“Altogether, it came out very good, I think,” she said.

Kolodner’s family is hardly the only one to make use of
Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms in the last year
for a family reunion. Though family reunions aren’t typically
perceived as particularly “Jewish” — that’s what Passover and
the High Holidays are for — many have taken the isolation of the
pandemic as a chance to connect, or reconnect.

Some reunions, like Kolodner’s, are new twists on old tradi-
tions, but other families, like that of Chani Baram, took the
chance to start new ones.

Baram, who lives with her family in South Philadelphia, said
that her extended family hadn’t gotten together since the early
’80s, when earlier generations remained in a tight circle. Since
then, as branches grew and new ones were added, such reunions
became a distant memory. For a long time, the idea of another
reunion wasn’t just geographically impractical, but emotionally
fraught. “People don’t feel as connected to each other,” Baram said.

“That’s the truth.”
After the pandemic began, a couple of cousins decided to try
and make something of everyone’s newfound downtime and
computer literacy, collecting emails and gauging interest for a
Zoom-based reunion. In the end, more than 200 people convened
in several different time slots on a Sunday in December.

A screenshot from a slideshow displayed during the Aronow
and Patkin family reunion shows some Philadelphia ancestors.

 Courtesy of Kerith Aronow
Name: Cong. Tiferet Bet Israel
Width: 5.5 in
Depth: 5.5 in
Color: Black plus one
Comment: Mazel Tov
Name: TerraVida Holistic Centers
Width: 5.5 in
Depth: 5.5 in
Color: Black plus one
Comment: JE - Mazel Tov
Though such conditions precluded intimate conversation —
there was the size of the group, plus the fact that many were
distant strangers to Baram and her family — Baram was pleased
the event was organized. Only in the pandemic, she believes,
would it have ever happened.

“It was really cool,” Baram said.

Betty-Ann Izenman of Wynnewood hasn’t been able to bring
her family together for a reunion in more than a decade. That’ll
happen when your family, once concentrated in Canada, is now
spread between Australia, England, the U.S. and the Great White
North. And yet, in 2019, a reunion was planned, with a city (Boston)
and a date (April 2020), ready to rock and roll. That original date
became an early casualty of the pandemic, and so, too, did a
hopefully conceived fall 2020 makeup. “And then it got canceled
entirely,” Izenman recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous.

Why don’t we just get together on Zoom?’”
That’s exactly what Izenman and 16 family member did last
summer, with the Australians rising early, the Brits staying up late
See Reunions, Page 12
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM MAZEL TOV!
MARCH 25, 2021
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