Living at Y.L. Baruch, Herzlia.

Larry and Michelle Blumenthal visited from Canada as did the Karros and Kayes from South Africa and Australia with whom we held a mini family ingathering in Hayarkon Park.

Chick’s first grandchild, Amit Chaim was born and had his Brit Mila (circumcision) in 2012 and Batya (Levin) Shillit’s daughter, Naomi celebrated her Batmitzvah in the Hebron Hills. After the party our car would not start because of an electrical failure and we were stranded in the West Bank because noone was prepared to come and tow us so we stayed the night with the Levin’s in Efrat and travelled in the morning back to Carmel to take care of the car.

Pablo, Debbie and the Jedeikens celebrated Eli’s bar mitzvah in Tzfat, coming from San Diego, Los Angeles, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

One of my newly found cousins, from the Kagan family,  David Wittenberg stayed with us in Herzlia.

Fanny, too, found long lost cousins living in Dusseldorf after leaving the Ukraine. Here is the story:

Fanny’s grandfather, Chaim Turim had a sister, Leah, who perished in the Holocaust together with her husband, Shlomo Pancerman. Two of their children, Max and Tzirl, were separated during the war. Max immigrated to the US while Tzirl served as a nurse  in the Red Army and finally settled in the Ukraine. The two siblings never stopped searching for each other but were unsuccessful in their endeavour.

In 2011, Fanny received an email  from people who knew her uncle, Jacobo, in Uruguay, asking for her permission to pass on her address to someone from Dusseldorf who was claiming to be a descendant of Tzirl. Fanny and Yaroslav (Slava) corresponded and established the connection. In 2012, while on a business trip to Photokina in Dusseldorf, I met up with Slava, his wife, Natalya and his mother, Larysa. In the meantime, another relative of Shlomo, Charne had passed away in Israel and because she had no children, her inheritance was to be divided up amongst family. Fanny, who had taken care of Charne, realized that Slava, being part of the family was also entitled to a share and requested from him his family’s marriage and death certificates. She passed these on to the lawyer who was dealing with the inheritance and who had received documents from the whole family including those of Max Pancerman from the US. One day Fanny received a call from the lawyer telling her that according to the documents, Max and Tzirl died on the same day, November 11th, in the year 2002.

The whole family went on a great sailing holiday in Lefkada, Greece together with Dave, Marsha and Reed who came from Arlington. Libi had her leg in plaster so she was a bit handicapped..