70 Jerusalem

On the last day of August we drove to Jerusalem to meet my cousin from Florida whom I had never met. We had decided to meet on the Armon Hanatziv promenade. Until then we wandered on the promenade and gazed at Jerusalem – the beautiful city, a difficult city, one that gives itself easily to the eye but guards its secrets. We also looked at the houses of Jabel Mukaber which border on the promenade.

My father left the United States when he was in his twenties (already with an M.A. in history), and came to Israel six months before the establishment of the state of Israel to be a pioneer in a kibbutz of 'Hashomer Hatzair'. To this day he lives in Kibbutz Hatzor. Before he immigrated to Israel he had fought with the American army in Germany and there, in 1945 near Heidelberg he was wounded in his leg by a German sniper's bullet.

All of my father's brothers remained in the United States. One of them (Barny) I had met once in Washington, D.C., where he worked on the White House staff. The eldest brother (Sam, that is to say, Samuel) was a pharmacist. Art (Arthur, that is to say, Abraham), whom we drove to meet in Jerusalem, is Sam's youngest son. Jerry, Art's older brother, I met in the seventies in New York, and much later I was his guest together with my youngest son Yuval, on the west coast, near San Francisco. At the same time I became acquainted with their sister Lyn, who is an artist and a film director.

From the time that I began to publish "Pictures from my Cell Phone" my connection with my family in the United States has strengthened somewhat. All my posts are translated into English and sent to my mailing list abroad, among them many of my relatives. In that way dialogue develops sometimes that is a continuation of things written due to the influence of the pictures.

We had decided to meet on the Armon Hanatziv Promenade. In the meantime, until the arrival of my cousin and my brother who was going to pick him up from his hotel, we observed the landscape and waited. It was hot. I looked at the Mount of Olives and at the houses on its slope. In the photo my wife and father are talking. Soon my father will meet his brother's son, whom he had seen only once – in 1946 after he returned from the war in Europe.