In the late 1950s, I started playing drums in the Tiberias Youth Orchestra. Though I was a skinny little 9-year-old kid without any training, something about music automatically clicked for me. Before long, I was trying all sorts of innovative drumming techniques, earning the respect of the older musicians. I intuited that drums would serve as a stepping stone toward other instruments, and one in particular caught my eye.

Someone in our community acquired a German-made Melodica, a handheld instrument that produces notes when you blow through a mouthpiece at the top and operate little keys with your fingers. I asked him repeatedly if I could try to play it, but he was protective of his rare and expensive treasure. Eventually, my persistence overcame his resistance, and I got my chance, surprising both him and myself that I was able to compose tunes right away.

I became fixated on acquiring a Melodica, which could be purchased for 28 lira from the back of a dusty little electronics store that mostly sold lighting fixtures. The problem was that I had no money at all. My first move was to build a little cash register out of wood and beg my parents to put money inside it. My dad told me that I was a lazy student, and would do even worse in school if I got a Melodica. My mother gave me half a lira on the condition that I did not tell my father. Sensing my desperation, a neighbor gave me menial work (totally inappropriate for a small kid), moving concrete buckets during construction projects, paying a pittance. I felt deflated with such a long road ahead.

At some point, my cousin in Tel Aviv sent me a few dove chicks. I built a cage for them and started raising and breeding them, even giving them names, like Tzitzik and Meru. This caught the attention of a neighbor, who approached me to say that he loves eating young dove chicks, since the meat from more mature ones is too tough. Knowing about my need to raise funds for a Melodica, he offered me half of a lira for each chick.

This put me in a moral quandary. On one hand, these were my pets who I had lovingly bred, raised and named. On the other hand, they were a source of kosher nutrition, and I could harness them to create a legitimate business that would allow me to meet my first financial goal relatively quickly. Though it felt absolutely terrible, I started selling him chicks.

Before long, he added a new condition: I would have to personally take my little pets down to the butcher and deliver them only after they were prepared. The trauma of this task cannot be overstated: I found myself carrying them in batches into a bloody little slaughterhouse, where tall, scary men wielding enormous knives would take my feathered friends, say a prayer to god, and slit their necks right in front of me. I felt a tremendous amount of shame carrying these birds back through the city, a lifeless weight wrapped in paper. But my register kept filling up with lira.

This neighbor then added yet another condition: after the slaughter and before the delivery of goods, I would have to personally pluck each feather out of each chick’s lifeless body. This felt like a bridge too far, but I was past the point of return and forced myself to comply. I never had to sell my body, but this requirement was just beyond the pale. The poor little chicks, my little pets, mercy on their souls.

Finally, I raised the funds needed to acquire the Melodica, a massive accomplishment for such a young kid. The sound of the melodies I played were infused with the sorrow of the doves, somehow allowing me to develop harmonies that I had never heard or played before.

The Six Day War started a few years later, and many of the men in our neighborhood went off to fight. The first one to be declared dead in battle was this awful neighbor who put me through such trauma. Alas, no more dove chicks would have to suffer.