A couple of nights ago an opportunity presented itself for me to undo one of my biggest regrets, that I have not established relationships with the many distant relatives that I have in Israel.
We didn't even know about the entire Israeli branch of family until about 30 years ago. How's this for a small-world-all-the-cosmic-forces-coming-together story? (By the way, in the interest of not printing any names of relatives without their permission, I am requesting in advance your forbearance for a lot of initials which be used instead).
I have an older cousin on my mother's side; I'll call her "CB", who is a real "Auntie Mame" type of character – she lives life to the fullest, she has a great time "doing her thing", and she has no qualms about speaking whatever is on her mind whenever it's on her mind. CB used to come to Israel on a regular basis with a program allowing retirees to volunteer on army bases. One year her group was taking a one-day trip to a city she had previously seen, so CB went to the city of Rishon LeTzion on her own since she had never been there.
While strolling through the city, CB saw a man who looked very familiar. Being the "Auntie Mame" that she is, she approached him, and said that there is no way she could possibly know him, but he looked too familiar for this to be coincidence, and asked who he was. It turns out that he was the oldest of five siblings who were orphaned in the Holocaust. They all came to Israel in 1947 (which was called Palestine at the time) with a group of 720 orphans known as the "Tehran Children" who were brought to Palestine from Europe via Siberia and Tehran (hence the name of the group). This gentleman (we'll refer to him as "YR"), was the son of my mother's father's brother, and he looked so much like my maternal grandfather, which is why CB approached him in the first place. When CB went to meet YR's four siblings, she almost fainted when she first saw his sister LN – she could have been my maternal grandmother's twin.
The most incredible aspect of this was that YR did not live in Rishon LeTzion (where he met CB) - he just happened to be there that day for work - on the very day that CB just happened to be there because it was the free day she had while her group was somewhere else, and she had decided not to join them that day.
Seriously - what are the odds?
So, all of the sudden, we had a whole branch of family in Israel, and when I came in 1988 I became close to YR, his wife and their only son (JH), who was in high school at the time. I also became friendly with LN and her husband, but their children were all grown, married and out of the house by that time, so I never got to know them.
Over the years YR and his wife passed away, but I was still in regular contact with JH, I attended his wedding as well as the bris for his first-born son. But, other than LN and her husband, I had almost no contact with anybody else in this extended branch of the family. At one gathering I met one of LN's daughters but that was it. CB has been in regular contact with LN, and they are very close, and my mother has also become very friendly with LN, in spite of the fact that they don't have a common language (whenever Mom is here, they get together with either me or Sharon translating for them).
A couple of months ago, LN's daughter – RJ, called my mother from Israel to invite her to her son's wedding. While Mom had only met this woman a handful of times, the invitation was very warm, very genuine and very sweet. And since any excuse to visit Israel to see us and the grandchildren is a good one, Mom decided to come. RJ also called me to invite us to the wedding, and like with Mom, while I had met her only once, and that was about 15 years ago, I felt that she truly wanted us to join her family for this joyous occasion.
This past Sunday we went to the wedding. We only knew a handful of people there – LN and her husband, and JH, who I had not seen in about 9 years since before he and his family went to South Africa for a 4-year stint, and we had not been in touch since then or since they returned. When I approached JH, he gave me a hug and an invitation to his son's Bar Mitzvah which will be a weekend-long event at a hotel in two weeks. He brought the invitation since he had been told that we would be at the wedding, and he made it very clear that he really hoped that we could come to the Bar Mitzvah.
In spite of knowing next to nobody there, we had an absolutely fantastic time. We were seated at a table with CB, who is now in her late 80's and her newlywed 95-year old husband, with LN and her husband, and her son (who I had never met) with his wife and two sons. We also met the groom and bride (who said that they had heard about us and were very happy that we were able to come) and the groom's sister.
The mother of the groom, RJ, who had taken the initiative to personally invite us to the wedding, told me basically what I needed to hear – that the "ball is now in my court."
Of course, she's right. She made the first move and called us to invite us to the wedding. This was her way of reaching out to establish a connection between her "branch" of the family and us. Now it really is up to me to demonstrate that it is important to me as well.
And I really hope to keep up my end of things. I was able to briefly meet two of RJ's three children, as well as her brother and family sitting at our table. They all seem genuinely happy for us to start knowing one another, and as somebody with no immediately family in Israel other than one of my wife's sisters, for me this is huge.
I have no regrets about the fact that I have chosen Israel as the place to build my life and raise my family. As I have mentioned in other blogs, one of the biggest difficulties in this is the fact that my family is still in America. I am very grateful to my family for all of their love and their support on my decision to live in Israel, but I also miss them terribly and I feel the hole in my life for not having them on the same side of the world as I am.
Even more, this is hard on my children. They have a large number of cousins, aunts and uncles in America, but only one aunt and uncle and four cousins living here. They have a wonderful relationship with the cousins here, but it is not the same as it would be if they had the entire extended family living in Israel.
And this is why RJ putting the ball into my court is so important. I owe it to my girls (and to myself) to enjoy having family, and to developing a relationship with people with whom we by all rights should have a natural connection.
The extended family here is very different than Sharon and I are – they are all native born Israelis, we are immigrants. All but one of the families are secular, whereas we are religiously observant. Yet for all of the differences, they have shown us only warmth and welcome, and a true hope to share family events and celebrations with us.
How can I deny my children what I have been foolish enough to deny myself up until now?
So the hard part now begins. I say hard, but I have no doubt that it will be worth every bit of effort that I put into it. And my girls may then grow up like most other Israeli children – with a large and loving family throughout the country.
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