7 Lessons frm Tova Mordechai’s To Play With Fire: Journey of a Jewish Soul

I recently had the privilege of meeting Tova Mordechai and listening to her share her remarkable story. As I listened, I could not help but recognize certain parallels with my own journey. Our stories are very different, yet both began with a Jewish identity that was hidden from us and eventually became the foundation of our lives.

Tova was born Tonica Marlow in England to an Egyptian Jewish mother and a British Christian father. Her maternal grandmother, a Romanian Jew who had settled in Alexandria and married an observant Jewish man, came under the influence of Christian missionaries and converted to Christianity. Tova’s mother followed that path and eventually married a deeply religious evangelical Christian.

Tova therefore grew up immersed in Christianity with little understanding of the Jewish identity she had inherited through her mother. At only sixteen, she entered theological seminary as its youngest student. She eventually became an ordained evangelical minister and was regarded within her religious community as a “prophetess.” For nine years, she devoted herself intensely to Christian ministry.

Yet beneath the certainty of the life she had built, questions were beginning to emerge. Something kept drawing her toward Judaism.

Tova began secretly exploring her Jewish roots. She visited an Orthodox synagogue, encountered Chabad, and started asking questions that challenged everything she had been taught. When the head of her seminary discovered what she was doing, he warned her that she was “playing with fire.” Those words would eventually become the title of her autobiography, To Play With Fire: One Woman’s Remarkable Odyssey.

In 1981, Tova left the church and reclaimed the Jewish identity that had been hidden from her for most of her life. She eventually became a Torah observant Chassidic woman, married, raised a family, and settled in Tzfat, Israel.

At a pivotal point in her journey, Tova received a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to share her story. She has carried that blessing with her for decades, speaking to Jewish communities around the world and using her extraordinary journey to awaken and inspire others.

That part of Tova’s story touched me in a particularly personal way. I, too, received a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I was thirteen years old when my family immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union. I had grown up surrounded by communist atheism and had not even known that I was Jewish until I was ten. Meeting the Rebbe and receiving his blessing became a defining moment in my young life. In many ways, it marked the beginning of my own journey of returning to my Jewish heritage.

Tova and I came from almost opposite worlds. She grew up surrounded by intense religion, while I grew up in a world where religion was suppressed. Yet both of us carried a Jewish identity we barely understood.

Two completely different roads had awakened the same search.

As I listened to Tova, seven lessons especially stayed with me.

1. Sometimes we spend years searching for something that was already part of us.

Tova traveled through an entire religious world before discovering the Jewish identity she had inherited from birth. Sometimes the greatest journey of our lives is not toward something new. It is the journey back to something that was always ours.

2. Never be afraid to ask difficult questions.

Tova had built her identity, community, and life’s purpose around her beliefs. Questioning them meant risking almost everything familiar to her. Yet real growth requires the courage to ask questions, especially when we do not know where the answers will take us.

3. It is never too late to change the direction of your life.

Walking away from an established life requires tremendous courage. But the years we have already invested in one direction do not obligate us to spend the rest of our lives traveling down the wrong road. Sometimes courage means beginning again.

4. Our past is never wasted.

Tova did not need to erase everything that came before in order to become who she was meant to be. Every chapter had shaped her ability to teach, speak, search, and ultimately inspire others. Even the roads that seem to have taken us away from our destination can somehow become part of the journey toward it.

5. One person can change the direction of another person’s life.

A teacher, a stranger, a rabbi, a friend, or someone who simply opens a door can become part of another person’s destiny. We rarely know how far one conversation, one invitation, or one act of kindness may travel.

Perhaps this is also why the Rebbe encouraged Tova to tell her story. Sometimes our own journey is not meant only for us. By sharing where we have been, we may help someone else discover where they belong.

6. Finding your way home does not mean life becomes easy.

Tova’s story did not become a fairy tale after she embraced Judaism. Her faith would continue to be tested through profound personal challenges and loss. Finding our path does not protect us from pain. It gives us a foundation from which to face it.

7. A Jewish soul never stops yearning for home.

Perhaps this is the lesson that touched me most deeply.

Tova came through Christianity. I came through Soviet atheism. Different countries, different childhoods, different circumstances, and completely different roads. Yet both journeys ultimately led toward the same discovery.

The circumstances of our lives may carry us through different cultures, beliefs, experiences, and places. Sometimes we may travel very far without even realizing what we are searching for. Yet somewhere deep within, the Jewish soul remembers. Perhaps that is the deepest message I took from meeting Tova Mordechai and hearing her remarkable story.

No matter how different the journey, how distant the road, or how many years it takes, the Jewish soul continues to yearn for home.

And sometimes an entire lifetime is simply the journey of finding our way back. As Tova discovered, “Don’t be afraid of the journey. Listen to the whisper of your soul, and keep moving forward even if it is slow.”