To Play With Fire: One Woman's Remarkable Odyssey

Rating:
Summary: This is an honest book
Review: I read this back when it was called "Playing With Fire". I am not sure which branch of fundimentalist Christianity her family was with....perhaps the British group "Plymouth Brethren", they were really cultlike. Her background was extreme, but her issues with Christianity are thoughtful and not merely colored by her strange community.

I recognized alot of things from my sojourn with fundimentalism, and I found her honesty refreshing. She is also very straightforward about the Jewish community she has joined. She doesn't paint an easy rosey picture of her transition. I still think of her and her husband, a convert from Episcopalianism. I think if you are interested in conversion stories and people affirming their Judaism you will love this book.

I remember vividly her description of the heartrending time of her sister's death, and her parent's programmed reaction.

Good Luck Tova! I am so glad to see this reissue of your book!

Rating:
Summary: little meat,alot of mush
Review: If you are looking for a book which details the intellectual and rational search of a person for the soul's home in the Jewish faith, this is not the book to read. Coming from a cultic, dysfunctional Pentecostal family, the author is very emotional and seems to judge religious precepts purely on the basis of how they "feel". I don't doubt that she had a life-long feeling of inner-connectedness to Judiasm,but all one reads is how a woman exchanged a christian faith which controlled all her action for a jewish version of the same.

Rating:
Summary: little meat,alot of mush
Review: If you are looking for a book which details the intellectual and rational search of a person for the soul's home in the Jewish faith, this is not the book to read. Coming from a cultic, dysfunctional Pentecostal family, the author is very emotional and seems to judge religious precepts purely on the basis of how they "feel". I don't doubt that she had a life-long feeling of inner-connectedness to Judiasm,but all one reads is how a woman exchanged a christian faith which controlled all her action for a jewish version of the same.

Rating:
Summary: Clever, sincere, and emotionally deep
Review: This book is a very honest one. I especially loved the fact that Tova did not show Orthodox Judaism in rosy colors, but were describing her negative feelings and experience with Orthodox Judaism as well. And there were plenty of what to be upset about. However, she chooses Orthodox Judaism for the rest of her life.

She made it clear that she despised Christianity not just because she was abused by so called "Christians" but also because she was rejecting the New Testament itself. She wrote openly inside her book that Jesus was a false prophet, and that Gospels were misquoting and distorting the Jewish Scriptures. She revealed herself as a very educated and knowledgeable minister quoting the verses from the Bible in order to explain us why according to her the entire Christian doctrine is wrong.

I highly recommend this book to all people: both Jews and Christians. Written in a very sophisticated English it will certainly help them to understand it other.

Also, this new edition "To Play with Fire" is much better than the old one "Playing with Fire". This new edition is longer on sixty pages and reveals more details about her experience and feelings. Even if you own the book "Playing with Fire", you certainly should get this uncut and unedited edition, too.

Rating:
Summary: Winner of the WordWeaving Award for Excellence
Review: TO PLAY WITH FIRE records Tova Mordechai's odyssey as moves from being an evangelical female minister to becoming an Orthodox, practicing Jew. The daughter of an Egyptian Jewish mother and a British Protestant evangelical father, Mordechai devotes her life to service within her church. Ever conscious of the differences between herself and the outer world, Mordechai continuously attempts to stifle her need to connect and to fit in.

For many years she maintained a double life between home and school, and later work and the religious campus where she lived. When her service was rewarded with a promotion and added responsibilities on campus, Mordechai cuts most of her ties to the outside world. Yet she never could completely stifle her desire to deepen her spiritual connection to the One God, and to explore the religion of her mother.

Nine years in the ministry lead to depression and disillusionment with her peers, and an inability to touch the enthusiasm she once experienced. Always aware that something was still missing from her spiritual life, Mordechai buries herself in work and service. But eventually she must do more. Forbidden by her church to explore her Jewish roots, Mordechai eventually leaves behind Protestantism to pursue the freedom of her Jewish roots.

Author Tova Mordechai pens her extraordinary spiritual journey from Pentecostalism to Judaism in TO PLAY WITH FIRE. While her story is intensely personal, it is also universal in her search for a relationship with the God of her ancestors. Her gift with prose brings the story a sense of immediacy that makes for fascinating reading as she exposes both her joy and her disillusionment with her protestant beliefs. A must read for all spiritual seekers, TO PLAY WITH FIRE earns the WordWeaving Award for Excellence.

