Blog/February 2011/Feb 25th

Feb 25th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

Olde acquaintances, sickly offspring, fine weather.

Last week Esther and I were having dinner and -- I'm not sure why -- were discussing my time in the Army (the Israeli Army, that is, almost thirty years past). After a while she asked me why I hadn't kept in touch with my friends from that period, and I didn't have a great answer -- we just fell out of touch, is all. So she said, "why don't you try to contact them?"... and this week, I did just that.

The main problem in trying to contact them was that two of them were women, who I presumed had married, and perhaps changed their last names. So to find them, I relied on my remembering what towns they were from -- and I looked to see if anyone with their maiden name was in that town, figuring it would be a relative.

The first one I tried, and found her mother -- who remembered me from thirty years ago! She gave me her daughter's cel-phone number, and I left her a message. The second one I "stalked" on Facebook. She didn't seem to have a FB page, but her kibbutz did, and among the "friends" of that page were some people with her maiden name. So I wrote to them, and one of them turned out to be her brother... who gave me her email address. So I contacted her.

Then I tried the guys. The first one was someone I served with for almost two years. I found his mother, who gave me his cel-phone number. But when I called him, he claimed he didn't know anyone by my name, and had never served on the base I had (and didn't know the other people I was contacting, either). The interesting thing is, I absolutely recognized his voice (and he has a not-so-common name, so I'm certain it was him). Very odd! The last guy is someone with a common name, in a big city -- so I had small hopes of finding him. But when I looked in the phone directory, it turned out he was the only person with that name in the city! We talked for a while, reminiscing about the "old days".

All the hevre were extremely surprised to hear from me, and they all have had interesting stories. I hope to get together with them sometime in the not-too-distant future and get really caught-up. Maybe I should be an investigator? They all asked the same question: "how did you find me?". Well here's a hint: Israel is really small. It's not like I was looking for "John Smith" in the US, after all!

Sarah came down with a bad cold this week, so she ended up staying at home. B"H, she's (mostly) better now -- at least her appetite is returning. She also interviewed (again) for the second-year job in Beit Shemesh, and will be making a decision early next week as to where she'll be doing her second year of service.

Esther and I have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather to take walks each evening. The spring weather is fantastic, the flowers are starting to bloom, and going on a "date" with one's spouse every evening is one of the finer pleasures in life.

No guests this week: after five consecutive shabbatot hosting people, we're taking a break this time. We'll be "doing lunch" at a friend's place, but other than that we're planning a very quiet time, nibbling on: vegetarian kippeh, roasted chicken-legs, eggplant salad, quinoa salad, humus, tehina, Chinese cabbage salad, mushroom soup, green beans, rice, and cinnamon rolls.

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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