One
question that I hear a lot is “Are you related to…?”
I’ve
come to expect it when meeting new people, and I starting shaking my head and
saying “no” even before they can finish their question.
Jewish geography is
great, but it doesn’t really work for me. My relatives who share the same last
name as me aren’t religious so no one knows them, and the religious family that
everyone is always asking about is not related to me. So, I have been content
for most of my life to know that my family is the black sheep and I will never
be a crucial connection in Jewish geography.
That
is, until two day before I left for seminary something happened. Two days
before I boarded a plane for the Holy Land happened to be my sister’s wedding.
(And my mother’s birthday). In the midst of all the wedding flurry, my mother
got a Facebook message from some lady claiming to be a relative. My mother
explained what was going on and that we would get back to her. Mazel tov! My
sister got married, I was home for one day of Sheva Brachos, and then bam, I
was welcomed into my beautiful homeland.
I don’t
really remember what happened that week (except for my first day… that was an
adventure) but I somehow found out that I had a cousin (they WERE related to
us!) and she was ALSO in seminary! Our first Shabbos was an in-Shabbos, but
knowing where said cousin was in seminary, I embarked on the trek through the
sweltering Jerusalem streets to find her. And find her I did! We had a reunion…
or first meeting (?) in one of her seminary classrooms.
Now, to
be honest, I’m not the “huggiest” person. (At least, not so much with
strangers) But, how does one greet a long-lost cousin, a perfect stranger, but
at the same time, a family member? Ok, we hugged. We gasped and giggled as
girls are known to do and promised to keep in touch and spend Shabbos together
during the year. Which we did. We went to my second cousins pretty frequently together
and got to know each other a little bit better. And when her brother came to Israel,
he also spent Shabbos with us.
Having
had only one set of relatives who are frum (from the other side, so not that
famous last name everyone asks about), it was very strange to suddenly have a
new cousin to be obligated to. She didn’t have any family in Israel (my cousins
there were the only ones I had) so I felt like I had to make sure she always
had a place for Shabbos. Definitely strange.
Mazel
tov again! My second sister got engaged during my year in seminary and her
wedding was a few weeks after I came home. Our new cousins came, but sadly we didn’t
really have time to bond and schmooze (Two weddings in nine months! Whoosh!).
We
haven’t really kept in touch these past few months because of college, friends,
life, etc., but in a way, had we not been cousins, we never would have been
friends. We are two very different people with lots of different interests that
don’t overlap. So while it’s great to have a new frum cousin, it also feels
like an alternate reality, in which she just doesn’t really fit the picture.
I now
have one new connection in my game of Jewish geography, but to be honest, it’s
just weird.