Rating:
Summary: Choices, decisions, and needs that divide one's soul
Review: To Play With Fire: One Woman's Remarkable Odyssey is the fascinating, autobiographical story of Tova Mordechai, a woman, born of a British Protestant Evangelical father and an Egyptian Jewish mother, who made a long journey of transition from being an evangelical female minister to becoming an Orthodox Jew. A deeply spiritual, revealingly candid, intensely personal story about many choices, decisions, and needs that divide one's soul, To Play With Fire is engaging, thought-provoking, highly recommended reading on the subject of what it means to be Jewish in the world today.

Rating:
Summary: Journey into Personal Peace
Review: Tova lacks a connection with her past faith in an evangelical cult-like religion and through a tumultuous journey she finds her freedom in her Jewish roots.

As the daughter of an Egyptian Jewish mother and a British Protestant Evangelical father, she is in spiritual conflict at an early age. She is perhaps unconsciously seeking her way back to her mother's roots, but does not see the connection until much later in her life.

I found the Jewish section in this book to have more beauty than the prior tortures of being forced to live in a setting of total disregard for the human condition in order to reach some level of spiritual significance.

She describes her life in dramatic detail. Often describing how those around her treated her. While she doesn't appear bitter, the marks of their unkindness drove her from one religion to a kinder, gentler form of living.

"I spent my adolescent years stewing in this schizophrenia of mixed feelings: sometimes crying from terror and begging Jesus to forgive my "sin," sometimes rebelling, kicking and struggling, and other times mocking and laughing. It would be some years before I would be able to abandon one track and live securely on the other." pg. 48

What Tova Mordechai calls Christianity, I'd rather call a cult. Not only does she grow up in an environment of extreme control, she finds it difficult to escape the snare of her own guilt for wanting to escape. Yes, we discover her deep desire to find God in all his glory and how trapped she is in her parents religious fervor.

Christians will find this journey depressing, while Jews rejecting Christianity may find it inspirational. Although, I'd like to say again that the Christianity described in this book is more of a cult in many ways.

She describes the Christians? around her in a very unhealthy light. Descriptions of having food withheld, punishments for situations beyond her control, requirements in dress and action, forced labor, unrealistic fillings of the spirit (peer pressure to reach religious goals), questionable healings, brainwashing, fasting, verbal abuse, neglect by her own family and peers, a path set in stone by her parents, etc.

At only one point in this story does she really take responsibility for her own destiny and that is the turning
point in her life. At all other points in the story, she seems to still be afraid of change and yet desires it so terribly that she experiences the terrible tortures of the soul.

Tova's writing is vivid and her painful ordeal is described in shocking detail. This is a behind-the-scenes account of a woman in emotional and spiritual pain. That is perhaps what will make it compelling to some readers.

What I found terribly tragic is that she throws Jesus Christ out along with all her past religious connections. She also rejects Messianic Jews who I would be more inclined to think had found a way to connect "real" Christianity with the beauty of the Jewish faith. For really, a true Christian respects the Jewish faith and finds it to be part of their own belief systems.

It occurs to me at least that her personality was not well suited to her past life and that when forced to believe, many of us will rebel in such circumstances. I would not wish her past on anyone. Just because people claim to be Christian or Followers of Christ, does not make them "real" Christians. To me, real Christians show love, and not once did the "Christians?" in this story show love or a concern for Tova.

They all seemed to be more concerned with power and finding favor in the eyes of their peers. In my mind, they were not portraying the true love Christ encouraged in the New Testament. Tova does not love herself and she seems to be unable to find anyone to love her or show her how
to love God or love herself.

Perhaps she looked at God through those around her instead of looking directly to God. Once she was able to escape the control of piety, she was able to embrace God more fully even though the rules in the Orthodox life might even be more strict than her evangelical-cult-like background.

A soul on a mission to escape man to find God. A soul looking for love and unconditional acceptance.

This is the story of one woman's experience with two religions. It should be taken as such. Like Tova, we all have to find our own way to peace and a knowledge of our creator.

