33] So in your world, you in high school.

Tova Mirvis [00:21:36] So my world was sort of this hybrid. My family was modern Orthodox. The high school was not modern Orthodox high school. Your high school, it was sort of to the right of modern Orthodoxy. It was sort of caught between those two worlds. And so we weren't Going to study Talmud at all, but we were going to study some rabbinic literature, which is what Talmud fits into that broad category. And it was the sense of like, oh, my God, the girls are being given access to these texts. And, you know, I felt the sense that to be given access was considered dangerous. You know, what will happen if we allow you to learn these things? And I was interested to learn. I mean, I was. You know, the idea that I lived rules but didn't understand how they were created or how they were taught or how they were transmitted, it felt like being locked out of the really what was the centerpiece of the world?

John Dehlin [00:22:25] Wow. Okay, so it sounds like a lot of feminist questions, a lot of sort of gender equality treatment of women. Women, you and women in general just feeling like lesser than in Jewish culture and observance. Any other strains of doubt or questioning that were happening parallel to your sort of issues around gender equality?

Tova Mirvis [00:22:49] Right, well, separate to issue gender equality. I think I just wrestled with the question of belief. I wrestled with the idea that, you know, it seemed like this, like, logic game to me. Like, how is it possible that of all, you know, the millions and millions of people in the world, what are the odds that I would be born into the truth? Like, down the street from our school, we had this school called the St. Louis Christian Academy. And, you know, I would drive past it every morning and I would think, you know, if I'm right, well, clearly they must be wrong. But from their perspective, they believe just like we are being taught to. And the notion that I happen to be born to the truth while everyone else was wrong and just seemed like a stretch. Seemed hard to believe this idea how lucky I was. And I would try to wrap my mind around it, I would try to convince myself of it, but I just couldn't get around the fact that, like, I kind of lucked out on that one. It seemed like. And I didn't understand, and I knew that those same kids believed the exact same thing. But how they had lucked out and just seemed like a problem.

Jewish Identity, the Holocaust, and College Years

John Dehlin [00:23:49] One thing that Mormons and Jews have in common is a similar number across the world. So Mormons claim around 16 million. How many do Jews claim? Do you have sense?

Tova Mirvis [00:24:01] I don't know, I said, but, you

John Dehlin [00:24:02] know, I've heard it's similar, but I call it doing the math. I did the same thing in high school. I divided it probably would have been 8 million or 6 million at the time by, you know, 3 billion or 6 billion or whatever it was. And it was less than 1/2 of 1% that was like, wow, really, like. But I was like, wow, I'm really lucky, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:24:22] I thought, how wonderful. Like, how lucky I am. And isn't that amazing? And when you really. When you step out of your own perspective, you think, I don't know, it doesn't seem as likely. And also the notion of belief, the notion that, you know, I was sort of bothered by this idea of I believe because I had been taught to, but if I had been taught something else, I would have believed that as well, and that that was problematic for me.

John Dehlin [00:24:49] So you're thinking of these things in high school now. What. Where does a. Where does a young Orthodox teenage girl in Memphis go when she's having these? Were they tormenting you or was it just, like, curiosity?

Tova Mirvis [00:25:05] I think at the time I probably would describe them as curiosity. I think the place I went with them was I read and I didn't read. It's funny, I didn't read secular philosophy. I read novels. And, you know, I think one of the other things that bothered me, maybe this wasn't a belief question exactly, but it was a critique of my world, was the sense that there was always a public version of truth. There was a story that we were taught. You know, every community teaches its story. And our story was that everything here is good and everyone is happy and everyone believes and everyone is content. And if you don't, you know, clearly there's something wrong with you because we all believe this, we all think this, and look how wonderful our lives are. I think maybe this is where I became not just a non believer eventually, but. But a novelist. The recognition that it's always more complicated than that, that the story never matches the public facade. And I used to, you know, hear little murmurings of community scandals. We always had these scandals that would happen. And I would think, you know, it doesn't match the story you're telling, or you would hear people's stories about, you know, the things that happen in all of our lives, painful things and complicated things. And I would have this awareness of the gap between what people said and how people really lived. And that. That probably moved me more than anything, the sense that the whole truth wasn't being offered. And I think reading novels, I read Anna Karenina in high school, and I had the feeling of here is the world as it is really lived. Here are people not performing and not trying to inspire me or trying to, you know, instill something in me, but just life, human experience. And I think that maybe taught me more that it Gave me a place for those questions. That sense that life and human beings are more complicated than religious worlds maybe want us to think.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] I have to ask, I don't know if it was from Fiddler on the Roof, where at some point Tevy is like, hey, God, if this is what it means to be chosen, I'm not

Tova Mirvis [00:27:10] so sure I'm exactly right. Choose someone else.

John Dehlin [00:27:13] But to not be too trivial about it, either I've read or I've contemplated just this idea that what would it be like to feel like you're Jewish, part of God's chosen people? And even Mormons think Jews are chosen. Like even Mormons view Jews as God's, the true pure blood of Israel. Right. What would it be like to view yourself as God's chosen people and to have such an epic history of Holocaust, of persecution, of murder and being driven. Not just the Holocaust in World War II, but the pogroms in Eastern Europe and I mean, millennia of persecution. Right, right.

Tova Mirvis [00:28:00] I mean, Jewish history is shaped with stories of persecution, anti Semitism, violence, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms. I mean, until the Holocaust, which was the one that I knew the most about, it felt the most immediate. Sitting in front of me in synagogue were a group of women who had survived the Holocaust. And when they leaned over, when they reached for something, I could see the numbers tattooed on their arms. And I think certainly for my generation, an awareness of the Holocaust was always part of our Jewish identity, even if we had no family directly who were direct survivors in any way. But it was a part of our communities and part of our education and part of our upbringing in any way. And I think that sense of wrestling with what it means. I think we all wrestle with questions of what is. Of God and evil and how we. How we reconcile those, but it felt deeply personal. I certainly read many, many books about the Holocaust. I was very afraid. I was very. You know, certainly when I was younger, in elementary school, we would learn about it, and I would come home and have nightmares and really be tortured with the question of, could it happen in America? Could it happen again? And reading, you know, reading from the Diary of Anne Frank to just, you know, night Elie Wiesel, really, the full slew of books really had such an awareness of what that kind of evil and suffering. And it felt deeply personal. It felt like it had been, you know, it was so not far removed. It wasn't like, you know, I can read about the Spanish Inquisition, but reading about the Holocaust, you know, my grandmother was alive during it in Memphis, but I felt like this was the same age. This was this time period that I could touch with my. By knowing people the same age.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] Did it affect your. In those teen or early adult years, did it penetrate? Sometimes that can reinforce this sense of discrimination, can actually reinforce one's feeling of specialness or a mission or purpose or passion. In some ways, persecution can actually reinforce orthodox belief for you. Did it ever challenge your belief?

Tova Mirvis [00:30:03] I think it does. For me, it did both. I mean, it definitely did increase the sense that I was part of this world and that I felt a sense of obligation to carry this history and to know the history and to carry stories that had been wiped out. And, you know, one of the things I did on a summer tour, I spent a few weeks in Poland and really learned the history. And I did. And even do still feel that sense of historical obligation and connection to this. To this historical travesty. And it did have that feeling of mission and purpose and just awareness, just awareness of what it meant to belong to this group and to be part of it. I think on a philosophical level, it created questions of where was God? How could this happen? And I was very aware of the apologetics offered sort of these stories. You know, I was raised with these stories of sort of how people were saved because they had observed in these sort of miraculous stories of survival. And all those stories, whether they're all true or not, I don't know. But they were used as a means of saying, see, you know, God was there. And I feel like if you're going to claim God is there in the stories of survival, you have to answer the question about the 6 million people who were killed. You can't hold up God only for the people who managed to survive. You have to answer the same question for those who didn't. And I felt like, you know, the best answers given were, we don't know. We can't understand. I think maybe that's the best answer a religious person can give when faced with something like this. When people attempted to explain it from a religious perspective, that felt deeply troubling to me, even to this day. Recently, someone said to me, the Holocaust was a test, was God's testing us. I just feel like you're talking about 1 million Jewish children killed. I can't even wrap my mind around the notion of a God testing us in that way. Someone said to me in response, I think God failed that test then, wow.

John Dehlin [00:31:57] So how did your faith. I'll call it a faith crisis, because that's what we call it in Mormonism. What do you call it in Judaism when somebody's questioning their faith, doubting their belief?

Tova Mirvis [00:32:07] Well, the term for someone who leaves is called off the derech. Derech means path. So people have actually called it otd. It's now like the term for who leave. But, you know, people would say, oh, she's questioning, she's struggling. She's, you know, she's, you know, maybe questioning would be the best term. But there's no, I don't think there's like one official term for, you know, really, you know, raising questions about faith and belief.

John Dehlin [00:32:29] So when did your, when did your questioning get serious?

Tova Mirvis [00:32:33] So after high school, I did what is very common for many Orthodox Jews and I spent a year in Israel. And the idea was that if you're going to go to secular college, where you're endangered on all fronts, spike by the lure of the secular world, you should spend one year in Israel in full time religious study. Really, it was like sort of seen as the last chance to study in that serious way. And I think it's also viewed as an inoculation against the secular world. If I could shore up my religious feeling, then I would not be as endangered when I went to college. And so I spent a year and, you know, for me, choosing the school I went to, even though it was an intense religious studies program, it was regarded as something of rebellion because I chose a liberal Orthodox women's yeshiva where we would study Talmud for much of the day. And at my high school that was regarded as like, oh, did you hear what Tovah's doing? She's, you know, it's a little iffy. And it was seen as, you know, really to the far left in the Orthodox world. And for me, I think that year was a chance to really understand that liberal world, that liberal Orthodox world.

John Dehlin [00:33:36] Were your parents alarmed? Did they counsel you against that?

Tova Mirvis [00:33:39] My parents were happy. So this school fit in more with my parents modern Orthodoxy as opposed to my high school's more right wing Orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:33:46] Okay, got it, got it. Okay, so. So you do a little more liberal experience in Israel and what happens?

Talmud Study Abroad and Arriving at Columbia

Tova Mirvis [00:33:53] And so I really, I love the Talmud study. I really felt immersed in it. And I think I felt in that year I felt a little more comfortable with my Orthodoxy. I felt this sense that maybe I could reconcile it. Maybe I could be a feminist, I could be intellectual, I could go to college and still be Orthodox. And I had this image of who I was supposed to be. She was sort of this like, she was, you know, feminist. She was gonna go to college but she was strictly Orthodox. And I felt like that was the ideal. And I just wanted to be her so badly. And so I really felt like I spent that year trying to become this person, trying to be. You know, the sort of mantra I adopted was I didn't have to agree with all the rules, but I was gonna observe them because they were God's will. And so that year, for example, I stopped wearing pants. I decided I would only wear skirts. And even though I thought, you know, oh, there's nothing immodest about pants, I don't really think there's anything religiously wrong with it. But I'm gonna choose this because this is what my community does. I'm gonna sort of align myself with my community more fully. And I felt like we had to follow the. There's a term in Orthodoxy called, you know, halacha, means Jewish law. And so being halachic is someone who follows the law. And I felt like I didn't have to buy into every sort of ideology, belief, but I was going to be halachic, I was going to follow the laws.

John Dehlin [00:35:18] And. And so that's, that's getting you more, more Orthodox.

Tova Mirvis [00:35:22] Right, Right. I, it was, it's funny felt I felt at the time like I was sort of staking my claim in this left wing Orthodox area. So one hand, it's becoming less Orthodox, right. It's becoming a little more liberal, but it's staunchly so it was sort of deciding this is where I belong and this is who I'm going to be and I'm going to follow the rules of this world.

John Dehlin [00:35:43] Okay, so what happens?

Tova Mirvis [00:35:45] So I spend this year and then I go to Columbia College in New York. And I felt like, you know, for the first time I was in the secular world. I was in a school that had more than 18 people in it. It was sort of a shock to my system because I was used to such a small world. And it was.

John Dehlin [00:35:59] That's a super liberal college. Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:36:01] Columbia is a super liberal college, although, you know, every college has its pockets. And so I was part of the modern Orthodox community at Columbia.

John Dehlin [00:36:08] Okay.

Tova Mirvis [00:36:09] And so I sort of, I think, you know, I felt shy and a little overwhelmed and it was very easy to be friends with the people who were like me. And so I had an Orthodox roommate and we, I went to prayer services twice a day and, you know, I would wake up at seven in the morning. Part of it was social. It was like the big social hangout for the Orthodox Jews to get up early and go to services. And have breakfast afterwards. But I staked my claim in that world, this was who I was going to be. I had, like, for a brief time. I started wearing pants again, and my roommate at the time said to me, you know, I don't think that boy will date you if, you know, you wear pants. And I wanted to date that boy. And it was very important to me to be seen a certain way. There's so much about how an Orthodox girl is regarded. Again, that same category of are you good or are you not good? Is she religious or not? And, you know, if you wore pants, you could still be Orthodox, but, you know, not 100%. And I wanted to be 100%.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] Okay, so you. So you. Did you date that boy and didn't

Tova Mirvis [00:37:11] even end up dating him? No, I stopped wearing pants and didn't even date him.

John Dehlin [00:37:14] Okay. All right. So how did your faith progress? What did Columbia do to your faith?

Tova Mirvis [00:37:19] So I think my goal at Columbia was to stay the person I always was. College for me wasn't about exploring. It wasn't about, let me look at what I believe. Let me change. It was, let me go to my classes. I was an English major. I knew I wanted to be a writer, so let me take in those parts, but not change my religious identity in any way. Not endanger it, you know, to take a religion class, or I would never have taken a biblical criticism class. I didn't want to be challenged, you know, a religious philosophy class, anything like that. I didn't want anything that would shake me from my sense of belonging and faith.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] So my understanding of biblical criticism is that it's basically teasing apart the Bible to show that it's not necessarily literal, that it's not necessarily historical, that Moses may not have even existed. And so would you have been aware that biblical criticism existed by the time you were at Columbia?

