With aliyah and extended stays in Israel on the upswing, as well as international assignments for professional advancement becoming common, members of our community will have much use for the practical wisdom amassed in this advice-packed book. The author, a social worker, came to her subject because of the aliyah of her older son and the subsequent birth of her grandchildren living “oceans apart,” yet she has taken her topic of maintaining loving family ties at a distance and universalized it. Her subjects include recent and long-term immigrants to the United States, American professionals who choose to live in Europe, Chabad emissaries who devote themselves to far-flung Jewish communities, and a variety of olim. All must deal with adjusting to cultural differences, coping with parental illness and death at a distance, and trying to maintain traditions and closeness despite separation from their family of origin.
Given twenty-first-century technologies such as e-mail and Skype, many families manage to communicate frequently and in a variety of media, but the author points out that these are not the same as being a physical presence in a grandchild’s life. She offers sensitive suggestions on how to preplan visits with distant grandchildren, deal with the tensions arising from turf issues, and extend a trip’s afterglow by creating a photo album of the stay. Each chapter has a practical “take-away”—and the reader feels in the presence of a wise and savvy grandmother sharing her life’s learning.
This is a warm and helpful book for the kin-keepers among us, no matter how much distance separates us from our loved ones.