(RNS) As toddlers we had sandbox friends and, later, school classmates. Then came work colleagues, some of whom became our best friends. All those folks are wonderful companions on life’s journey. But Anthony Brandt said it best: “Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.”
Sadly, the family as an institution is constantly derided on TV sitcoms. Worse, many hypocritical politicians, while proclaiming their public commitment to “family values,” have privately engaged in shameful activities that undermine their own families.
I thought of Brandt’s words as members of my extended family recently celebrated the 80th birthday of my sister-in-law, Nan Rudin.
Every family has its chronicle of joys and sorrows, births and deaths, and mine is no different. I met Nan years ago when she became my brother Bert’s fiancee, and one of her first acts as a new family member was to attend my high school graduation. It was an early example of one of Nan’s most endearing qualities: she travels to significant rites of passage in the lives of her family and friends. Bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, weddings, anniversaries, every school graduation ranging from kindergarten through graduate school, and sadly, funerals.
When my brother died in 1974, a victim of Hodgkin’s disease, both Nan and he were only 44 and the parents of four children. His death forced a grieving Nan, suddenly a single mother, to make a momentous decision: “to choose life” as the Torah urges, or to turn her back on life and retreat into a self-imposed shell. Happily, Nan chose to follow the Torah and in so doing, she has ultimately survived and triumphed in the face of sorrow and loss.
During the past 35 years, she became an anchor for our family. Her two daughters and two sons have grown into loving, accomplished adults, themselves the parents of eight children, members of a new Jewish generation that Bert never lived to see. During my parents’ final years, Nan provided tender care, and her extraordinary sense of compassion also extends to a myriad of friends, all of whom are the beneficiaries of her concern.
But even though each family has its unique narrative, I believe Nan’s 80 years represent something beyond her own family, she is part of the American Jewish cavalcade of history. Her grandfathers came to the United States in the 19th century as young immigrants seeking freedom and liberty. They fled the harsh anti-Jewish prejudice that denied them educational and occupational opportunities, the anti-Semitism that poisoned the societies of their native European lands. But within a single generation, the newcomers and their children, Nan’s parents, became sure-footed, proud citizens of America.
Like other American Jews, Nan and Bert participated fully in our nation’s life, including my brother’s tour of duty as a dental officer in the U.S. Army. Following their return to civilian life in Alexandria, Va., they became active in the civil rights struggle, and were founding members in 1962 of what was to become the Old Dominion’s largest synagogue. Nan was active in the Soviet Jewry campaign during the 1970s and 1980s and repeatedly picketed the USSR Embassy in Washington. One of her sons has served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces.
Besides her family and a large number of good friends, Nan’s life has been enriched by her years working as an usher at the famous Kennedy Center in the nation’s capital. As a lover of theater, dance, and music, Nan has seen hundreds of performances at the center, and has become both a keen critic and a strong supporter of the arts.
At her birthday celebration, the psalmist’s words came to mind: “The days of our years are three-score years and ten, or even by reason of strength four-score years…” Nan Rudin, by reason of her enormous strength, has reached “four-score years” with hopefully many more to come.
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