Tova Mirvis [00:38:18] I was. I was aware as a school of thought, and I was aware of what it was interested in doing. I was aware that it would challenge the notion of whether God was the author of the Torah. And I didn't want to have. I knew that if I were faced with it, I would have to take it seriously, and so it was easier not to read it.

John Dehlin [00:38:34] So you just avoided it. Oh, my gosh. Do you ever pinch yourself now or hit yourself now that you had a chance to study that stuff?

Tova Mirvis [00:38:42] I do. Oh, I pinch myself about so many things. About college, about being afraid about being afraid to explore, about the idea that I could change. I mean, for me, change was the most terrifying possibility. And maybe I was most afraid of it because I knew. I knew that part of me was so hungry for it. I knew that inside me there was a voice that was questioning. And I had this idea that if I just didn't listen to it, somehow it would go away. And I think I did everything I could not to listen to it, because it was just. It was. It was. You know, I knew in college I would hear about people like, oh, do you hear about this person? You know, he took a class in secular philosophy, and now he's not orthopedic anymore. They were like the warning stories. They were the stories that would scare me. And I was curious. I thought, what is that like? And, you know, I couldn't imagine how you would navigate. You know, I feel like, well, who are your friends? And what do you do on a Friday night? And what will your world look like if it's not this? And so there are cautionary tales.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] So in some sense, I don't want to simplify it this way, but. But religion was stunting your personal growth and development. Is that fair to say or not? Is that oversimplifying? Is that.

Tova Mirvis [00:39:57] Well, I think it created. There was a border. It built a fence around me. And so you could explore up to this point, or you could make other friends who weren't orthodox, but up to a point. And, you know, the idea that you could be part of the outside world as long as you knew who you really were. And maybe some people in college were better able to navigate that, of being more comfortable having lots of different kinds of friends and being parts of lots of things. For me, I felt very aware that I didn't want to be loosely tethered to my world.

John Dehlin [00:40:31] Yeah, okay, so it sounds like college wasn't the place where you started really having the intense, doubting, questioning.

Tova Mirvis [00:40:39] College, for me was. It was. You know, I think for a lot of people who go to secular college, I feel like that's one exit ramp people take. I didn't. I just was too afraid of.

John Dehlin [00:40:49] Okay, so what happened?

Tova Mirvis [00:40:51] So, my senior year of college, I had a friend who actually had converted to Judaism. And she was sort of fascinating to me. It was fascinating that she had chosen this world. And, you know, she actually ended up inspiring my first novel. I was interested in what makes someone choose this world but be different. She wasn't able to fit in like you, really. The first time I met her, I knew right away that she had not grown up in this world. And I was interested in how we belong or don't. And she Was dating this guy, and he had a friend, and they introduced us on a blind date, and we went out, and 12 weeks later, we got engaged.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] 12 weeks later. Okay, and you were married and how soon after that?

Tova Mirvis [00:41:30] So we met and. Oh, my God. Our first date was. It was October 30th was our first date. So some animal. I could do the math. It was in 1994, you know, this week. So we went out for 12 weeks. We got engaged around New Year's, and we got unofficially engaged then. We got officially engaged then, and we got married in August. We had known each other. One of the things that sort of bothered me was, I haven't known you for a year, and I'm married to you.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] So you married him within a year. Yeah, same with me. I was married to my wife within 10 months of meeting her. Okay, and was he Orthodox, and was that part of why you loved him, and was that part of the contract for why you got married?

Marriage, Community, and Belonging as an Orthodox Woman

Tova Mirvis [00:42:17] Yeah, he was Orthodox in a very, very similar manner to me. I mean, he was part of a very similar modern Orthodox community. We were. We were, as our friend said, you're exactly the same. And that idea that we were just religiously, we were very similar. We were both strictly Orthodox, but we always used to say, like, we're not harsh about it. Like, we were a little more bendable. We weren't. I had roommates who are, you know, more strictly religious. You know, they were a little more didactic in some of their observance than I was. And I always felt like I wasn't like that. And so we. It felt like a comfortable fit. He knew my friends, I knew his friends. Our parents actually knew each other. Years before, our fathers had gone to medical school together. So the Orthodox world. I'm curious if you had a similar thing, like the idea of Jewish geography, we call it, where everyone knows everyone. Everyone is one step removed from one another. And so I told my parents I was going on a blind date with this guy, and I was like, oh, I know them. We went to. My daddy went to medical school with his dad. You know, she's like, I think we were at his circumcision. And I was like, oh, that's too much. Didn't need to know that. But, you know, that sense that everyone is interconnected in so many ways, that's awesome.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] Okay, and what state did he grow up in? Go to high school?

Tova Mirvis [00:43:28] He's from Boston.

John Dehlin [00:43:29] Okay, okay, good. So, all right, so you get married. And how did your questioning start impacting your marriage? I Assume you started out hopeful and committed to your Orthodoxy, but also sort of progressive in your Orthodoxy. When did things start becoming difficult for you and then problematic in your marriage?

Tova Mirvis [00:43:55] Right. I think on one hand, getting married felt like it secured me to my world. I felt like when you're a married Orthodox woman, you are an official member of the community, and any worry I had that I could go astray or I might question, I felt like, well, not anymore. I'm secured. Now I'm part of this marriage, an Orthodox marriage. And in some ways, it was reassuring. It felt like, okay, this is who I'm going to be. And yet at the same time, I feel like marriage turned the heat up on a lot of questions. And one reason it did that is because in Orthodoxy, particularly for a woman, there are all sorts of new laws that you encounter when you get married. And the first one that was the hardest for me was the idea that, you know, until now there are all these laws of modesty about pants and skirts and sleeves and elbows, but hair is. There's nothing about hair until you get married. And then there's the idea that a married woman's hair is considered, like nakedness. It's considered improper for a man who's not her husband to see her hair. Which is why many Orthodox women wear similar vein, you know, as in, you know, across the spectrum, there's different interpretations. In my modern Orthodox world, there are all these attempts to reframe this. You know, no, it's not that your hair is improper. It's not that. It's like, you know, a private part. It's a sign of marriage. You wear, you know, that when you get married, a woman needs to wear on her head, a sign of being married. And so I had that same sense, that same resistance, the feeling of, so now more of me is being forbidden. More parts of me are off limits. And, you know, the idea of covering my hair felt very disturbing. And, you know, interestingly, my mother doesn't cover her hair, and my mother in law doesn't cover her hair. My then mother in law doesn't cover her hair. But there was that move to the right where women like me, whose mothers would not have covered their hair, were all covering their hair. And so I got married and I was engaged. I felt like I want to be that person, that same good girl image. I want to be her, and that girl, of course, would cover her hair. And so I told myself I was doing it in a liberal way. It was somewhat radical. In my mind, I was gonna wear a hat all the time, but not cover all of my hair, which was sort of the left edge of orthodoxy way of doing it. But I also had a wig. It was a fall, which is sort of a demi wig. And in my mind, I was like, no, I'm not right wing. I'm not wearing a wig. I'm wearing a fall. The difference between a wig and a fall is about an inch of hair. You know, you put a fall on right here. So I would like. I would get in every morning, I would pull this part of my hair forward. I would clip the fall on. It was like this layer of hair that, you know, was supposed to look exactly like mine, but of course, it was like this weird, not curly enough version. And then you pull this hair over and you kind of pin it on and. And it was sort of this. You could ask the question, if no one knows you're doing it, how exactly is it a sign of marriage if the fall is so identical to your hair? What is the point? And I did wonder that I would attach it and I would think, is there a God of hair for whom am I doing this? Or I would wear a baseball hat all the time. And I hated it. I felt covered over. I felt like I lived in this little enclosed world where my vision was impeded. But again, it was. I'm doing the law. It wasn't supposed to matter how I felt about the law. I just had to observe it.

John Dehlin [00:47:22] Wow. And in addition to the hair was there also. So you said there was a hat and the hairpiece.

Tova Mirvis [00:47:29] It was one or the other. So I would either wear the fall and that, you know, basically you would. I would have my hair in a barrette here, and there would be like this. Like this part of my hair would not be my own hair. It would be fake, kind of laying over my hair. And so. Or if I didn't feel like dealing with it or didn't want. I lived with a constant fear that someone was gonna see the gap between my real hair and fake hair. I was always so self conscious wearing it. So I would wear a baseball hat instead. So you could do one or the other.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] So it was normally a baseball hat that you'd wear.

Tova Mirvis [00:47:58] I did. I'd wear like. I would try to wear, like, berets some way. I would look in the mirror and I would think, you know, is this who I am? You know? And I had a moment walking down the street once where I caught a glimpse of myself unexpectedly in a mirror. In New York City, there were these drugstores that had these full length mirrors. And I caught a glimpse of this young woman. She's wearing like a hat, like this big round hat and a long skirt. And I had this moment where for a second I looked at her and I thought, who is that? And then like, you know, that split second before you recognize yourself. And then it was like, oh, that's me. And the shocking thing was that, you know, I felt this internal sense that said, like, no, this is not who I am. This is not me. Like the me who lives inside doesn't match that religious woman who was presenting herself. I think that was another one of those moments, that sense that the person I am on the inside does not match the person I am on the outside.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] Wow. I had no idea. So the hair law became a major source of discomfort and questioning over time, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:49:08] It did. And the other area of law that applied to married women that was very hard for me was the notion of a mikvah, which is a ritual bath. And so, you know, we were always taught that any, any sexual contact was forbidden until we were married. And then when you're, when you get married, you're all of a sudden allowed to have sex. And we'd have any contact. But it's not just like, oh, now you can have sex. Even that is very strictly legislated. And so before getting married, everyone takes something called, like, it's called kala class, which is like a bridal class. And we learned the laws of Jewish family purity. And those laws again were extremely strict. And the laws were that, you know, in a nutshell, that during a woman's period and for the seven days after, she's not permitted to touch her husband at all, no physical contact, you can't sleep in the same bed, you can't pass a plate to each other, you can't get no hug, nothing. And then after. So for five days of bleeding, seven days, the so called clean day, that's half the month. It's half the month, right. And that was seen. And there were all these reasons given. Every time it's like the first time, it keeps your marriage alive. You learn to communicate non sexually. It makes your marriage better. All these sorts of things were sort of told and maybe they're true for some people, but I don't know. But it was, you know, and a woman had to check herself. So we were taught, you know, it was, it's. Everything is very regulated. So, you know, I have my period for five days and then on the sixth day maybe I kind of still have my period. But is this sort of, you know, can I start counting or not? I don't know. And so you were supposed to bring the cloth to the rabbi to ask. And I see your expression, believe me, I know. To ask, you know, to show that the smear, like, is this reddish brown, is this yellow. I know, I know. I did this. I did this. I brought, I brought a cloth to a rabbi and I said, like, I wanted, because, you know, you can't have sex until you go to the ritual bath. And I was trying to get pregnant. And so I was very concerned with, you know, my missing ovulation. And so I brought a cloth. The rabbi and I thought, like, I don't want to be here. I'm sure he does not want to be here. But like, again, this is what the law requires us to do. And so I did it. And you know, I think for me this is an area of major apologetics. And, you know, I don't want to only dismiss it as that. I think for people, this could be beautiful. And many people who believe it, I understand that and feel the need to say. I know that for many people this is foundational and important. For me, it felt intrusive into my body. It felt like the law was written across my body.

Sexual Restrictions, Purity Laws, and the Mikveh Ritual

John Dehlin [00:51:50] Yeah. And like, you know, for post Mormons, the big thing is like, oh, little 12 year old girls are being, you know, asked if they masturbate alone in a room with a full grown man. And that's, I think in many cases that's one of the most extreme examples of, of just improper boundaries. Right, right.

Tova Mirvis [00:52:13] I think one of the changes that has been made in the modern orthodox world is the idea that you can bring those cloths to women, that women can be decisors of the law in that way. And that has been something that the modern Orthodox community has championed, the idea that it's uncomfortable for a woman to have to ask a man that. And so I think that is an example of an area where people recognize this is deeply uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [00:52:35] Yeah. Jera Lee just wrote, Mormonism is feeling a little less peculiar.

Tova Mirvis [00:52:40] Okay, good, I'm glad.

John Dehlin [00:52:43] But it's not like, oh, great, you know, we can use your more harrowing experiences to make ourselves feel better. That doesn't feel better. It just makes me feel sad that they're maybe that's rude of me or insensitive to say that they're orthodox women who have to bring their underwear to a rabbi to see if, if there's sufficient or insufficient spotting to allow them to have sexual intercourse with their spouse. Is that what is that kind of right?

Tova Mirvis [00:53:11] It's. Yeah. I mean, you are checking to see if you have. You need seven continuous days of clean or pure, as it's called. But, you know, and I think one of the things I wrestle with is, you know, I know people who are fine with it. I know people who don't experience it as problematic, and people who love going to the ritual bath, who consider it deeply, and. And I always want to give honor to that. I know that for some people, that is the experience. What becomes hard is when people who feel that way are unable to. It's one thing to say, I like this and believe in it, but can you make room inside your belief to recognize that for some people, that experience is intrusive or is uncomfortable or. I don't want the law to regulate my private life in that way. And where is the space to recognize that? That, I think, is where it becomes harder for me. When there's no space given for the fact that, you know, when you're inside it, you take it as a given. I went to the ritual bath a few nights before I got married. It was just part of what I did. And I went my entire marriage. And sometimes it bothered me, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it felt meaningful, and sometimes it didn't. But is there ever a place to step back and say, you know, not everyone experiences this in the same way, and where is the room to say, like, I see why this could be hard for someone who doesn't want this or doesn't believe.

John Dehlin [00:54:34] Was the ritual bath like a public thing? Was it just private in your home? Where did the actual bath happen?

Tova Mirvis [00:54:40] So there's the idea that when you go in the ritual bath, there's not supposed to be a separation between your body and the water. It's sort of a sense of full immersion in that world, in the. In the bath. And so that is interpreted through rabbinic law to mean that, you know, a hangnail, for example, to go back to that could be a blocking between yourself. Or if I wore jewelry, that would be a blocking. Or tangled hair would be a blocking. And so it's the idea that you would immerse your full body. And so women will clip their nails, take a very careful bath, comb your hair in the interest of having yourself fully immersed.

