Could I forgive my brother for taking my inheritance?

As told to Rivka Streicher

Chapter 1

I was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, but by the time I was ten years old I’d lived in five places. We moved often, following the capricious road of my father’s radio broadcasting job.

My parents were nominally religious and would attend synagogue on the High Holidays. When we lived in a small town in rural Virginia, we went to a temple that dated back to the Confederate era. It had an organ and a choir and was absolutely Reform. During our sojourn in Tennessee, we attended the synagogue closest to our home, which happened to be an Orthodox shul.

My grandparents on both sides were traditional — they kept a kosher Pesach for example — but they seemed to take for granted that religion was an old-world relic, and they didn’t try to pass it on.

In any event, religion was just a vague backdrop to my childhood. My father’s rage and violence overlaid everything else.

We were two kids; my brother, Marc, four years my senior, and I. When I think of Dad, of Marc, I see a brown violin, broken and violated. I hear the screeching of the wood, the sound of my own screams.

I was seven years old, learning to play the violin in school. I had a shiny little wooden number, a beautiful instrument I was inordinately proud of. One day after school Marc asked me to teach him something. I taught him “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and he was so good, he picked it up in a matter of minutes. He was so happy with himself that he’d managed the song, he whooped in the air, and sat down hard on the bed — right onto the violin.

I desperately didn’t want to cry and attract Dad’s attention, but I was seven, my violin was broken, and I couldn’t stop the tears. Marc begged me to stop, but as he pleaded, I felt myself losing control over the heaving in my chest, the little gasping breaths, the tears leaking from my eyes. Within moments, my father came in and took in the scene: my brother cowering, me crying.

Without waiting for any explanation, he grabbed Marc and beat him to a pulp. Then he took the violin and destroyed it over my brother’s head, slamming and breaking and bruising, while I watched it all from the corner, sobbing hysterically for my father to stop.

Although I wasn’t the actual victim in that case — in general, Marc was Dad’s literal punching bag, bearing the brunt of his anger — the trauma never left me (though I did go to therapy to contain it).

Marc and I didn’t even try to have a relationship. With a dad like ours, it was just too dangerous. We lived in our own little boats in rivers that ran parallel to each other, doing our own thing, holding on tight by ourselves.