Jewish food was something you only got to know when, after hating it your entire childhood and thinking everything from the horse-radish on the gefilte fish to the no desserts were without sympathy to the human condition, you find yourself alone and cold in a strange place and suddenly discover that you have to have kasha or you'll shrivel up and die.

When I was 5 my father presented me with my "first" violin (implying there would be more as I got bigger). There was nothing I could do, I was trapped. But I was a resourceful child and have always known there was a way you could get free of torture and quite by accident it turned out that I couldn't tune the instrument. I couldn't tell when it was out of tune. I'd practice out of tune. I drove my father crazy (what he was doing to me too), so that was the end of that. I remained culturally deprived of the violin my whole life.