John Dehlin [00:55:18] And so you do all that in preparation, and then you go to the. But you bathe before, and then you also bathe at the synagogue.

Tova Mirvis [00:55:26] People do it differently. Some people get ready at home, and some people get ready at the mikveh itself, depending on timing or each mikveh has different setups.

John Dehlin [00:55:35] And then when you go to the mikveh.

Tova Mirvis [00:55:38] Mikveh. Mikveh.

John Dehlin [00:55:39] When you go to the mikveh, what happens there?

Tova Mirvis [00:55:41] So usually you would take a quick shower, like a second shower, and then you would go into the room where there's a ritual bath, and you would be observed by the attendant. You know, in the Jewish world, she's called the mikvah lady. And you would immerse and say the blessing and go under three times total. And the woman would watch to make sure that every part of you has immersed fully.

John Dehlin [00:56:03] Wow, that sounds. That's got some Mormon baptism sort of. Sort of similarities, but it's also got some Mormon temple ritual similarities as well.

Tova Mirvis [00:56:13] Interesting.

John Dehlin [00:56:14] Yeah. And you do that once a month.

Tova Mirvis [00:56:17] Once a month.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] Wow. And what was it like to just not be able to have sex with your husband for two weeks out of the month? I guess you're saying that one thing that was hard about it was the fact that you were trying to get pregnant. But was it hard for him, and was it hard for you in other ways?

Tova Mirvis [00:56:35] It was hard. I mean, it created the sense. You know, I think when you're not married, sexuality is regulated, right? Everything is allowed or forbidden, and you operate under those terms that anything sexual is forbidden. And I think what was most hard for me was the idea that even in being married, there was still this notion of allowed and forbidden. You know, I would think, are we allowed to touch? You know, it made me always feel aware of law. And I think maybe that's one of the purposes of it. Maybe that because Jewish law is about every minute, every day, it creates a structure around sexuality, and you're still inside this structure. And, you know, I know very, very well, I. I could go on and on about the sort of reasons given and how it makes it beautiful. I could say it. I just. I can't, because I've heard it so many times that I. And yet didn't experience it that way and don't believe in it. And I think the issue I have with apologetics is they're supposed to make you feel better about something that you kind of don't feel good about. And I think that there's a way in which it forces you to think I should think this, but I don't what's wrong with me? And so even sort of giving you the summary of the apologetics makes me feel uncomfortable, because I think it's a way of quieting People and forcing dissent. You know, the thing I heard over and over again about the ritual bath was, it's beautiful. You know, it's beautiful. And what's so hard is. And again, yes, for some, I'm sure. I'm sure it is. But when you are being told something is beautiful and you don't experience it, that you have to set you. I feel like your sense of self is forced underground. You're forced to say, you know, everyone says it's beautiful and something must be wrong with me that I don't see the beauty or I don't experience it that way. And I think it damages your own sense of internal autonomy.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] Absolutely. I'm taking furious notes here. What you just said about apologetics is so powerful that it's set up to make you feel good about something you really don't feel good about. That is so powerful. I love it. And, of course, pushing yourself underground really quickly, Todd, our listener asks, what are you being purified of? Like, why? I mean, that's kind of a profound question.

Tova Mirvis [00:58:56] Right, right, exactly. And purity has so many layers and has so many resonances of what does it mean to be pure, impure? I mean, in a technical. It stems from a biblical notion of blood as being impure. So the, you know, people who were bleeding couldn't give temple sacrifices. So woman's period, the actual blood itself is what taints, sort of makes you forbidden for sexual contact. And so you are being purified, you know, but if you, you know, it's sort of. Women's period is so central to a female biology, you could ask, like, are you being. Is it your own set female body that you're being? You know, that is being made pure. And there's all the. Again, like, with apologetics, you. It's not about cleanliness. People always say. It's not about purity. It's about permissibility. There are all these attempts to make it, you know, but for me, it feels like all these attempts to make it not be what I think it is. And the notion of, you know, women's blood being a taboo, like, period blood, menstrual blood being a taboo, you know, in many societies, I guess I can

John Dehlin [00:59:56] imagine there's a lot of Orthodox Jewish women that are just like, oh, this is part of our belief and part of what we do, and they don't even think a thing about it, the impurity. And then I'm guessing that there's others that are just wracked with this torment of always feeling impure. And every month, I'm going to be impure again. And am I dirty now? And am I worthy? I imagine that just depending on one's personality, they could experience these beliefs and rituals very differently.

Tova Mirvis [01:00:20] Right. I think everyone experiences it very different and very personal. And some people probably enjoy the sort of rhythm it creates in your month or the sense of structure. Other people probably chafe at it. I think that, you know, we're every personality. People don't get to choose. Most of us don't get to choose the faith we're born into. We're born into something, but our faith, our personalities and our, our minds don't necessarily match the worlds we're born into. And so we all come up against those rules in different ways.

John Dehlin [01:00:44] So Jeralee is appearing a lot on the show. JERA Lee so in Mormonism, the leadership in the church, they aren't apologists, they are just the teachers and the enforcers of orthodoxy. In Mormonism, there's sort of this group of apologists. They're professors at Brigham Young University, they're parts of these nonprofits that are separate from the religious institution. They're kind of these unofficial arm's length people that they create websites and books and podcasts trying to make doubting and questioning Mormons feel better about a bunch of things they don't feel good about. How does apologetics work in Orthodox Judaism? Is it the rabbis themselves who are also part time apologists? How does apologetics work in Orthodox Judaism?

Apologetics, Community Structure, and Growing Doubts

Tova Mirvis [01:01:32] I think Orthodox Judaism doesn't have, I think, the same centralized structure you're describing. There's no sort of one Orthodox, like synagogue, you know, it's not like there's a central body. There's many different groups and there's many different, you know, there's some rabbinic organizations, but there's no sort of centerpiece or main single authority figure in that way. And so there's so many different streams of Orthodoxy. And so I think that there are different movements, you know, different. So I don't feel like it has as clear of a distinction as you're describing between sort of the official version and the apologetic version. I think that there are people who consider it their mission to explain doubt to who put forth things on Internet services or sermons just, you know, personally to try to reach out to people within Orthodoxy, there's, within the Jewish world there's something called the Kirov movement. So Kiruv comes from the Hebrew word to draw closer. And you know, Judaism doesn't proselytize outside of the Jewish faith. But that group is very interested in bringing people who are Jewish deeper into the fold and deeper into Judaism. And so their goal might be to try and explain to people why, you know, you think this is problematic, but it's really not. Or people who offer proofs of God's existence, who want to sort of argue with doubters and be like, you know, I can show you why it's beautiful, or I can prove to you why God really exists. So that I think it's sort of an outreach movement, is maybe engages in some of what you're describing.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] Would this sort of conversation happen in the synagogue, or would it happen at a university? Would it happen over the Internet? How does somebody find these sorts of people. How does a doubter who active in Orthodox Judaism find these sorts of people that would give these explanations to try to make them feel better?

Tova Mirvis [01:03:15] Well, some of it could be just personally. Let's say a student in high school could confide in a rabbi or a teacher, and they could sort of talk to them about it. There's been, I think, a growing awareness in the Orthodox world about kids who are dissatisfied, or people talk about kids at risk, or this idea of kids who are leaving the path has become much more in the spotlight within the Orthodox world right now. And I think that puts people in a. Of wanting to try to keep these kids inside or figure out how to. How to speak to them, how to answer their questions, and with the desire to pull them back in and keep them within the community.

John Dehlin [01:03:49] Okay, all right, so now talk about how the stuff with the hair, the ritual bath, how did that lead to more and more serious doubts, personally? And then how did it start affecting your marriage?

Tova Mirvis [01:04:06] Sure. Well, I, you know, I felt it was that same. That little voice, you know, when I was, you know, in fourth grade, saying, I don't. I don't like this. You know, each time, it's like adding a little bit more power to that voice. And so I did. I did cover my hair for the first three years of being married, and I really hated it. I felt like, you know, I felt like it went against some central part of myself. And I think, you know, hair is such a personal sense for, you know, for me, it was such a sense of who I was, an idea of having to cover over some part of myself. And I tried to do it. I would make myself do it. I would pin that wig on every day and think, I hate this. I hate it. But I would say, this is what you're supposed to do. And to not be someone who covered her hair. I felt like I don't want to be that person. And I think that was probably one of the first real moments of reckoning where there was an action produced. And after about three years, I decided that I couldn't do it anymore. I just. It made me not want to go outside. I just didn't want to. I felt like I was doing something that went against some essential part of who I was. And with some things within Orthodoxy, let's say keeping the Sabbath, there's no room to decide, I'm not going to do it. But hair covering. There are people in the Orthodox. There are women in the Orthodox world, my own mother, for example, who did not cover their hair. So there. It felt like there was a choice. I would be making a statement. I knew. I knew I would be regarded as less religious. But you could still be within and not cover your hair.

John Dehlin [01:05:33] Regarded by who? Because if your parents don't care, who are you worrying about?

Tova Mirvis [01:05:36] Right? So it's funny, that's a great question. Who is the watcher? Who watches us? And I think that in the Orthodox world, community reigns supreme. I almost think that community is the God. I wasn't worried about God. I didn't worry, oh, no, God is going to consider this sin. You know, it's funny, within Orthodoxy, you can go a lot of days without even hearing anyone talk about God. It's law, religion, the rabbis. I was afraid of being perceived by my community. And so community becomes an enforcer of laws.

John Dehlin [01:06:07] And is that just your local temple? Who is the community that? Is it your in laws? Is it your friends from college? Who are the community people that most had that influence on you in those early married years?

Tova Mirvis [01:06:23] It's all of those. All of what you said, like, it's family, it's community members, it's synagogue members, friends. You know what, for Orthodox Jews, community is so central. I'm curious if this is the same in your world as well, where the hundred percent. I know people who say, well, I don't really believe in it, but I want to belong to the community. And, you know, the community has many wonderful things. A sense of belonging, of being rooted, of having. Being surrounded by people at all times, at hard times, at good times, that I think is the real selling point. And it's used as the selling point. And it's what you lose if you leave. It's why I think people don't leave. So that almost like community has this, like, sort of amorphous, you know, voice. You know, my first novel is sort of told from the point of view of the community. And this, in this we voice, the sense that there is this community almost takes on a personality of its own. And so it was this sort of generalized notion of community and what will they think? And this they looms enormously large.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] What will they think? And who is the they? I love that idea. Who is the they?

Tova Mirvis [01:07:29] Right, There is a they. I think we each construct our own they. Who is our they? Who keeps us inside? Whose voice do we hear? Whose eyes do we imagine? I think we probably each have our own particular version of that they.

John Dehlin [01:07:42] Okay, so three years in, you stop doing the hair thing. Your parents don't care, but you're probably feeling self conscious about the rest of the community, right?

Tova Mirvis [01:07:52] And my then husband, you know, he was in a similar place where his mother didn't. It wasn't. It wasn't absolutely necessary. There was wiggle room. And, you know, I want to give him credit for it, that when he saw how much I hated it, I was not very quiet about it. You know, putting that wig on every morning, I was like, God, I hate this, and I can't stand this, and trying to scrunch the hair so it looked something like my very curly hair. He was aware that it really bothered me. And I think he understood, you know, at the time, I think he understood that it was hard. It was hard for me. Maybe. Maybe he had some sense that I was trying very hard to be somebody that ultimately I wasn't. But he, you know, I remember so clearly, you know, one of the moments I write about in my book, but was we were with friends. We were at a reading in New York where I was in school, and I was wearing this baseball hat, and I just felt like, I can't wear it. Like, not for another minute can I keep this hat on my head? And we weren't among anyone from our community. There was no they, you know, in the presence, because it was all people. It was writers that were. I was sort of friendly with, but it wasn't community. And I said to him, you know, would you mind if I took off my hat? And, you know, there was something about the strangeness. I was asking him permission because, you know, for, you know, in our world, what I did reflected on who he was as well. You know, he was judged. How religious he was, depended on, you know, does his wife cover her hair? Was a way of determining his religiosity, not just mine. And I remember, you know, I remember on his face this look of, you know, it was kindness and compassion and understanding was hard. And Also, I think confusion or fear about what does it mean to set, you know, the ball of change in motion? What does it mean to take one step down? And he said, oh, I'm fine with it. You know, it's fine with me. And, you know, I said, are you sure? Are you really fine with it? And I saw, you know, that flash of worry in his eyes. I'm sure I had it in my own as well. Only his anxiety. It was certainly mine as well. But I don't think we knew. Maybe we didn't know. We were at the beginning of a very hard conversation. But I think certainly when you get married young, the conversation, maybe at any marriage, what happens if one of us changes? We got married. We signed a marriage contract between the two of us. But there was also an informal contract that the person I am now at 23 is the person I'm always going to be. And, you know, I don't think that is life. And so what happens, you know, that moment, you know, sitting in this little weird bar in Manhattan, of course we wouldn't eat anything or drink anything because we didn't do that. We each had a Coke. That was like, as far, you know, what we would do in this baseball hat between us on the table. You know, when I think back, I feel like that moment right there was where we started something that couldn't be turned back from. But if I knew then what it would have done, I would have realized how big of a moment that was.

Stepping Away from Observance Inside the Marriage

John Dehlin [01:10:51] You called it a step down.

Tova Mirvis [01:10:54] Right.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] Just that act of taking the hat off. Right.

Tova Mirvis [01:11:00] It was. It was. I was supposed to be, you know, the religious woman I was supposed to be. It felt like a failure in some sense. I mean, it felt both like a moment of stepping more deeply into my own self and claiming my own idea. And yet, you know, that same good and bad. It was also this feeling that I'm not able to be who I was supposed to be.

