My family I grew up in, on my mother’s side, we are very volatile, but all bark and no bite-- we are little, state-legal fireworks, not bombs, if that makes sense. I think a lot of Ashkenazic Jews are like that. No one would ever dream of cutting someone off, and making the rest of the family try to decide which one of them to invite to weddings and B’nei Mitzvah.
Honestly, Alex drinks too much, Lydia should help more with the dishes, everyone is sick of Jonas’ unsolicited advice, do NOT put on the news if Susan and Ilan are both there, and Sabra has a new boyfriend that none of the other women want to be alone with.
And occasionally, there are some really bad things going on. When one elderly relative could not take care of himself, a his wife was not doing a good job, to put it kindly, we called adult protective services. Their kids were mad, but not to the point of cutting anyone off.
My husband cut his mother out of his life. I haven’t heard her side, because I never met her, and now she is deceased. His sister has done the same, and his brother did not see her but would email and talk on the phone. He claimed that she was abusive to them when they were children, and in a peculiar way I won’t go into.
I don’t know what I would do in his position.
I do know that he was angry enough with his father for not intervening, that he cut him out as well, but he began to realize that his mother prevented him from seeing his father, and denigrated him verbally (they were divorced). He reconciled with his father in time for our wedding, and our son had a wonderful grandfather.
On my father’s side, there was and historic “We’re saying Kaddish for you,” and after that, a “Never Again” attitude. My father’s side of the family was much more reserved, without the Askenazic roots, but they were also shaped by the past.
My grandmother’s grandmother (or great-grandmother), who was from a wealthy Southern family, and all this happened long enough before 1865, that I don’t want to know about these people, honestly. But this many greats grandmother, who, I am not making this up, was named Blanche, was disowned by her family, because she eloped with an Irish Catholic. I don’t remember his first name off-hand, but his last name was FitzPatrick.
FitzPatrick was alone in the US-- no family here, good friends, though. Along with one of them, he got excommunicated for nun-napping.
After that, he started practicing Judaism, and he and Blanche moved to New York for a fresh start, along with all the Jews from Europe arriving for a fresh start. That’s how my grandmother and grandfather both happened to be there just before the Depression to meet and fall in love.
After what they went through, they never wanted another estrangement in their family, and worked hard to teach their children patience and diplomacy. Seriously, my father could have been very successful as a diplomat. His brother sort of was, albeit, a corporate diplomat, not a foreign diplomat.