"I challenge my destiny, my time
I challenge the human eye.
I will sneer at ridiculous rules and people
That is the end of it; I will fill my eyes with pure
light, and swim in a sea of
unbounded feelings."

~Aisha al-Taimuriya (1840-1902)

Rating:
Summary: more than five stars!
Review: Tova Mordechai's story of her journey from a Pentecostal cult to Judaism reads like a Jewish _A Little Princess_: she lives in poverty surrounded by plenty, is forcibly separated from her family; she succeeeds at everything she tries and yet receives no recognition for her successes, but she is cheerful and good-hearted throughout. If this book were fiction, it would be remarkable for its excellent writing, suspenseful plot, and believable characters. The fact that the book actually happened is all the more amazing. _To Play with Fire_ compellingly tells a truly fascinating and inspirational story, giving the reader an insight behind closed doors of two little-understood religions.

Any autobiographical work about an author's religious "odyssey" sets off alarm bells in the mind of a demanding reader, yet this book avoids the clichees. Despite telling a very personal story about the evolution of the author's fundamental religious beliefs, it maintains a distance from them: much to her credit, the author does not attempt to persuade readers of the truth of her new belief system, and she does write a relatively honest assessment of her new life. Further, it is clear that Ms. Mordechai is writing for her audience, not herself: she tells her story because others have found it fascinating, not because she thinks herself a model of humanity, again quite unique of autobiographical works.

Nevertheless, I do wish that she had written more about her current life. She mentions her reluctance to accept anything blindly, and indeed she argues extensively with the Lubavitch rabbis at her seminary, but she nonetheless stayed within Lubavitch during her struggles, rather than exploring other streams of Judaism, such as the Greek and Egyptian traditions of her ancestors.

While the most important part of her exploration occurred in the transition from Christian to Jewish, I wish she had discussed her thoughts about the nature of religion itself: whether power in any religious group should ever be centralized in one figure whose opinion determines the policy of the religious group, or whether decentralized power (as in the classical Jewish model of multiple rival opinions) is safer.

It is understandable that she cannot risk personal relationships by giving a complete discussion of her own life in her small community, but I was disappointed to watch her lush prose become sparse at the very end, and to see her incisive commentary become more muted.

One warning to the reader: it is impossible to read only one chapter and it compelled me to stay up until 3 am to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: more than five stars!
Review: Tova Mordechai's story of her journey from a Pentecostal cult to Judaism reads like a Jewish _A Little Princess_: she lives in poverty surrounded by plenty, is forcibly separated from her family; she succeeeds at everything she tries and yet receives no recognition for her successes, but she is cheerful and good-hearted throughout. If this book were fiction, it would be remarkable for its excellent writing, suspenseful plot, and believable characters. The fact that the book actually happened is all the more amazing. _To Play with Fire_ compellingly tells a truly fascinating and inspirational story, giving the reader an insight behind closed doors of two little-understood religions.

Any autobiographical work about an author's religious "odyssey" sets off alarm bells in the mind of a demanding reader, yet this book avoids the clichees. Despite telling a very personal story about the evolution of the author's fundamental religious beliefs, it maintains a distance from them: much to her credit, the author does not attempt to persuade readers of the truth of her new belief system, and she does write a relatively honest assessment of her new life. Further, it is clear that Ms. Mordechai is writing for her audience, not herself: she tells her story because others have found it fascinating, not because she thinks herself a model of humanity, again quite unique of autobiographical works.

Nevertheless, I do wish that she had written more about her current life. She mentions her reluctance to accept anything blindly, and indeed she argues extensively with the Lubavitch rabbis at her seminary, but she nonetheless stayed within Lubavitch during her struggles, rather than exploring other streams of Judaism, such as the Greek and Egyptian traditions of her ancestors.

While the most important part of her exploration occurred in the transition from Christian to Jewish, I wish she had discussed her thoughts about the nature of religion itself: whether power in any religious group should ever be centralized in one figure whose opinion determines the policy of the religious group, or whether decentralized power (as in the classical Jewish model of multiple rival opinions) is safer.

It is understandable that she cannot risk personal relationships by giving a complete discussion of her own life in her small community, but I was disappointed to watch her lush prose become sparse at the very end, and to see her incisive commentary become more muted.

One warning to the reader: it is impossible to read only one chapter and it compelled me to stay up until 3 am to finish it.