Siblings and Other Friends

The New Yorker's Thanksgiving cover this year shows a large turkey. Superimposed on the bird's body are pieces to be carved from it, each marked with the name of the diner to whom it will be served. Among the guests are "Glutton Brother and Picky-Eater Wife," "Loudmouth-Parolee Brother-in-law," and "Brother's Klepto Wife."

The unfortunate host who carved that turkey last week may not represent a majority of turkey carvers this year, but his feelings are far from unusual. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are notorious for reviving youthful jealousies and resentments, when siblings who live far apart come together again and often regress to childhood in their relations with one another. On Thanksgiving Day last week, the Times recounted disasters at past Thanksgiving dinners, "Insults, Breakups, Slaps, and Tears," sent in by readers. These included several screaming matches between siblings.

I'm happy to report that I'm not among the number of feuding siblings. When my brother and sister and their spouses get together with my wife and me, I'm glad to see all four of them. I not only love my brother and sister but I also like them. I feel the same way about their spouses, who've been married to my siblings so long - 51 years for one couple and 49 for the other - that they have become my brother and sister too. I enjoy being with all four of them and consider them my friends as well as my siblings.

Unlike my other friends, my brother and sister share my childhood. Now that my parents and their generation have gone, my siblings are the ones who know me longer than anyone else. Our bond is indissoluble and would remain so even if we didn't like each other. But just as my brother and sister knew me as a child, my other friends know me as an adult and have seen me in contexts unavailable to my brother and sister.

Our friends in Jerusalem served as a surrogate family while we lived there, and now that our homes are on different continents, we still keep our connection through telephone calls, e-mails, and visits when they come to New York as they almost inevitably do. Our friends in New York, in contrast, share with us a different history, for they knew us before we left for Jerusalem. Following the rule that a couple's friends reflect mostly the wife's choices, most of our New York friends are women with whom my wife went to school or to college (sometimes to both) and their husbands, with whom we quickly became friends. They attended our wedding, we attended theirs, and we watched their children grow up, marry, and start their own families in turn, just as our friends watched ours, even though these observations were made at a distance. We saw these friends briefly whenever we came to New York in summers or on breaks between semesters and more extensively during our sabbatical years. They have greatly helped our reintegration into American life, just as our Israeli friends helped our integration into Israeli life.

Now that Brooklyn has become our sole residence, we have started to make friends here as well. Whether old friends or new, based in New York or Jerusalem, our friends have enriched our lives. We couldn't ask for better friends (or siblings) and they make us thankful indeed. Taken together, our friends and our siblings have sustained us from childhood to old age. If they all joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, we'd order lots of turkeys so that we could give each one the best possible cut.