John Dehlin [01:11:23] Yeah. So that's something that's. We gotta explore later because you feel like it's this epic failure, step down, disappointment, sin, transgression, whatever. And at the same time, the way that I would look at that on your behalf now is this major awake, you know, this being born, born again for the first time and sort of having that moment of empowerment and liberation where you are taking a first step at possibly having the chance of becoming who you really should be and are meant to be and can become.

Tova Mirvis [01:12:03] And that's what I think. What's so complicated about moments of leaving where you're doing both the same time. And, you know, for me, it was the first time of saying. Saying, yes, that might be the law, but I don't want it. I don't want it on my body. I don't think I believe in it or, you know, if I believe that taking my hat off was really bad, would I have done it? It was realizing. No, it's like pulling off the hangnail. It's realizing I have it in me not to follow this. And, you know, it's. Those are scary, tremendously scary moments, but they are empowering also. They are saying, I am capable of doing something other than what was expected.

John Dehlin [01:12:38] Yeah. So how did that. What. What came after that step down for you and your husband?

Tova Mirvis [01:12:45] So I told myself, oh, it's just this one thing, you know, just one thing. And then I. After that, I wore the hat for a few more months. I told myself that I was going, you know, it's just that one night, I'm not gonna change. I'm not gonna change. And then, you know, maybe, you know, the forbidden fruit, we do it one time. And I was like, oh, can I do this again? I sort of waffled and, you know, the strange thing about wearing a fall that looks exactly like your is that people don't always know when you're waffling. So I would kind of not wear it sometimes and wear it. I was in this trying to figure it out stage, and a few months later, there came a time when I made this decision. I had just finished writing my first book, and so much for me of being a writer is about wanting to be honest and about wanting to lay bare truthful experience. And I just kept feeling like I've written this book. I ended up finding an agent and a publisher, and it was about to come out, and I felt like I'm writing a book where I want to be honest, and yet I feel like I live dishonestly. I feel like I'm wearing something to pretend to be someone I'm not. And so really right around the time that I found my first agent and it seemed clear or more likely the book was going to be published was when I told my husband that I decided I was going to permanently stop wearing a hat in the fall. And, you know, it was that same moment I felt his understanding. I don't think either of us were equipped to deal with. With change. But I remember that same flash of fear because I said I wasn't going to change more. And yet here I was changing more permanently. And I started wearing pants Somewhere in that transition period, I also started wearing jeans again. And it just seemed like it felt like this feeling inside me was gaining momentum, this sense. And I think when I look back to his fear, I feel sorry and sad for him about it. I feel sorry for myself and sad for myself to. To be the person who, you know, to feel like the person who loves you is also a little bit afraid of who you might become. I think that is a very, very lonely way to feel in a marriage. To feel that if I become my true self, I'm endangering my marriage. And, you know, for me at the time, again, it was. It was all in very low relief. It was, no, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be okay. This is just one thing, one small thing. It's not gonna become bigger. And I held onto that idea for a long time that it's not gonna go beyond. It's just these two things now, but nothing else.

John Dehlin [01:15:14] 2 meaning the hat and the wig

Tova Mirvis [01:15:16] or was there the hat and the pants?

John Dehlin [01:15:18] Hat and pants. Okay, so the hat and the wig, both.

Tova Mirvis [01:15:21] They go together the same. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:23] Okay. And pants. Wow. Yeah. It's like there's a book called the Backslider in Mormonism where you're always trying to be or. But then you backslide and then you try again, and then. And you just. At some point, you just become enveloped in shame and self loathing because you just realize you can't do it anymore.

Tova Mirvis [01:15:41] Right? Because the idea that who you want to be is bad, like you are forced to. You're in this mode where you want to listen, discover your inner voice, or be your full self, but you're told that that self is wrong, and you're in an impossible bind at that point, I think.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber at mormonstories.

Tova Mirvis [01:16:06] Org.

John Dehlin [01:16:07] Thank you very much.

Writing Transgressive Fiction While Staying Orthodox

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 820

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. So it sounds like the hat, wig, and the pants weren't the end of it. So how did it continue after that?

Tova Mirvis [00:00:46] Right. I wanted to think, okay, just this, just this.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] And that's still three years into the marriage, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:00:52] Three years in, three years in. And then I got pregnant and I had my first child. And I had. And then motherhood became a way of defining me. And it felt like those issues, they took a backseat for a little while. I felt like, okay, we were Orthodox. I was gonna send my kids, my son to an Orthodox school. We were going to follow this. But I feel like my questioning sort of became masked a little bit by being disengaged. It was easy not to go to synagogue every week because I had a baby, and it was easy to sort of be like. To sort of. Motherhood became my new identity, and so I didn't have to wrestle with the questions as much. I also, you know, at the same time, my first book came out, and it was about the Orthodox Jewish world, and it was regarded by many as being critical of that world. And so all of a sudden, I was this figure where, you know, I was Orthodox in practice, but I was sort of regarded by many in the Orthodox world as a critic from within. And I was sort of iffy in regard. And so for the first time, I had the sense of these private questions were being talked about publicly. And I heard over and over again the accusation that I was airing the dirty laundry, or people in the Memphis Orthodox community were angry about the book, and they said, you know, no one's going to want to move here now or no one's going to, you know, no one's going to, you know. You know, was it good for the community or bad? My work of art was going to be judged in the terms of, again, good or bad. And, you know, I hoped it was a more nuance portrait, but it was only regarded as, was it nice or was it not nice?

John Dehlin [00:02:33] It's so. It's reminding me of Kaim Potok. Like, were you compared to Kaim Potok? And then the Asher Lev, the whole Asher Lev book is about this art.

Tova Mirvis [00:02:43] Oh, I love that book. That book, for me, I was like, oh, I'm not the only one who feels this way. That sense of art and religion and rule breaking and what does it mean to push the boundaries? And what do you lose by pursuing your art? I read the Chosen in high school, and I saw the movie in high school, and for me, it was shocking. Oh, it's my world on the screen. You know, other people are seeing my world. But, you know, I loved those books growing up.

John Dehlin [00:03:07] But he was criticized. I'm sure Khayim Potok was villainized for ruining Judaism. Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:03:12] Or for presenting a story that didn't adhere to the official version. You know, I think so much about how certainly this is true within Orthodoxy, I believe. But my guess is it's true in other religious worlds that there's an official version. There's a story that is told. And the story is, someone told this to me last week in a very mean Facebook post. Someone said to orthodox Jews are happy we do not write books because we do not have time to go on book tour. And I was like, huh? You think so? Another one wrote in. Another woman commented, correct. I was like, yes, correct. And that is the story, right? Orthodox Jews are happy. When you're inside, you're happy. And I feel this. Even when I was Orthodox, I felt, no. Orthodox Jews are human, human. All of the things, all of the questions and problems and struggles, same as anywhere. Religion does not protect you from being human. With all of the things that happen to us in our lives and that insistence over and over again. You know, when I got it on my Facebook page last week after the book came out, I was like, oh, right, you again. That version, that story that, you know, Orthodox Jews don't doubt. Orthodox Jews don't have marital issues. Orthodox Jews don't ever get depressed. Orthodox Jews aren't anxious. Orthodox Jews aren't questioning. I just feel like, for whom are we telling these lies? And I know what the lie does to you. It says to you, the one who is, that you are the only one. And I think, you know, I felt this. Really. I felt that my whole career as a writer, that my interest is opening up those human places and saying, of course we feel this way. Everyone feels this way. Everyone has these questions and struggles.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] Wow. Okay. So your role as an author starts making you criticized by some. I'm sure you were held up and honored by some parts of your community.

Tova Mirvis [00:05:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] And then villainized by others. Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:05:03] Exactly. It was very much both at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:05:05] And so how did that end up affecting your faith journey?

Tova Mirvis [00:05:10] I think for me, it created this sense that I was in this insider, outsider position. I was both at once. And so I was fully Orthodox. After my second novel came out, there was a piece in the New York Times Book Review critiquing me and several other writers for writing negatively about Orthodox Judaism. And it was mortifying because I was Orthodox. I remember reading it right before I went to the Mikvet, the ritual bath. And one of the things lady said to me was, you know, oh, I know your name. Why do I know your name from somewhere? And she's like, oh, I just read an article about you. And I was like, I bet you did. You know, while she's checking my back to make sure there's no stray hairs on it. And it wasn't like she was right. I wasn't being critiqued about my portrayal of a world I had once belonged to. I actively lived in that world. And so it was that feeling of being uncomfortable inside my world, though, a feeling that I was this, and yet I wasn't at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:06:08] Wow, that's. I mean, that's hitting home for me because my. My disciplinary council was covered in the New York Times, and I was active in the church when the church was excommunicating me. So it hits on me.

Tova Mirvis [00:06:21] Right, right. In the New York Times. It said about me that I was insider, outsider, that I pretended to be Orthodox. And it said that, you know, the biggest. This thing, this writer who was newly Orthodox and sort of had the fervor of someone who had become this. The thing she was about in my second novel was that I portrayed a strictly religious, Orthodox couple who were engaged, and so they had never touched each other. But there was this moment when the fiance sort of touches her and leans in for a hug. And he was sort of caught with this, between his desire and his sense of the rules. And certainly a moment I'll experience. You know, it happens all the time. And she was like. She said, everyone knows that an Orthodox boy would never hug his fiance. And I was like, no, everyone knows that an Orthodox boy feels he should not hug his fiance, but he is a human being. He's a 21 year old, and he wants to. And he is caught between his desire and his belief. And that's the real story. And, you know, it was mortifying. I was infuriated by the piece. I ended up writing this response, but it was that sense that I don't belong to this world, really, or at least to her version of the world.

John Dehlin [00:07:30] You're a truth teller, Tova, and that gets you in trouble.

Tova Mirvis [00:07:32] It does. It's right. It's. Yes. And I think that for me, as a writer, telling the truth is a thing. But I once heard a quote, someone said, do you want to know what I think, or do you want to know what I really think? And I think in my world, it's just tell us what you think. I don't really want to know what you really think.

John Dehlin [00:07:48] I love that. Okay. In Mormonism, there's the term wolf in sheep's clothing. So this outsider insider, did you get labeled with equivalent sort of negative labels?

Tova Mirvis [00:08:00] Yeah, I was viewed as, like, you know, at every book talk I did, someone would always ask me the question, are you still Orthodox? And I would always be like, why do they say still? You know, what do they know? I'd always say, I'm a liberal, feminist, pluralist, modern Orthodox Jew, whatever that means. I would kind of play it for a laugh because I didn't know how to really answer it. But I felt. I mean, in my practice, I was fully Orthodox. You know, I would never eat something that was not certified kosher. I would never break the Sabbath. But I. And I observed that my children were being raised in an Orthodox environment. I went to the Mikveh, sort of the full, you know, normative Orthodox Judaism. But in my work, I think people were aware of the questions I was asking.

John Dehlin [00:08:38] Yeah. And so I imagine that over time, it can be exhilarating, like I'm plotting new ground. I'm speaking the truth. I'm trying to create this new space for a new generation, and we can change and we can do better. I know a lot of the early years of my activism had this spirit of excitement and of change, but I wonder if it was also tinged with the wonderment on your part of whether it was sustainable.

Tova Mirvis [00:09:07] Right. I think what was interesting was I felt like my activism. I mean, I was part of an Orthodox feminist world. I was not particularly at the forefront of it. I was, you know, supportive of it and was somewhat involved. I felt like my activism was on the notion that there was an internal life in the Orthodox world. I think that that was what people were. The people weren't upset because I was advocating for women to be rabbis or women to take on greater roles that wasn't that religiously involved. I think people were angry at me because I was saying that not everyone believes as they're supposed to or not. Everyone has a perfect family or not, you know, or saying yes, a yeshiva boy, a religious boy does hug his fiance, at least it does far more than that. Or he wants to, or an Orthodox boy has desire, or an Orthodox married woman has a fantasy. You know, that idea was very, very problematic for people. And the idea that, that within the law there was a subjective experience that I wanted to give voice to. And for some people that was intolerable.

John Dehlin [00:10:06] All right, so two books down, how did it progress in your life and in your marriage?

Tova Mirvis [00:10:10] Two books down. I've got two kids trying to hold it together, you know, with my then husband, they were. We moved to Boston to the Orthodox community here, where I felt that tighter sense of community. When I lived in New York City, it felt a little more loose about what community meant. But we moved into an Orthodox neighborhood, bought a house, went to the Orthodox synagogue. And again, that same sense of I'm going to try to be this. The article I was referring to came out like a few months after we moved in. And I was like, oh, that's not going to make it easier to make friends here. But you know, I was sort of the per. I was like, oh, we know who she is. And you know, trying to hold it together, trying very hard to be who I was supposed to be. And I was writing about doubt more, I felt. But I also felt very blocked as a writer sometimes because I felt, you know, felt afraid I would write these stories. I had this idea for a short story collection called Transgressive Girls. And I wanted to write about, you know, girls who push the edge. I was sort of coming at it through fiction, you know, always with this sort of self delusional notion of oh, it's just the characters, it's not really me. I'm gonna write about these characters who push up against the boundaries. But I was growing disillusioned. And I think the way I managed disillusionment was, was by being disengaged. You know, I would go to synagogue, I would have cook Friday night dinner, I would do the holidays, but I wasn't particularly engaged in it. One of the things I did for years and years was I prayed every morning. There's sort of a service you say, and you can go to synagogue and say it, but you could just say it yourself. And I considered myself obligated to do it. And somewhere around the birth of my second child, I stopped praying every morning. I just didn't really want to. I felt like I was just reciting words. Maybe it fell away just by the busyness of life with small children. And then I stopped feeling connected. But so I began to have the experience, you know, maybe what you referenced earlier, being orthopractics, you know, that I would. I observed fully, but I knew my heart wasn't really there. But I thought I just somehow had this idea that I could make it through unscathed. I thought if nothing shook my faith, if nothing bothered me enough, if I didn't read anything about. If I didn't read Jewish, non Orthodox Jewish feminism, I didn't expose myself to things, somehow I could just manage to stay within and get through to some imagined other side. I didn't want to. I knew my whole life was built on this, and I was terrified of what would happen if I questioned the foundations.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Okay, I'm looking at the time and I know we're going to have much more interview than what we're going to have time for. So tell me what time you have to, like, hang up the phone.

