My mother's passion percolated within me. And over the last year, it found expression in a direction she could not have foreseen

My mother’s family is close — not just her siblings, but first cousins too. Her grandfather, Reb Psachya Lamm z”l, was a patriarchal personality who raised a strong, frum family. An orphan from Poland who raised himself in the yeshivos of Hungary, his passion for family was influenced by the fact that he grew up without one. Throughout the 1950s, his children and grandchildren would gather at his Williamsburg home on Motzaei Shabbos for Melaveh Malkah. At those get-togethers, the cousins bonded. That experience set the standard for my mother for what family was supposed to be.

She shared her expectation with me. When I went to summer camp, she found one of her cousin’s sons who was there and urged me to connect him even though we had little in common. When I went to yeshivah in South Fallsburg, she connected me with cousin’s child who lived nearby, even though I felt uncomfortable. She made sure her relatives knew I was there and would ask me for updates about them, which I could hardly give. When my wife and I moved from Lakewood to Dallas 20 years ago, she was probably disappointed that we would be geographically distant from family.

But her passion percolated within me. And over the last year, it found expression in a direction she could not have foreseen: I channeled it by reaching out to a long-lost branch of my father’s family.