Dear Shalom,
I am fascinated by the discussion of Tov Mirvis' Book of Separation and grateful for some of the important points that have been made.
However, while I wholeheartedly agree that slandering God, the Jewish people, our beliefs and practices is slander, so too is slandering Tova Mirvis. The Book of Separation is not an attack on Orthodox Judaism. It is an intensely personal memoir in which she explores her feelings about Jewish life and the breakdown of her marriage. At times, these are negative and painful to read, but the book is written with immense sensitivity and enormous respect for Jewish tradition.
I suspect that it is not necessarily the most helpful book for high schoolers to explore their identity, but it certainly raises questions which Jewish educators ignore at our peril. So the question that I think we should be confronting is what if anything could be done to prevent more people abandoning their faith in the way that she did? And what if anything could we do to bring them back?
Best wishes
Gideon