Tova Mirvis [00:12:48] Okay, so it's my time, so I have another 45 minutes.

John Dehlin [00:12:52] Okay, good. All right. So good.

Tova Mirvis [00:12:53] And will you forgive me if I walk you back up the stairs to go to get my computer charger? Sorry for the little bit.

John Dehlin [00:12:59] Not at all.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:00] Hiding the mess. Hiding the mess that you're gonna.

John Dehlin [00:13:02] Don't worry about it. This is so. I'm so grateful. You're so generous and this is so profound. And lots of listeners are. Our audience is actually growing on the Internet, which is rare for to be two and almost two and a half hours in to an interview, and our audience is growing. So Mormons are loving this. So.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:19] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:13:19] Hello.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:19] I'm getting the charger. Sorry, I feel. I feel highly.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] Don't worry, don't worry. Don't worry. So, all right, so you're continuing with the orthopraxy at this point. You've had two kids, you've had two books, but you're not in it spiritually, you're not in it mentally, and you're starting to wonder if you can just kind of hang on and survive at this point.

Tova Mirvis [00:13:45] Exactly. Like, make it through somehow. Just sort of don't let anything shake me from. From, you know, being part of it. Because to be shaken from it is to, you know, is to potentially upend my life, which the thought of it is terrifying. Really. Sorry, we're just gonna plug in the computer.

John Dehlin [00:14:01] No, it's completely. Mormons will relate this. The idea of leaving Mormonism is terrifying. And, you know, this idea of community is the God. I don't think that's fully permeated Mormonism as a meme. But I think it should, and it probably hopefully will, because I don't even think Mormons are as conscious about how much community is really at the core of people's commitment to the church.

Tova Mirvis [00:14:28] Community is everything. Community. I felt like community. If you told everyone, like, okay, God doesn't exist, but, like, can we carry on? I feel like many people will be like, no problem.

John Dehlin [00:14:37] Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right, so then how do you go from sort of starting to die inside, but still observant to things really becoming a problem?

Tova Mirvis [00:14:46] Right. And so for, you know, for the next number of years, I had a third child, and I was working on a third book. I was very stuck in writing the book. I really felt it was. I decided I was gonna write a book that was not Jewish in nature. My first two books really dealt with questions of belief endowed and community. I think that I was used up from these questions. I wanted to write something else. Maybe my own disengagement made me want to feel that at least in my writing, I could go somewhere else. At least in the fictional world I was creating, I could create some place of freedom for myself. So I wrote my third novel. Visible City is not religious at all. And it felt like a refuge in some ways, but even there, I couldn't finish the book. It was this strange thing. My first book took three years, and my second book took four years. And, you know, this book, I'm on year five, I'm on year six, I'm on year seven. And I kept writing it, and I wrote every day, couldn't finish it. And I would get feedback from people, and I was writing about marital and happiness. I didn't know I was writing about that when I started, but I was writing about a woman who watches her neighbors out her window. And in the early versions of the book, she watches them and she sort of lives through their lives, but she doesn't. And she's unhappy, but she doesn't do anything about it. And she comes to the conclusion in the early draft that it's enough to live inside your mind. It's enough to watch other people and to have your own sort of fantasy world, but you can stay in that same small box of your own life. And readers would say, you know, I gave it to a few people to read. And everyone had the same response that it's unsatisfying. Nothing happens. Nothing is at stake here. And I couldn't hear it. I just. I didn't know what to do about It. And I used to think to myself, well, you know, I'm writing realistic fiction. You know, no one does anything about their lives. Doesn't everyone just like, ruminate and think about what's wrong, but no one actually acts? And the idea that someone could act like a, a character could do something, I was like, oh, that's, you know, that's non realistic fiction. I don't do that kind of thing. And that idea, the idea that you could change, I was like, no, no, no. And so, you know, year, a decade, you know, I think back, I can't believe how many years it was. But years and years went by and I, you know, I was sad. I was busy with my children. I love, you know, being a mother. I was deeply involved with them. My marriage sort of had evolved into the point where I felt alone, but I also felt like, you know, very much this feeling of, okay, I can take care of, I can do this myself. You know, like, I've got the kids, I've got this, you know, I felt like, just try harder. Be. Be the person who can do everything. And I felt like, you know, it wasn't. We weren't fighting about the hard issues because we weren't talking about them. I think that neither of us are probably confrontational by nature, and it was easier to ignore them. So we would sometimes, kind of vaguely, I would sometimes say things like, I don't know if I want to be orthodox, or I would say, I think orthodoxy is misogynist. And you know, one time my husband said to me, you know, you know, meaning. Well, he said, I know it's misogynist, but I want to be orthodox anyway. And, you know, I understood it, but for me, that sentence, I felt like there's nothing to say after this, that was the end of the conversation. It didn't go beyond that. And I felt that sense. I felt like, you know, every marriage has the rules you create with each other. And I think the rules we created with each other was that I could be unhappy and I could feel dissatisfied. I could think about them and I could write about them as long as I didn't do anything about them. And that was my own, you know, I don't fault him for that. It was my own guiding principle as well. Think about it. Don't act. Don't act on anything. And you know, my mantra through those years, you know, when I would be upset, I would tell myself, you know, nothing can change. I felt like I had married into this world. I was born into it. I was raising three Children in it. I had a house in the Orthodox community in this town. It was Boston suburb. It was too late. I was 37, 38 years old, and it's too late to change. I thought I had already become who I was supposed to be. And I just felt like being poised on the edge of a cliff for a long time. This sense that, too late to change. Too late. And I think, I'm 38. It's too late. The counter voice would say, I'm only 38. Is it really too late to change? But, you know, it felt like it was for a long time, and.

John Dehlin [00:19:05] But it felt like Moses wandering in the wilderness.

Tova Mirvis [00:19:08] Right, exactly. My 40 years in the desert, that sense of being lost, it felt. It felt like, you know, the sense that. What? You know, I would ask myself, well, what would it mean not to be Orthodox? What would that even look like? And, you know, sometimes we would talk about it. We would say, well, there was an egalitarian synagogue that met near our house. And we would say, I could go to that. As long as the we of the family remain Orthodox. I could sort of be like, oh, they're Orthodox. Tova's a little on the edge, but they're Orthodox. And I never wanted to do it. It wasn't enough of an answer. Just sort of. That I could have these little moments when I didn't have to fully be Orthodox, or I could sort of have these forays out of the community as long as I was willing to raise my children inside of it.

John Dehlin [00:19:54] Yeah. So this period of wilderness and just feeling stuck, that's got to be depressing. I mean, that's. That's almost the definition of dep.

Tova Mirvis [00:20:01] Right, right. Being stuck. Being unable to foresee the possibility that you can change.

John Dehlin [00:20:07] Yeah. So what broke through? How did it break? How did you break out of that?

Tova Mirvis [00:20:13] So I felt the pressure increasing inside myself. I felt like for so long, I had been unable to know for myself that this was problematic. But I finally. I think maybe it was age, maybe it was that that small voice was so loud inside my head. But I started having little, tiny experimental forays. And so, you know, one of them was, you know, I sort of laugh at it now, but I. Sushi is considered, like, the gateway food in Orthodoxy because you. Because it's not. Because it's raw. It's, you know, technically, like a salmon avocado roll is technically, the ingredients are kosher. It's not certified kosher, but people who are in the Orthodox world will eat that. Even though it's not technically Kosher. We didn't do that. But I would be at the grocery store and I would buy a thing of sushi, and I would, like, hide it in my cart now, eat it in my car. And I would throw the wrapping away, like in a different garbage can. And I felt like I both could see myself from the inside and the outside thinking, oh, very radical. I'm eating sushi. It's not certified kosher. But again, it's one of those moments of realizing I can. I can break a rule and I'm okay with it. And those built up, I think my marriage, separate from the religious questions, was having a very, very hard time with issues of emotional connection and a sense of partnership. I think was very, very hard in our marriage. And I felt increasingly alone. And, you know, the religion was a part of that. It also had its own separate piece of not feeling. Not feeling that sense of partnership. And, you know, as the dial got turned up on each one, I really became aware that I was really at the edge. You know, our marriage was sort of taking on elements of estrangement, where on the surface it looked fine. You know, I would smile when I was supposed to, but internally was, you know, really felt cut off completely. And at the same time, some of the religious issues were becoming heightened, you know, one particular way. You know, again, it was around my writing, but I was struggling with my book and with the sense of needing freedom, and I wanted to have my character. Once I realized what was wrong with my third novel, I had to ask myself, can these characters make a change? Do they have the courage to do something different in their lives? And I became aware that I didn't think I was writing autobiographically, but it became clear of how deeply autobiographically I was writing. And then I had a moment that I felt like was really a turning point moment for me from a religious perspective. I was invited to speak at a conference of rabbis. It was called the Orthodox Forum. And it was a modern Orthodox gathering where every year 100 rabbis would discuss issues of importance to the Orthodox world. They discussed rabbinic authority one year, or relationship between the Orthodox world and non Orthodox world. And this year they were discussing culture. Orthodox culture.

John Dehlin [00:23:09] What year would this have been about?

Tova Mirvis [00:23:12] Let's see. This would have been about 2011.

John Dehlin [00:23:15] Okay. All right. So about six years ago.

Tova Mirvis [00:23:16] Six years ago. So I was invited to speak to this conference, as they were. One of the panels was going to be with several Orthodox artists. And so I was invited to speak on the panel, and we were given a series of questions to answer Beforehand. And they were questions like, is it a conflict to be an Orthodox artist? Can you create within an orthodox environment of religious law? You know, are there challenges? And in the first draft of those letter essays, I gave answers that I knew they wanted to hear. I said that, you know, maybe there were some challenges, but they could coexist. I said that you could be Orthodox and you could be an artist. I said that Judaism encouraged questioning. I didn't give my second half of the answer that, you know, as long as you accept the answers. I wanted to tell them, don't be afraid of art. I wanted to say, you know, art comes in peace, nothing to fear. Like, let. I wanted there to be greater comfort with the arts in the Orthodox world. And I wanted to be an example of that and say, you know, it's okay to teach our kids art, okay to be exposed to secular culture. It doesn't have to take away from your Orthodoxy. I sent back the answers, and then, like, a few weeks later, they asked me if I would come speak at the conference, you know, based on those answers. And I said I would. And then I looked back at the answers I'd written, and, you know, I hated myself for them. I felt like it was a lie. I also read the other responders, and I hated their answers, too. I felt like we were lying. I felt like to say, oh, there's a small conflict. No big deal, was not true. And I, you know, I felt like I did not want to be someone who spoke dishonestly and required the people around me to be dishonest as well. So I emailed the organizer, and I said, can I revise my answers? And I just wrote. I wrote what I thought, and it was, you know, this one of those, you know, part of the pleasure of being a writer when you really tap into your own internal freedom to say what you really think. And, you know, in writing those. Writing those answers, I decided I was just gonna say what I thought, and if they didn't like them, that was fine. But, you know, one of the one things I said was they asked if you would be willing to. Do you feel you have to get rabbinic permission for some of your scenes? Do you feel like you need to ask a religious question about some of the permissibility of your art? And I said, no. I said, I won't. I said, you know, I was on a roll by this point. I was really trying to go after it, to really be honest. And I said, you know, what would I do? Like, show a sex scene to a rabbi? And ask if it was okay. And then if he said it wasn't okay, take it out of a book, you know, who was in charge, whose authority? Who had authority over my artistic creation? And regardless of whether orthodoxy says it was supposed to have authority, I knew that my answer was no. I have authority over my artistic creations, not the religious world. And so I went to speak at the conference concerned, because I knew that I had been honest, in a way, in a nonfiction form, and in a personal sense, different than I had been. But I reached the point where I just felt it had become impossible to write something I did not believe I could no longer speak something I did not think that was true. And it just became clear to me that I was either going to stop being a writer or I was going to be really honest. And I went to this conference and got grilled by the rabbis. And many were very upset by what I said, But I said that I was not. I did not consider myself under rabbinic authority when it came to my art. And, you know, with each question, each sort of digging in on me about whether, you know, was this idolatry I was describing, was there no one in charge? Were there boundaries? Who set the boundaries? You know, one rabbi said, who was I to decide that I didn't have to ask rabbinic questions? He actually said, if you had a talent for running a brothel, would that be okay as well? And I was like, brothel? I felt like my fiction was so tame. I was like, if only, you know, that were the problem. Like, I was, like, struggling to be free to write a sex scene in the first place. And I remember standing there before the rabbis, and it just. That same. No. Like, that little quiet no that I had heard as a child, it just. It filled me. It was this, no, like, no, I don't believe in this, and no, I don't. You know, their intention was they wanted to create a world that kept people inside. And I, you know, what I said was, art is dangerous. Art opens boxes, and it opens doors. And that is just the truth of it. Art is not here to make you feel better about yourself. It is here to ask questions. And as an artist, that's what I'm here for, too, you know, One of the ironies was that the comic took place, and it was at Yeshiva University, and the conference took place in the room that happened to be housing the student art show. And there was a big slogan behind me. It said, think outside the box. And I was like, you can't say that as a slogan and not mean It I said, because when you think outside the box, you might change and you might not agree with what you were supposed to think. And when you allow yourself freedom to think, there are lots of possibilities that can happen. And I understood they didn't want those possibilities, but I knew I could no longer be part of a world that was intent on keeping you within that box and pretending that they wanted you to think outside the box. And I think that that moment was really the last time I would have ever considered myself Orthodox. I think I knew. I knew with a certainty that was undeniable for me at that point, that I was no longer Orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:28:47] So what do you do when you come home from that? What do you do when you come home from that event and you're married to an Orthodox man and you're living in an Orthodox community and your parents and in laws are Orthodox, and you're raising your kids Orthodox?

