by Rick Gwynallen
Most likely stimulated by the March birth of our first grandchild I have found myself reflecting on the idea of “family”, particularly how it applies today when so many of us have such far flung familial relationships and friendships. At present, my everyday life spans two main worlds. Those are the Jewish community and the Scottish Gaelic-language community, and there are very few crossovers between them. In addition, there is my identity as part of Baltimore City, a resident of the Chesapeake watershed, and my place in my own far flung family. How do I see “family” given such diversity in my own relationships?
Community, and rebuilding it, is a common thread of conversation in today’s world. It was at the heart of my work for the last 14 years in urban neighborhood development in Baltimore City. The less we feel we have community, the more important it becomes to attain it. People want it, but know it is fragile and even tentative in today’s world. Many move to a new place and think of it as their community after just a few years. They also move again. Most people have some range of different communities where they have important relationships. Even if you are a person living and working in the same area your family has been in for generations you probably have a faith community, a political party, a union, the grange, or benevolent associations within that larger identity of a shared geographic area. For the rest of us who move about and have blood family scattered about, we certainly have multiple institutions with which we relate be they neighborhood, political, faith, or professional institutions, or others based on common interests.
Yet, despite the desire for community a decline in formal membership in many kinds of institutions seems characteristic of life today. If we do not “attach” how do we have deep bonds of community?
We all think we know what “family” means. The subject immediately turns our minds to our parents, brothers and sisters, spouse, children, grandchildren, and so on. Many of us in today’s mobile world may pause for a moment to think about an aunt or uncle, or some cousins, who live far away. There are those people related by blood to us but who are not part of our everyday life. We don’t have to think about what’s going on with them regularly. But certainly they are family, even if perhaps not so much in our thoughts. For a moment, that might feel a little sad.
But “family” does not necessarily have to mean being related by blood or marriage. Reading Torah we frequently come across the reference to our “brothers”. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that in Parashat Behar the word “brother” appears in the laws referenced in the parsha no less than ten times. “Do not wrong your brother.” “If your brother becomes poor.” “The nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold.”
Despite the frequent reference to others as “brother”, almost the whole of Genesis is about blood brothers not getting along. Perhaps there is some feeling here that we have always needed a concept of kin that is more expansive than that of the immediate family.
The concept that being family is more than relationships of blood or marriage was not restricted to ancient Israelite society. The Gaelic term aon bhaile has multiple translations – one home, one farm, one village, one town.
Dr. Emily McEwan pointed out in her article, Teaghlach Dhè – The Family of God, that Gaelic conceptions of kinship in ancient Gaelic Ireland and Scotland included fostership, and that membership in the Scottish clans was less about blood, and more about shared residence, economic ties, military service, and loyalty.
Dwelly’s Classic Scottish Gaelic Dictionary, records a Gaelic saying, which in translation is: “Fostership to a hundred degrees, blood-relation to twenty.” About this expression, Dwelly’s comments: “The closeness of relationship established by fosterage among the Celts is almost without parallel and this is one of the strongest expressions of Highland opinion on this point.”
Such a reference is not restricted to antiquity. In an earlier period of my life when I was more active in Left organizations it was common parlance for union members to refer to each other as “brother” or “sister”, and in others as “comrade”. Many fraternal orders have the same custom. When I worked for a forest conservation organization one of the Board Members that grew up in the labor movement referred to us all as “brother” or “sister” even if no one else did.
The use of these terms within membership bodies like unions, parties, or fraternal organizations might make them seem exclusive, but it doesn’t have to convey that sense or be restricted to institutions. “Brother” and “sister” were terms used in the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and in many communities of color today.
These references might seen out-of-date or even a bit “put-on” to many today, but my experience was that of being brought into a common body, a fraternity in the original French sense of the word, with common obligations and expectations. Many of these relationships felt as deep, or even deeper, than bonds of blood family. The terminology was a constant reminder that our bonds were not just work-related or political, but much deeper, more like family.
It didn’t stop heated debates and criticism, but, at its best, it fostered an environment that reminded everyone that you had similar goals and bonds that went deeper than a disagreement.
In this year’s Shavuot Yom Limmud at B’nai Israel in Baltimore City, a friend led a discussion on “Sacred Arguing in Jewish Tradition”. A “mahloket” is translated as a controversy, disagreement, or conflict. The most frequently used concept for explaining the nature of a mahloket is “l’shem shamayin” and “lo l’shem shamayim”: For the sake of heaven or not not for the sake of heaven. A Pirket Avot (mishna 5:20) states that “Any controversy which is for the sake of Heaven will result in something permanent, but when it is not for the sake of heaven, it will have no permanence.” The Piket Avot goes on to juxtapose the disagreements between Hillel and Shammai, who argued for the sake of Heaven, with the criticism of Moses by Korach and his company, which was not for the sake of Heaven. In brief, we might see an argument for the sake of Heaven as being between people who that their bonds were deeper than the argument, and that they shared a direction and purpose greater than themselves. In short, that they are brothers and sisters, if not by blood than by communal bonds.
What Rabbi Sacks points to in the Bible is perhaps an ideal state, that of being brothers, a goal necessary to reach to have an harmonious society, even though it will be hard to achieve, such as in Genesis.
The Israelites, the Gaels, and many other ancient peoples, had a concept of kinship much broader that what is common in the western world today. Indigenous nations of North America were rooted in kinship groups that had a right to place within the larger tribe.
That broader sense of kinship probably played a significant role is keeping their language and culture alive and transmitting both from one generation to the other.
It’s challenging in modern society. Democracies do not recognize extended kinship groups, but rather territorial areas, with an emphasis on individual citizenship and individual votes for those living in a specific territory. In such an environment, the sense of fraternity plays a larger role in creating shared bonds than extended kinship, but even that is in contrast to the constant reminder that we are individuals who must take care of ourselves first.
Being aon bhaile, one village, one family, might seen easier in an older time, in a tribal or at least rural setting. The sense of needing each other in such societies was not just a noble goal but a daily necessity, even if fraught with difficulty. Today we have so many choices. If we don’t like some people we can simply go to another shul, use a different carpenter, or go live in another community, and never see those people again. Such an attitude and action is more easily possible today than in previous generations. How bonded are we really if we can walk away so easily? If what we as individuals, or perhaps a nuclear family, “want” is considered before what is “needed of us”how deeply do we take our responsibilities to one another?
It’s one thing to to agree on policies that produce a fairer world. It’s one thing to create programs and laws. It’s another for a people to feel so bound together in a mutual history, a shared life, and mutual responsibility that their bonds are unbreakable.
Yet, the principle can still guide us. We are not strangers or foreigners to one another. We are members of many varied communities within which we share mutual interests and a mutual need for one another. We are, as Emily McEwan said, aon bhaile, and must work to make that more than just a principle.
Stumbling Toward Torah 