I don’t know and I am not going to pontificate on his famous opening line in Anna Kal’enina. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I will add my own comments about the habits of happy families, however.
Happy families stay connected. Happy families exert great effort to stay connected. Happy connected families have a sense of rootedness. Happy connected families provide emotional support for individual family members who may be faced with a challenge or two or three. A network of people connected by blood and by values can help carry members during their struggles.
My mother and her siblings maintained their connections to their relatives far and near. Remote relatives and relatives who lived in remote locations were brought close. The Eichenstein siblings saw their parents and grandparents be there for family members. The latter came to this country in the early twenties, way before their relatives from Galicia. And they sent dollars and affidavits during the pogroms and then later during the Holocaust. And the cousins, great aunts, and their progeny descended on our family in Chicago for weddings, traveling by train, bus, and plane, and stayed for the ensuing festivities. One of the youngest of the first generation remembers her grandmother repeating in Yiddish, “Cousins zennen azovy brider in shvester.” Cousins are like brothers and sisters.
As the Eichenstein sisters discussed family, life, and sometimes confounding circumstances in their marathon sessions around our breakfast room table over comfort food and coffee, they verbalized these comments and added to them. One of the many universal truths that resonated from one tanta is that your kids should marry into good families so that when the struggles occur, they have people to render emotional support.
Families must remain connected, however, for that to happen. And strong happy families maintain connection in many ways. Jewish families, of course, have the chagim when families gather to perform the age-old mitzvos. How lucky are we Yidden whose Torah ensures our families’ strengths through mitzvos that are done en famille like sippur yetzias Mitzrayim, remembering personal Churban on Tisha B’Av, and brachos from the older generation to the younger members erev Yom Kippur.
We are fortunate, as well, to live during a period when keeping families close is so much easier. With technology, easy transportation, and multiple channels of communication, we can talk, text, WhatsApp, zoom, and meet our relations with ease. Some families have chats. Some do quality time with family Shabbosim in rented houses in other locales. Others vacation together. Others hold of ficial reunions every few years. It takes time, effort, and resources.
It’s work to plan, pull together, coordinate, and manage so many people of different ages at one time and in one place. Some are just too busy keeping up with jobs, kids, and life to manage extras. These are usually the younger folks.
It’s up to us older ones to take the initiative to maintain family connections. No matter your style, your means, and your personality, if you care enough, you do the work to make it happen.
My fourteen-year-old great niece made this observation a few weeks ago one Friday night. She was part of the Cousins Connections Shabbaton that I had arranged for 23 teenage girls and granddaughters. My husband’s siblings’ high school age granddaughters were treated to a first-time experience in our home in Lawrence along with the opportunity to get acquainted with their second cousins. That insightful young girl noticed the effort put into the planning, the place settings, the gift bags, the program, and the room assignments (by lottery, per age group).
And that was before we had lovely seudos with my husband telling the girls about his father whom none of them had known. As hashgacha would have it, my father-in-law’s thirtieth yahrzeit was later that week, and they learned about his early life in Rumania, the loss of his mother, the Auschwitz period, and his yeshiva attendance in the displaced persons camps. Chapter two, the postwar years, was recounted the next morning. Each seudah had zemiros led by the two eldest girls followed by games and activities.
I channeled my inner head counselor in sandwiching outdoor and indoor activities (walk to the shore, davening kabbalas Shabbos in shul, Friday night oneg in the basement where they could stay up as late as they wanted) as well as some unstructured time. Motzei Shabbos they did a low tech craft before the requisite pizza and ice cream.
They came with a great attitude and simple clothes. They brought Cousins Connection hoodies, drawings, and lots of nosh. They rose to the occasion, as well, with creativity and initiative, playing games of their own, composing great shots for the music video they planned, and figuring out when they could meet next.
I didn’t think beyond sparking some family connections for my own granddaughters. But, suddenly, I became a heroine in the family. My adult nieces and nephews are telling me how they connected more with members of their generation through making the arrangements and the girls’ developing bonds. One niece said, you reversed a forty-year trend.
And the trend continues. The girls found so many nearby relatives with whom they have so much in common. One set of girls recently visited a set of second cousins in their own community together with their grandmother, and the relationships grew further. The ninth graders living in Baro Park gathered in one home on a recent Shabbos afternoon and partied and played and planned for seven hours.
So do expand on Tolstoy, Jewish men and women of wisdom. Expounding is not necessary. Do invest in strengthening your family bonds with the ex tended family. You and your generations will benefit no matter which way you do it. Whether you have the merch or not from the family confab, you’ve got shared memories and reinforced commitment to each other.
JWOW! is a community for midlife Jewish women which can be accessed at wwwJewishwomanofwisdom.org for conversation, articles, Zoom events, and more.