Tova Mirvis [00:29:01] Everyone, right? And what do you do when that voice is not going to be quiet anymore? You know, I think it took, you know, how many decades to reach that point. But, you know, I was about to turn 40, and it reached the point where it was undeniable. And, you know, I think sometimes the cost of. There's the cost of leaving. And I knew I would worry about that. I would keep myself awake at night worrying what would happen if I left. But there's a cost to staying. There is a cost to being someone you are not. And there's a cost to being inauthentic. And I came to understand that the cost of inauthenticity and dishonesty was far greater than the cost of leaving. And I knew, I mean, it was the most terrifying thing I've ever known. But I knew that I was going to change. I knew it. The time had come. And it started small, you know, I think, because the world that I lived in was made of small rules. It started with a very small infraction. On a Friday night. I went upstairs. My big breakout moment happened while locked in the bathroom. But I sort of smuggled my cell phone upstairs in my sweatshirt pocket right after we had finished having Shabbat dinner, Friday night dinner. And I turned my phone on. I checked my email again. Like, tiny in the scheme of things. But for me, it was a moment. It was saying, it's not just that I can break, you know, the rules like pants and hair covering that are fungible and sushi is iffy. A phone on the Sabbath is a break. And I turned, I looked at my phone, like, do I have it in me to do this turned it on. I was like, I do, because I don't believe in it. And I think when I came to realize that question, every time I would try to make myself adhere to the. The rules, it wasn't like, oh, I believe in it, but I really just want to check my email, or like, I believe in it, but I want to eat the tofu. It wasn't out of desire. It was this sense of, do I believe it's true? And I eventually came to know that, you know, the answer was, no, I don't. I did not believe in a God who commanded rules that he gave to just my particular world that were required of me. And that there was a goodness or badness associated with. With whether I ate the tofu or checked the cell phone. And, you know, it's found. It's everything. It changes your entire notion of truth and goodness. But, you know, that moment, locked in a bathroom, flushed the toilet so no one would know where I was, my husband wouldn't wonder what was going on. Just felt like one of those private moments of reckoning, of knowing that it was awful to think about it. It was terrifying. I felt like I was smashing the little world that I held. But in the same way that, you know, not covering my hair was empowering, it felt like saying, I'm going to become myself. I am going to listen to my own voice, and it will cost and it will hurt and there will be pain to go around for all of us, but I can't be inauthentic anymore.

Coming Out as a Nonbeliever and the Mixed Faith Marriage

John Dehlin [00:32:00] So how and when did you come out to your husband, and was he the first person you came out to?

Tova Mirvis [00:32:06] I told him I had a close friend who was Jewish but not Orthodox, and I would confide in her. I would tell her that of that growing sense, I would talk to my mother about it a little bit. I talked to a few friends that always very masked, I would say, oh, I'm struggling with it. I don't know. But, you know, one of the things about Orthodoxy is people don't talk about belief a lot. It's really not, you know, if I were to start talking to my Orthodox friends about God, I think they would look at me askance. You know, it was sort of like almost like awkward to bring up God. I could talk about how I'm cooking for the holidays and I'm doing this and I'm, you know, what are you doing for Shabbat? And I can meet you at synagogue and sit next to you, but to say, like, I'm Questioning, like, whether there is a God who commands would have been like, oh, what's she thinking about? You know, it was much more practical because.

John Dehlin [00:32:54] Because they don't think it's important or because they think it's a dangerous topic, or because they think, yeah, like, why? Why is it? Or because it's not useful to talk about belief.

Tova Mirvis [00:33:06] Right. It's funny how I think it's because it's sort of the assumed as the foundation, but it's just not. It's almost, like, awkward. It's almost like, too personal or too. I mean, as odd as it's gonna sound, it's almost, like, too religious to talk about God. Like, it's much easier to talk about law. There was some weirdness to it where, like, we observe, but, like, belief was like, you know, put you in, like, a sort of hippie, spiritual place that, you know, my orthodoxy was not like that. And so we. So I told my husband, you know, I told him. By the time I told him, though, our marriage was already in a very dangerous place. It was really. We were going to couples therapy. It was already. I think by the time I told him it, I was already past the point of no return emotionally. You know, I look back, if I could have. If I could have told him years earlier, but we did not have the kind of marriage where we could deal with hard subjects. We had a marriage that worked well when things were fine, but when things were hard together, we did not have the ability to deal with something that was this complicated.

John Dehlin [00:34:14] Yeah, and you referred to this earlier, and it's one of the things I see. There's this point where the believer loses their belief and the orthodox person stays orthodox. And in terms of emotional intimacy, it's just like this. And the longer you stay married, you just become more and more alienated from each other emotionally, and your intimacy dies. And you can stay married, but the marriage, in some ways, is dead. And it's just a matter of how long you want to stay in an emotionally dead marriage. Right, Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:34:47] I think what happened was I became aware that. That the me I was trying to become, like the more honest, authentic self, was a threat. And the feeling that when you are with the person who's supposed to know you best and love you best of all, regards your true self as threatening, as dangerous. I don't know how to be intimate in that way because I viewed myself that way. I felt like I was a danger that myself, this self I was trying to craft that was authentic and that had integrity about belief, that self was going to destruct the thing I was supposed to uphold. And, you know, I would see it in my husband's eyes. I would see the sense that I was. I was dangerous. And I think whatever was left of our marriage by that point really ended with my recognition that I was a danger.

John Dehlin [00:35:36] So. So was that in 2011, where you knew the marriage was over, is that what you're saying?

Tova Mirvis [00:35:41] Yeah, I did know. And it was. It was not only about religion. I mean, there were other issues going on as well between us that were very, very hard that we did not deal with. We didn't deal with family issues together. We didn't deal well with division of labor. We didn't deal well with those things. And so we went to couples therapy, and the couples therapist always wanted to talk about religion. And the idea was that if we would just make a few changes, maybe religiously, then I would be fine, you know, if we make a few. Some laxity. So, you know, one issue that, you know, if you go to a hotel for a weekend, you can't use a card key on the Sabbath because it's electronic. And so what do you do? You have to hint to the hotel person to come open your door. And I would always be bothered by this. And so it was like, what if you agreed you could just use the card key on the Sabbath? And by that point, I was like, no, it's not about that. It's not about, fine, we'll go to a sushi restaurant together. You know, like. Which he was offering to do. I think he was trying to make it better. It was so far past the question of, can we be a little less stringent in our observance. It was, what happens when the self I have become no longer fits inside the structure we have created at that point, it was over before it was over.

John Dehlin [00:36:56] But you did go to therapy and you tried. You had a lot of other issues. That makes perfect sense. So what year were you divorced? Let's see.

Tova Mirvis [00:37:06] We were divorced in, I think it was 2012.

John Dehlin [00:37:09] Okay, so. Okay, so there wasn't. So there wasn't this. So was there a moment of coming out to him and then trying to. Or by the time you actually came out, it was over.

Tova Mirvis [00:37:21] It was no direct coming out. It was that it was clear that I was religiously upset and on the edge. I don't think that even in our divorce, it wasn't clear, well, how far was I gonna go? How. Just how non religious was I not gonna be? And, you know, by that point, because there was no more conversation that could happen without it being a fight or an argument. I didn't share that anymore. Any more of the religious questions.

John Dehlin [00:37:44] Wow. I mean, isn't it amazing how a religion can come between a married couple, the person you're supposed to be the most close to, where you just the most important and obvious thing that bound you together, that's causing you all this torment, that's this huge, massive elephant in the room. You don't talk about it. Right.

Tova Mirvis [00:38:10] And because I think what was so hard was to realize that the thing I felt strangled by, the thing I wanted to escape, was the exact same thing he wanted. So, you know, I felt, you know, I felt terribly guilty about the divorce. I still do sometimes. That sense that I had changed, what was sort of hurled at me again and again was, you've changed and how could I? It was true. I had changed.

John Dehlin [00:38:31] I had.

Tova Mirvis [00:38:33] And the thing that was so hard to realize was that, you know, a few times, you know, they said we don't have to be Orthodox. But I realized the thing, you want this world. This is the world you believe in and you want. And it's the world I need to leave. And so it wasn't a question of, I'll become less strict, we don't have to be this way. You are something and want something that makes me feel imprisoned. And there was just, there was no getting beyond that question.

John Dehlin [00:38:59] So what about the option of being in a mixed faith marriage at that point? That's what we call it Mormonism, where, where he's Orthodox and you're not.

Tova Mirvis [00:39:07] I know people who do that. I mean, it's, you know, it's interesting. I am remarried right now to someone who describes himself as Jewish and he's completely secular. And, you know, you. Even though I'm not really, I'm still connected to the Jewish world in many ways. I wouldn't describe myself as religious, but I go to synagogue for the holidays and observe the holidays, but I do them without my husband because he doesn't want that. I am the last person who's going to force anyone else to be religious. And, you know, what irony would that be? But, so there we navigate. You know, maybe it's what you would describe as a mixed phase, but I'm not because I'm in the sort of wiggle room place, it's easier to do it. I felt like with Orthodoxy, we could have done that if I were willing to bend, if I were willing to sort of, you know, like, we would still keep kosher, of course, like the Kitchen would still be kosher, and we would still keep Shabbat, the Sabbath, of course, because my husband wouldn't go anywhere on the Sabbath, so I privately could, like, eat my sushi and my tofu. But it was still who we were. And, you know, I think it can work when both sides are able to accept the other person for who they are, who they become. When both people are able to make room for the fact that who you are is not who I am. And, you know, I think when it's regarded as, well, you've changed for the bad and I hold on to the good, then I think it's very hard. But when both people are able to reconcile the fact that people. People believe and I love you, and you believe differently, I'm going to enable you to believe differently and still be together. You know, in my marriage, that just. It wasn't the kind of conversation we could have.

John Dehlin [00:40:39] I mean, I'm just. I'm just. I'm. You know, I come from a divorced family, so I have this bias of wanting every. Every marriage to stay together. So even though your divorce has already happened, I'm thinking in my mind now, wait a minute.

Tova Mirvis [00:40:51] Save it.

John Dehlin [00:40:51] Right? Tova, wait. No, talk to him. Tell him I want the marriage to stay together. I'm going to be. I'm not going to be Orthodox anymore. But. But you be you and I'll be me. And you go. You observe Sabbath and you. You go to temple. But I won't. We'll both share. And this is what I do as a profession. I got my PhD in psychology, and I'm all about helping a mixed faith marriage stay together. And it's all about helping them learn to respect each other.

Tova Mirvis [00:41:17] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Helping them empower each other and their decisions. That these differences can actually be a sign of strength in your relationship, and that a kid raised with both perspectives gives them a chance to entertain both paths. And so there's a part of me that wants to still fight for that marriage.

Tova Mirvis [00:41:34] Still. Right? Yeah, I understand. You know, when I think back to the past, I understand there's a part of me that has that wish, that fantasy or wish of it. I think you have to have the foundation in a marriage that you have to have that ability to talk about the hard subjects, because this is a really good, hard one. I mean, this cuts. This is not just like, are we gonna observe the Passover Seders? This is. Did you buy the soy sauce that had the certification on it? Or you didn't buy the one, then you ruined the pots in the kitchen, you know, this is. Do we let the kids eat, you know, go out with their, you know, go get pizza at the local place? Do we. On Saturday, did you tear the toilet paper or not? You know, this is everything, so.

John Dehlin [00:42:10] Or in America, tear the toilet paper.

Tova Mirvis [00:42:14] You can't tear, you know, wipe if you can't.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] How do you wipe if you can't?

Tova Mirvis [00:42:18] Toilet Kleenex.

John Dehlin [00:42:20] Oh, my God.

Tova Mirvis [00:42:20] Or something like, tear them beforehand. You know, it's a mole. It's everywhere. Or like, for example, let's say I didn't want to be Orthodox anymore, but would I not go to the mikveh if I were not gonna go to the mikvah, then we wouldn't have no sex life anymore. That was not.

John Dehlin [00:42:36] Because he wouldn't have sex with you if you didn't go to the mikvah? No.

Tova Mirvis [00:42:39] So would I still be required to do that?

John Dehlin [00:42:42] He'd be unclean in his. From his perspective.

Tova Mirvis [00:42:44] Right. Like unpermitted to him. Who would our community be? You know, I think. I think what would have happened was I would have done it on the sly. So if I were willing, you know, I had someone emailed me recently saying, well, I don't understand why you couldn't be Orthodox. You know, everyone in our. She had been part of the same Orthodox community I was. And she said everyone in Newton ate out in non kosher restaurants. We just did it in the next town over. You could have done that too. I said, but I don't want to live that way. I don't want to hide. I don't want to pretend and be something quietly. And, you know, I also think that, you know, I think that if our marriage had been stronger, we could have done it. I think that the other issues in the marriage made it impossible to have this conversation. And our personalities, just the differences between us that were there, that came out in this way. So I don't, I don't. I do feel that if we had a stronger base and a stronger ability to deal with hard things, you know, maybe there was a better chance.

John Dehlin [00:43:38] Have you seen it happen with other Orthodox couples where they are able to. Or is it pretty much unheard of?

Tova Mirvis [00:43:44] I have heard of people doing it. I think it's hard. I mean, I do know people who talk about it. I know there's differences in religiosity. I think. I do think people navigate it in different ways. I don't think it's simple.

John Dehlin [00:43:55] Yeah.

Tova Mirvis [00:43:56] And in your world, are people able to navigate the mixed space?

John Dehlin [00:44:00] It sounds like it's easier. I mean, I just had a commenter write, Michelle wrote, this makes Mormonism look easy. So I don't think the Mormons that I know who are in a mixed faith marriage, including some people very close to me, I don't think they think of it as easy. I think they think of it as excruciating and as almost fatal.

Tova Mirvis [00:44:18] Right. And I guess also the question becomes with your children, like, do you raise your children? You know, if you decide you don't believe in something, do you then raise your children with the beliefs that you don't believe in? You know, are you required to teach your children something you don't think. And that I think is even in divorce, that question comes up. But that's a hard question.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] Yeah. Okay, we've got 10 more minutes. How many more minutes do we have?

Tova Mirvis [00:44:43] I've got till 1. It's 1. I've got till 140.

John Dehlin [00:44:47] Oh, wow.

