A Call From Ethel Regarding The Author Shalom Auslander

My mother called me with news. "We’re related to Shalom Auslander!" I love Auslander's work, particularly his memoir stuff. I'm getting his book (The Foreskin's Lament) as soon as I can pry myself off this computer. My mother, totally against type, also loved his short story collection (Beware of God). She went on about how she loved the story about when the character wakes up on shabbos and instead of a Gregor Samsa-like roach, is a blond, built non-Jew who knows how to use power tools. Ethel had just read an interview with him in Jewish week. “Ooh," Ethel said, "is this boy angry! His parents must have done something to him to get him this angry." This is progress for my mother. She usually believes the parent is sainted and does not wrong, it is the child who drives the parent to frustration. But for some reason, Shalom hits a nerve. "We're sort of mishpucha with him." This is news, I thought. "How are we related?” "He is related to Rabbi Lamm, Sylvia's first cousin," Ethel continued. "Sylvia can't remember but she thinks she went to his wedding in Israel.” Sylvia is the woman who married Ethel’s rabbi brother, my Uncle Abe and is a little Lamm. See? It’s a stretch but still valid. Rabbi Lamm. Yes. I remember Rabbi Lamm. I went to Camp Morasha, a yeshiva camp with Rabbi Lamm's daughter, Channa? I think that was her name. A short, dark-haired girl with Irish white skin and freckles. She is his relative too. I wonder how she feels about that? While Shalom had a far more extremely religious upbringing than I did, our kinds of family don’t like to lose a child to secular life. I would guess that out of all of my yeshiva classmates, I am the only 'girl' who didn't stay in the fold. My mother views my not being observant akin to drug-addiction. There are lapses when she seems proud of me, (even though being a wine writer is bizarre), but mostly she moans, “Where did I go wrong,” when she meets silence to her prods of “You know, you can go to shul sometimes. It won’t kill you.” Then my mother got to the point. Seems as if Shalom is having a reading on Tuesday in Chelsea. "Go," she said," And do me a favor, ask him if he circumcised his son, Paix. What a name. Wait! He named his son after him? Paix means Peace, no? Shalom? Peace? I wonder if he drinks wine. Maybe he can blurb your book?" Who knew my mother thought of such things. It was the first really good idea my mother had for me in a long time. Call waiting fired off and Ethel’s wisdom and commentary on Shalom came to an end, "I bet it's some Jewish organization asking for money. I'll call you back."