What Family Can Teach Us About Friendship

Growing up in a family of seven, and as the oldest of five children, was no joke. Life in our home could rarely be characterized as anything short of either a raucous party or a full-blown war. There wasn’t a lot of in between. The differences in personalities alone are enough to ensure that intensity is always the dominant mode when it comes to large families living under one roof.

I come from a line of passionate and highly-opinionated people who have no problem going against the status quo. We are all always right, all of the time—if you ask us, that is. I always say that it must be in the DNA. My great-grandfather, a Spanish immigrant of Sephardic ancestry who was a leader in the Latino workers’ rights movement in the U.S., was warned repeatedly to cease his Communist activity or face deportation. His response was to raise the red flag in front of the Los Angeles County courthouse before being arrested, tried, and ultimately deported in 1933 and executed in one of Franco’s “white terror” camps.

What can I say? We have strong opinions in my family, and when we believe passionately in something, we’re almost always willing to pay the price for those beliefs.

Of course, generations later it wasn’t the subjects of Communism or workers’ rights that dominated dinner table conversations in my home, but if you don’t think that discussions about the meaning of biblical passages or appropriate clothing for teenage girls or even general politics don’t feel just as loaded around the family dinner table, you’re wrong.

But this is the thing about family. When we argue with our family members, it feels like the stakes have never been higher. Each person needs not only to be heard, but also to be heard the loudest. It’s about staking out one’s place in the familial pecking order. It’s about both asserting one’s individuality and finding a sense of belonging. These are, truly, high stakes. And when the stakes are high, so are the emotional responses to disagreements.

I’d be lying if I said that, in addition to all the great times (and there were many), there wasn’t some yelling and screaming here and there. I would also be lying if I said that even as adults my siblings and I don’t have many disagreements when it comes to politics, religion, culture wars, and even the pandemic. But those disagreements, as vast and fierce as some of them are, have never caused us to jump ship. Not one of us would ever consider abandoning a familial relationship because we don’t see eye-to-eye on something.

In fact, it’s our disagreements, as much as our love, that bind us together.

Ideological diversity, a root cause of disagreement, is important because it challenges us. It teaches us to listen, and think, and, sometimes, even change a little—or, at the very least, become a little more understanding of the “other side.”

This may be the single most important lesson of family life. 

I can’t help but think that, especially now, the family unit is an important model for friendships. Families are rarely comprised of people who agree on everything, and perhaps there’s a good reason for that. At a certain point, most of us leave our family home and make our own; we also find and make our own friends, who often became like family. Many of us describe some of our closest friends as “family.” But these friends are typically people who we’ve bonded with out of shared interests, opinions, or professions. They are people just like us in most ways. In fact, they are the opposite of family.

What would it look like if we expanded our “friend family” to include people who think a bit differently from us? And what would it look like if, instead of jumping ship when we discover a friend has a different opinion about how to fight racism or how to end the pandemic or who to vote for, we listened and struggled through the dialogue, like a real family? What would happen if we stayed together instead of cutting each other off?

In a moment when things have never been more polarizing—politically and culturally—than they are now, and in a time when years-long friendships are instantly destroyed because one side expresses a different viewpoint, perhaps this is exactly what we need. Admittedly, I’m fortunate to have come from a family that stuck together even when they fought or disagreed, because it turns out it was one of the most valuable lessons I was taught: how to be a friend.

The family model is, ideally, one of tolerance. Even if we recoil from the idea of tolerating something with which we disagree, we have to face it, again and again in the context of the family structure. 

The family model is, ideally, one of tolerance. Even if we recoil from the idea of tolerating something with which we disagree, we have to face it, again and again in the context of the family structure. It’s not so easy to walk away or delete someone from Facebook over a disagreement when they are part of your family. Some do, of course, but the costs are always high. Being part of a family inevitably forces you to figure out how to learn not only to live with those who are different from you, but also to appreciate them, not in spite of their differences, but because of them.

It goes without saying that holidays can be some of the best and worst times when it comes to spending time with family. And yet, even those of us who dread going “home for the holidays” keep going back because we have a sense of responsibility, commitment, and—dare I say it?—because we love each other.

This year, as we consider who to invite to our Rosh Hashanah tables or our Sukkot parties, perhaps we should reach out to some of our friends with whom we may have lost touch or even pushed away in this last year because of political or ideological differences.

This year, as we consider who to invite to our Rosh Hashanah tables or our Sukkot parties, perhaps we should reach out to some of our friends with whom we may have lost touch or even pushed away in this last year because of political or ideological differences. Maybe it’s time to really treat our friends like family.

Monica Osborne is Executive Editor at the Jewish Journal. She is a former professor of literature, critical theory, and Jewish Studies, and is the author of “The Midrashic Impulse and the Contemporary Literary Response to Trauma.” Follow her on Twitter @DrMonicaOsborne