Tova Mirvis [00:44:49] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:44:49] Okay, let's do a. No, go ahead.

Tova Mirvis [00:44:52] Yeah, I have a radio interview at 2:00'. Clock. I just need a few minutes between them, but I'm good.

John Dehlin [00:44:57] Okay, so we've got another 20 minutes, is that right?

Tova Mirvis [00:45:02] Yes, 25.

John Dehlin [00:45:04] Okay. Okay. So do you have a sense for divorce rates in Orthodox? Because in Mormonism, the divorce rate is comparable to the non Mormon divorce rate. So I don't think divorce is a big of a deal in Mormonism as it might be an orthodoxy. Do you have a sense of. For the divorce rate?

Divorce, Leaving Orthodoxy, and Life After Faith

Tova Mirvis [00:45:20] I don't have a sense. I don't have numbers. I would just say anecdotally, I do think that it's much less common. I do think that it's, you know, far more rare in the orthodox that, you know, it's certainly communally, it's the, you know, it's becoming more common, but I think it's far lower than these, the mainstream rates.

John Dehlin [00:45:37] So what was it like to go through that divorce process in Orthodox Judaism?

Tova Mirvis [00:45:43] You know, it felt, it reminded me of the ways that what is private is also public in a community. And so I felt very much that it was, was not just that my then husband and I were getting divorced, that we had reached impasse and that I needed to do this. I felt like it was played out in our synagogue and in our community. And I think it was really one of the most painful parts of this story for me. I became aware very quickly of how people choose sides and how you don't just divide your property in a divorce, but you divide friends. And it was really. Maybe I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was. It was enormously painful for me to realize that the people who I had considered friends were, you know, were uncomfortable around me or were not going to speak to me or I would get this sort of like, you know, little hellos in the grocery store letting me know that I was now someone who was uncomfortable. And I think there are certainly many people in the Orthodox in our community who had gotten divorced. I don't think it was only about the divorce, but also because it was sort of clear that I was no longer going to synagogue and I was no longer going to be Orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:46:45] So you lost friends, Lots of friends. You, I imagine you started feeling sense of shame whenever you'd walk out in public and start seeing people.

Tova Mirvis [00:46:57] It would only be when I would run into people I used to know. You know, I would have. And I, you know, at first I did not realize this was a thing. I didn't realize that people weren't gonna say hi to me anymore. And it was on the level of good friends, but really on the level just for, like, the women I would see in synagogue every week. Like, I wasn't even necessarily sure of their names, but, like, I knew them and they knew me, and I just sort of became aware. I remember the first time I was in the grocery store and I passed someone, I sort of started to say hi, and I just saw the, like, the look away. And it wasn't everyone, but it was certainly, you know, someone said to me, oh, maybe it was just one or two people. I was like, no, no, it was not just one or two people. It was. And I think maybe we respond to things because things make us uncomfortable. I certainly know that feeling of, oh, God, I don't want to wade into whatever's going on there, but I think divorce and certainly religious change make people enormously uncomfortable and feel threatene. But it was really uncle. You know, it was really hard to feel that there was, you know, this was a. There was a public opinion about my divorce. You know, one of the people who had been my former best friend in the Orthodox community, you know, she and her husband chose my husband's side and they really actively befriended him. And she told me that she. That people would come to her, you know, wanting to know the scoop. You know, she was the one in the know. And they would say, well, you know, what's going on with Tova? What's that about? And she would tell them that, oh, well, Tova doesn't come to synagogue anymore because she thinks people are judging Her. And I was like, what a lovely thing to say. You know, this sense of it, this feeling of somehow I was being. You know, I was being pushed further to the Alps. And, you know, that loss of that, you know, that felt like a betrayal of a close friendship. And I think that probably was one of the hardest parts of it, that sense that this person who had been my confidant and closest friend, you know, she said to me, I told your husband everything. You said, you know, that I felt like we weren't friends anymore, so I was entitled to tell him everything. Like, that's quite a definition of friendship.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] There's also, in Mormonism, this idea that believers want to say that someone loses their faith because they were offended, because they never believed in the first place, because they wanted to sin, they wanted to break some rule. And so instead of taking the questions seriously, they try and write it off to something superficial.

Tova Mirvis [00:49:07] Right? The thing was, oh, she must be crazy. That was the idea that I was crazy. And I was like, you're not gonna be able to pin that one on me. A lot of people, they do pin it on. I was like. Like, I'm just not gonna give you. You're just gonna have a hard time saying I'm crazy. But people said, oh, I heard she came home one day and out of the blue said she wanted a divorce. And, you know, it's such a denial of your right to your own story. It's such an attempt to say, we know the truth about your divorce and you are not entitled to tell it. You know, in writing my memoir, one of the things I thought a lot about is, you know, no one gets to tell our stories for us. No one owns our story, and no one has the right to determine what it is. And I certainly, as a writer, I felt like, no, I do have my own version of. I think people are threatened. You know, people don't know how to talk about these things. They're uncomfortable. I think there's. I'm sure people felt like, well, he was still going to the synagogue, and so it was easier to be friendly to him because he was still inside. And I was, you know, you know, not coming anymore, and what was my story? But the idea, you know, that I was somehow, you know, that I had to be maligned. I had to be maligned in order. In order for him to be all good, I had to be all bad. There couldn't be any. It couldn't be a complicated story. It couldn't be. They just. They weren't. They weren't able to be together or she believes differently. It couldn't be that I had grappled over a lifetime. It had to be like, oh, what does she want to do now? Kind of thing. It had to be viewed in the most, you know, cynical or dismissive terms, as opposed to, like, isn't it important to grapple with what you really believe? Isn't it actually valuable to examine who you are and who you want to be?

John Dehlin [00:50:43] And you've already answered this, but I'll ask you one last time, because it is the question in sort of liberal progressive Mormonism, why not just stay, but not believe and just say, my participation is not literal? I disagree with the social problems in the church. I don't believe it anymore. But this is my tribe, this is my community, and I'm going to do it because it's a home for me and it's my path. You don't have to believe it's the path anymore. You could just be this Universalist, Unitarian, Orthodox Jew that does it out of a commitment to the community and out of a feeling that it's good for you and the family, even if it's not what you literally believe. And maybe you won't obey everything, you'll just obey the parts that. You've already answered this, but I want you to answer one more.

Tova Mirvis [00:51:34] Yeah, no, it's interesting to hear because I feel like that question is so relevant in terms of my own world that. And I think, you know, I used to always have this, like, fantasy that I was gonna like, take a survey. I was gonna say, like, stand up in synagogue and say, okay, everyone, put your heads down. You know, show of hands. Who really. But who really believes or who likes community, who likes tradition. And I think many people, I think there's a lot of value to exactly what you're saying. That sense that I connect here, I like, I enjoy community, I enjoy tradition. My parents are in this world. And so I think for many people that word for me, I couldn't make that work. First of all, because you don't get to say, honestly, I don't believe in this, but I'm doing it anyway. There's a pretense of belief. And that for me required a level of dishonesty that felt really hard. Also because I think that living with rules you don't believe in is not just like, there's a gain to it and no loss. It cuts into your sense of self and autonomy, into freedom. And also because orthodoxy is so rule based, it would be, it wouldn't be like, you know, I can do, I do the holidays now. I love doing them with my parents, I do with my kids. We have, you know, Sabbath dinner together. I feel very connected to Jewish history and Jewish culture. But there's a difference between that and saying, you know, oh, I need to go to this thing. It starts at 5:00 on a Saturday. But I'm not going to go because I don't do that, because I don't drive until 7. And why don't I. Because God told me to. That sense that it cuts across every moment. And so having to observe things, you know, in every hour of every day that I don't believe in feels like living falseness to me. And so I feel like, you know, I think what I do now is I connect parts of it and still am engaged. I would still consider myself, you know, an engaged Jew and involved, but it's not with that layer of pretense and pretending to be something for the sake of upholding. And also, I don't want to teach my children those same lessons about good and bad. I don't want to raise them to feel, you know, I don't want my 9 year old daughter to feel like, oh, you're wearing sleeveless today, like that's bad. I don't want those messages to be written across her body as well.

John Dehlin [00:53:40] That is a major dilemma. Is, but, but, but, but it, but her dad is still devout and so she's right, your kids are gonna get half your messages and half his. Right?

Tova Mirvis [00:53:50] Right. I mean, part of divorce is that there's no longer a single notion of family. There's a fractured notion, there's families, and we're all sort of an overlapping family. But they learn, you know, they learn a message that there are different ways to be, and there are different ways to be Jewish and there are different ways to live in the world. And it's a hard message, it's a complicated, you know, it's a mixed blessing for them to get that message. It comes with confusion, but it also comes with a truth about the world that they learn that we make choices about what we believe, that you don't have to only be one way and you don't have to live the way you were raised in world the and that you too will get the opportunity as you get older to ask yourself what you really believe and you eventually, increasingly will live according to your own beliefs. And so my kids do live in different worlds. And my oldest son is in Israel for a year right now. He just graduated from high school. And he is part of an Orthodox community. And I feel my obligation and my desire as a mom is to enable him to be part of a world he's choosing. And so, you know, an example of that is my kitchen is still strictly kosher. I do all the same rules I described, because I want my family to eat in my house, of course, my son, but my parents, my siblings, I want to try to have as wide of a. Most inclusive of a world as possible. So I keep, you know, keep things as much the same so that I can include the most amount of people in that world.

John Dehlin [00:55:09] Wow. So you're. You're observing a lot of Orthodox Judaism to keep peace with your own children, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:55:16] I am. I want my. He's my son. I would never, ever do anything that would make it harder for him. And so I feel like I want to look for ways and, you know, it's part of the challenge of family, of how we say, you know, part of parenting. You know, I sort of just coming of age as a mother, of having the first child leave the house. You know, so much of being a young parent is about wanting to hold on to your kids, wanting to shape their world and teach them. And I remember the first time my oldest son came home from nursery school having learned a song I didn't teach him. It was, like, shocking that he could know a world I didn't teach him. But, you know, part of parenting is letting go. And I miss my son. I just talked in this morning. I was like, God, I miss you. You know, it's been. If you've been gone since September, and, you know, the hard, painful part of parenting is coming to accept that our kids are their own people and they. They have the right to choose. And I think I know it as a daughter and a mother, and I feel like my job is to help my kids choose authentically and choose with integrity to make educated choices. It's not my job to choose their beliefs. Even if I thought it was my job, I don't get that. It's not our choice as parents.

John Dehlin [00:56:25] So is there a part of you that's scared that your kids may choose Orthodoxy?

Tova Mirvis [00:56:30] I'm not scared of it. I feel like my oldest son has chosen that that's what he wants to be. I want them to be happy. I want them to live with belief and to live lives where their internal sense matches their external lives. And if my. If any of my children feel that in the Orthodox world that I'm happy for them, I hope it won't be A rejectionist orthodoxy that rejects those like them, that aren't like them, but I want them to, you know, I'm comfortable with that in the same way that I'm comfortable with them choosing not to. I want them to be authentic to themselves.

John Dehlin [00:57:02] You, you say you want your kids live with belief. Why do you want your kids to live with belief?

Tova Mirvis [00:57:07] Well, I don't mean belief in God. I mean belief in their lives, belief in, you know, I. I'm a vegetarian, and I believe in vegetarianism. I wouldn't impose on anyone else, but I believe in it. For me, it means something. It's important. So I want them to have the experience of belief, of believing in the work they do, believing in the place they live, to have the experience I want them to live. I should cover. You know, belief is a loaded term here. I want them to live with a sense of meaning and purpose, however they choose that for themselves. With, yeah, I'm going to take away the word belief. I want them to live with a sense of internal integrity that they can create, that there's not one way to live no one owns. You know, I was raised to think that if you aren't religious, you don't have meaning and purpose, you know, the outside empty, secular world, to know they can create meaningful community, meaningful relationships. They can feel mystery and awe. You know, one of the things I've learned for myself, my own journey, is you can belong to a community, but you can feel belonging in lots of places. I think my most meaningful experiences have been in nature, which are never part of my orthodox world. You know, that you can experience. You could have a deep experience of the world outside of religion. And I just, I want them to know that they get to craft their lives for themselves.

John Dehlin [00:58:28] So for you, it would not be disastrous if your kids became orthodox. You would be happy that they were following their own path, right?

Tova Mirvis [00:58:37] I mean, I, you know, I can feel the anxiety if it feels rejectionist, the fear of it. But I think in the same way that, you know what I feel like the gift my parents have ultimately given me is that I get to choose who I am. I have to give that same gift to my children. I can't be honest and say you have the right to choose as long as it matches me, because that's my critique of so much of my religious world. But you can choose as long as you choose this. So I give them that sense that they can choose. You know what the truth of parenting also is? Even if I didn't give them the gift, they still have that right. They're still going to be their own people. And so I choose to let them be themselves.

John Dehlin [00:59:16] So have your parents. Sorry I interrupted. To become what?

Tova Mirvis [00:59:20] To be who they're going to be.

John Dehlin [00:59:22] Right. How have your parents and siblings treated you in all this?

Tova Mirvis [00:59:26] They have really been wonderful. You know, I think for my mother especially, there's a process. I think, you know, when we have a kid, we have a vision of who they are, of who we imagine they're going to be. And when they change, we have to create a new vision. We have to accept, oh, you're not what I thought. You're not how I thought it was going to look. And maybe there's a grieving process that happens in the, in it. But, you know, one of the things that has saddened me most about in my own journey and learning about people's journeys like mine is how often people are severed from their families. I just, I want to ask, you know, in which God's name are you cut off from your child? In which God's name did you reject a parent or a sibling? Hard for me to imagine that it's any, that there's any value or purpose in choosing an ideology over a child, over a parent. And I just, you know, I feel like my parents ultimately choose family. They haven't changed their beliefs, but they're able to make room for mine. And stories where people are cut off from family are the ones that I think break my heart the most. And I think it's common. Certainly in my orthodox world it's common, but I just feel like what value has been upheld, what lesson has been taught by choosing that over a parent, child relationship?

