Prepent Day 16: Handling Family Feuds
Image by Jacqueline Nicholls
By Amichai Lau-Lavie September 7, 2017
Some family feuds, big or small, can sometimes take generations to heal. Some never do. Many could have been curbed or avoided. We keep our dirty laundry behind closed doors and often close our hearts to the mere idea of reconciliation with kin. Can we find ways to build again the bloodline bonds of trust? With the current state of divisive politics, this is truer now more than ever.
I really like my cousin A but this past November, after he announced on a mass-family listserv with pride and reason why he voted as he did, I haven’t been able to talk with him, let alone simply reach out. I know I could and should go higher but I’m so disappointed, hurt and mad. We will meet again as cousins do, and better if we were friendly – so why not take a breath and use this sacred time to try and defuse the feud with love?
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