Parental Relationships, Jewish Identity, and Finding Meaning

John Dehlin [01:00:38] So your parents and siblings have accepted you still?

Tova Mirvis [01:00:41] They do. And I consider it a gift, one that I know you can't always count on and leaving.

John Dehlin [01:00:47] Where are you now with beliefs?

Tova Mirvis [01:00:51] You know, people have asked me, you know, since I started my book tour. You know, the question answer period is always like the nerve wracking part. Now people ask me what I believe in and you know, I have a question mark. You know, I certainly am connected Jewishly. I feel very connected to Jewish history and Jewish culture and Jewish tradition. Could I describe myself as a believer? I don't know. Not unless I redefined every word so many times that I'm no longer sure what they mean. You know, I am moved by the world. I believe in meaning and I sometimes feel a sense of mystery and awe and majesty, you know, in nature. You know, if I tried to like twist that, could I say that's belief. Like, I don't know, I think it's something else. I don't think you could really define it as belief.

John Dehlin [01:01:36] Do you attend a synagogue weekly?

Tova Mirvis [01:01:39] We belong to a synagogue that meets near our house.

John Dehlin [01:01:43] Reform.

Tova Mirvis [01:01:44] It's not Reform, it's sort of traditional, egalitarian. And I. Whatever that I know. So it's the one my ex husband used to always urge me to go to. We belong to it because it's nearby and my kids have friends there. So. So it works socially with raising kids and wanting to have a place for holidays. We go occasionally, I would say.

John Dehlin [01:02:03] So when your kids do bar mitzvah. Bar mitzvah, do they do that in your ex husband's synagogue or how does that work?

Tova Mirvis [01:02:09] So we had. My middle son had a bar mitzvah last year and it was endlessly complicated, of course, especially because he did not want to have a bar mitzvah. My middle son is the one who said to me one night, he's like, you know, when I get older, I'm going to go downtown and sign up not to be Jewish anymore. He imagines there's like a bureau you go to to fill out this form. But he did not want to have a bar mitzvah and, you know, I wanted him to. His father very much wanted him to. But we managed to do it. We had a very small service. We rented a place in a high school just for family and we had an Orthodox service, which was hard for me. I felt, you know, I felt like I was in a tough spot where it was important to my ex husband and to his family and my family. I decided for peace of the family, I was going to go along with it. It was hard, you know, it felt alienating for me in a certain way. But tried to make the bar mitzvah experience be about more than just sort of the ritual observance. I really tried to talk to my son about, you know, what it means to become, you know, hardly a grown up, but like, you know, an older member of a community. We did a project with a food pantry that was really meaningful to us and tried to, like, think about it outside of the construct of that service. But, you know, navigating religious life with, you know, it's hard enough to be married to someone you don't believe the same way. Being divorced from someone where you have different beliefs, it makes for, you know, endless fun.

John Dehlin [01:03:26] Super hard.

Tova Mirvis [01:03:27] Yeah.

Standing in the Orthodox Community After Leaving

John Dehlin [01:03:27] How are you treated in the. In the broader, even national or global Orthodox community? Do you feel like a pariah? Do you Feel like an apostate, you know, are you looked down upon? Are you demonized as a public figure?

Tova Mirvis [01:03:45] I think, you know, it's interesting because my first two novels were Orthodox. My third was religious at all. And then about three years ago, I wrote an essay that was in the New York Times about my Orthodox Jewish divorce ceremony, where I came to realize I was leaving not just this marriage, but the Orthodox world. It felt like this, you know, outing myself for the first time. You know, people were like, oh, we didn't know that about her. And, you know, I had that moment of trepidation of putting my story out into the world and what it would mean to, you know, in the most public place possible. You know, there's no more public going public with it than putting it in the New York Times. This had said, I'm not Orthodox. And I was very nervous about reactions. And, you know, I found that the response to that essay really cut across so many religious lines. I got so many emails from people who. Of all religious backgrounds who are grappling with change, who are really related to it. And it's what inspired me to write my memoir. And I found, you know, even within the Orthodox world, there was a similar reaction. I felt like there were people who, of course, were bothered by it, who felt like I'm, you know, publicly. Why do you know, one of their comments, I get a lot of, why do you have to talk publicly about these things?

John Dehlin [01:04:50] Exactly. Go through it yourself, but keep quiet and don't ruin it for everybody else.

Tova Mirvis [01:04:55] Right, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:04:55] So why. Why are you doing this?

Tova Mirvis [01:04:57] Right, exactly. You know, it's so funny, Actually, a few months ago, I did a book club Skype with a group of Mormon women in Utah, and they told me about Mormon people who write about the Mormon world. And they said they can't they leave it, but they can't leave it alone. I think that's what they said. And I said, you know, it's funny because in the orthodox world, I am one of those people. Like, you don't know that because you don't feel bothered by it the same way. But, you know, the reason to write. First of all, there are lots of reasons to write publicly about it. I think the more interesting question is, why do people not want it to be written publicly about? And I think it's because it goes against the story. The story is we're happy. And if you want to quietly slink away, then nothing has to challenge our notion that there is one story to tell. And even recently, I got this little rebuke from an editor of a New Jersey Jewish newspaper for an essay I wrote in the New York Times a few weeks ago about. It was in the Modern Love section about taking my son for a piece of non kosher pizza. And she said, you know, one of the things she said was, if you have these thoughts, you should write them in a diary like in the old days. And I was like, right, if I have these thoughts, we should. Those are quiet. No one needs to know. And publicly, you should write the version where everyone is happy, right? Everyone is orthodox, because that, of course, can be told publicly. I mean, no one is saying, don't tell the religious version publicly. That is perfect for public consumption. And the reason that no one wants these other voices is because they threaten the story. They threaten the version that there's only one way to live. And they are dangerous because they tell people that you're not the only one. And, you know, it's actually interesting, one of the responses I got to this Modern Love essay, I got responses from all religious backgrounds. I actually got a response from a man in a Mormon community who told me he was getting divorced and that he had showed the essay to his parents because. Because it helped explain his experience. And I think the value of talking about these things is it contradicts the public version that there's one way to live. It insists there are many ways to be. And there are many things that. There are lots of us who feel this way, and even those of us sitting quietly in synagogue or in church, there are lots of us who are questioning. And that, I think, is why people don't want it to be told. The reason to tell it is because it's true. It's true of the world. It's true of how so many of us live.

John Dehlin [01:07:18] So there's this. There's this infamous quote in Mormonism that not all things that are true are useful. And I'm just going to push back, not from my own value, but from the people that tell me to shut up, basically. And the idea is, it may be true. Yes, there are people being hurt, but your religion's been around for millennials. It's the core of so many people's identity, their families, their sense of meaning and purpose in the world. And you're harming that. You're harming this infrastructure that lives are based on. And Tova, the more you speak out, there's going to be more doubt, there's going to be more questioning. You're going to weaken this institution that has meant so much to so Many people for so long, it's going to lead to divorce and sad. And you're basically pulling the threads on the fabric of society that keeps people moral, keeps people happy, keeps people with a sense of meaning and purpose. You're hurting people. That's the argument, right?

Tova Mirvis [01:08:20] I hear it in the same way. Believe me, I've heard it many a time. What I would say is you're asking people to construct a lie. You're asking people to uphold a fantasy for your purpose. And I would have to, you know, I think you have to take apart the purposes. You want to uphold something that to me, doesn't seem true. And so you're, you know, you are asking for sort of, you know, we. I think we do this in lots of places, right? We uphold an ideology. We uphold a construction notion of what's true. And the people you're harming are the individuals inside that who feel they can't live truthfully or authentically. You're precluding the possibility of people coming to their own truths in order to uphold your version of the truth. And, you know, I hear the idea that, you know, that truth is hard and stories. It was hard, though it's not really. I don't think it's just about truth. I think it's about the notion of individual difference, the idea that lots of people experience the same thing in different ways. And I think what really the goal in trying to silence the stories is about trying to say there's one version. And what the hope is, is if I say it enough times, you will change so that you adhere to the version. You know, I think that the damage is done by insisting people there's one story. I think the psychological damage is enormous, as evidenced by people who leave. The sense of trauma people feel in leaving the sense that you are. We are being told there's one way to be, and if you don't match that, there's something wrong with you. And, you know, the other thing about that, you know, that I also would want to say is talking about people who don't believe doesn't endanger the whole endeavor. Religious faith can encompass lots of things. Religious culture can make room for people who don't believe. Everyone who leaves is not leaving in order to tear down. You know, I'd love to think, you know, one of the things I think of my memoir is, you know, people ask me how it's read in the orthodox world. I'd want to say that I think that, you know, I hope it's a call to a religious world to ask how we deal with difference. How do we deal with the fact that not everyone believes as we do? Because it's true. Whether you like it or not, it's true. Not everyone believes as we do. And we have a choice to make as a religious community has a choice to make as well about how it wants to deal with those who don't believe. Does it want to turn its back? Does it want to demonize or shun? Or can religious communities be secure enough in their own beliefs to say, I believe this, I accept that you don't, that that's also okay.

The Book of Separation and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [01:10:52] But if somebody says the beauty and the power is so profound that these little intellectual or faith or integrity concerns you have, or concerns about the minority for whom it doesn't work, none of that matters when compared to the power and the strength and the value of the orthodoxy. And so the cost is not worth the benefit. Just be quiet.

Tova Mirvis [01:11:19] Right. I guess I would say the power and the beauty and the strength to whom? You know, to the believer, yes, it is power and strength and beauty tradition. To the non believer, it's not power and strength and beauty. To the non believer, it's a prison. And so that's, you know, I think that people want to believe that belief is objective, but belief is a subjective experience that someone feels. And, you know, for someone who believes, I think it's a wonderful thing for them. I feel like if you're born into a world that you believe in, how lucky you are. If you're born into a world that matches you, consider it a gift. But can you make room inside that to recognize that not everyone has that not everyone is born into a world that matches them? And, you know, not everyone believes. Belief is not provable. You can't prove it. So you experience it. That's great, but not everyone does. And where do you make room for those of us who don't?

John Dehlin [01:12:15] I want to keep going. The book is the Book of Separation. Tova Mirvas, listen, Mormon Stories listeners, don't hang up yet. What we're going to do is we're all going to go buy this book. We're going to have 10,000 copies of this book purchased over the next month. We're all going to read it. And then in a month, Tova, we're going to have you back on Mormon Stories Stories, and we're going to let our listeners ask you questions. We're going to celebrate this beautiful book and we're going to bring you to Salt Lake City and we're going to give you a wonderful experience here in Salt Lake City. What do you think?

Tova Mirvis [01:12:48] It sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate your reading the book and it's great talking to you. It's so interesting how we come from such a similar place. Even in your questions, I hear how much there is in common between our worlds.

John Dehlin [01:13:01] You have no idea. And we're going to explore that. But thank you for this beautiful gift of a book. I don't want to minimize you by saying you're a modern day Kaim Potok because you're a modern day Tova Mirvas. But you're doing incredibly important work, not just to Orthodox Jews, but to people all over the world. And so bless you, Tova. You're brilliant, you're thoughtful, you're sensitive. And all my listeners are writing how much they've loved this experience.

Tova Mirvis [01:13:31] Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

John Dehlin [01:13:34] Stay in touch. We're gonna have you back and good luck with everything.

Tova Mirvis [01:13:37] Okay? Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] All right. Good luck with your interview. I'm gonna say bye to my listeners really quick, but you can hang up if you want.

Tova Mirvis [01:13:42] Okay, thanks so much. Bye.

John Dehlin [01:13:44] All right, thanks. Tova listeners, thank you so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please stay tuned for more. We're releasing the Michael Quinn interview today for those who are donors. So if you're a member of patreon, patreon.com MormonStories or if you are just a regular donor, you'll be able to access the Michael Quinn interview today. There is a Facebook group called Open Stories Foundation Donors that you can join only if you're a donor in the past month, past year and you can get access to those interviews early. We're going to be offering new and exciting, exciting things through Patreon and through the Open Stories Foundation Donors Facebook group. So thanks to all of you who support us. You can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donation button. 10, 20, 2500 bucks a month, whatever you can afford, keeps the Open Stories foundation going, keeps us alive and allows us to continue providing this sort of stuff for you. So please support us if you are able. If you're not, we still give these interviews away for free. So thank you for listening one way or the other. Other ways that you can support Mormon Stories, you can like our Facebook page at Mormon Stories Podcast on Facebook. You can give us a positive review on Facebook at Mormon Stories Podcast. You can also give us a positive review on itunes. So please go to itunes and give a positive review to Mormon Stories Podcast. We want to thank everyone who makes this possible. Amy Grubbs, Cody Layton, Sharon Price, our staff at the Open Stories Foundation. Please know that your donations allow us to have a staff and to run as a legitimate nonprofit. Please know that your donations are tax deductible and they go towards the mission of the foundation. That we are. That we are. That we're doing all we can to support people who are experiencing religious transition. We have other podcasts at Thoughtful Faith, Mormon Matters, Mormon Mental Health, Mormon Transition. Look for more podcasts there as well. And just know that we're here to do whatever we can to support you guys. So please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com if you are in a mixed faith marriage and you want us to tell your story. We would love to feature more mixed faith relationships in the coming month or two. That's going to be a new series we have, so please reach out if you're in a mixed faith marriage and you want to tell your story. Know how grateful we are. We're also grateful to our Board of Directors and Lee Stowell, Roger McComber, Craig Woodfield, Steve Holman, Steve Holbrook, Sorry, Kim Turner and Nadine McCombs. Hanson couldn't exist without our board, so we're thankful for them as well. We love all you as listeners. Please tune in again soon on Mormon Stories for more episodes. Please buy this book, the Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis and please look forward to our future interview you and our visit to Salt Lake City, hopefully from Toba. Thanks again for everyone. Sure appreciate you tuning in live on Facebook to those who have tuned in live. And please tune in again soon for another episode of Mormon Stories and check out our events@mormonstories.org events. Thanks everybody. Take care and see you all very soon. Sure appreciate the support. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.