A day with my family. What a day!

This post is more for me (Bob) and not as much for the Cleveland Hiking Club as the previous posts, and the next ones.   I spent today with some wonderful people - my family who I've never met until now.

Timur, Yuri, Lena, and Liel on Mount Scopur.
Lena is my second cousin once removed

Yuri is a manufacturing engineer at a semiconductor plant, and Lena is an insurance broker.  We started the day with a walk through the Old City of Jerusalem, and then went to Mount Scopus.   The view from there is spectacular, and it is also the site of Hebrew University, which was built beginning in the 1920s.  After the War of Independence, Mount Scopus was held by Jewish forces but was surrounded entirely by the Jordanian army.  A UN-brokered agreement kept this as an Israeli enclave in the middle of Jordanian territory, with rights of passage for supply convoys.

Hebrew University was built and enlarged with the help of donations from many generous people.   A wall of donors is on the site of the overlook, with most donors identified by country and most of those from the US identified by state.  Among them are two wonderful families from Cleveland - the Mandels and the Ratner/Miller family, who are recognized as being among the generous patrons of the university.  They are also well-known for philanthropy in the Jewish community and beyond.

The Mandels are in the left column 8th from the top,
and the Ratner/Miller/Shafran families are in the right column 9th from the top

We went for lunch at a very pleasant cafe, and then I offered to take them out for ice cream.  That ended up being a much bigger experience than expected.  We found one place in Jerusalem that was closed for Shabbat.  We continued to Latrun - where we visited the Armored Corps Museum yesterday - and only found packaged ice cream in the freezer.  There, the staff recommended a location further west.  We went there, and did not find anything helpful, so we continued to Tel Aviv where there was an ice cream store that Yuri had enjoyed previously.  We found the store - out of business!  So we got packaged ice cream from a nearby store, and ate our ice cream on the beach of Tel Aviv, by the Mediterranean!  Never did I expect that a suggestion of going out for ice cream would turn into such a long trip!  To make the occasion more interesting yet, there was a Hari Krishna group singing and dancing on the beach.  One of them approached me and offered me their book - they had English translations - and while I declined the book, I told them a little about the Hari Krishna group in Cleveland.  (I didn't bother telling her that everything I said was from the 1970s).

Liel, Yuri, Timur, Bob, and Lena on the Tel Aviv beach

We drove back to Jerusalem late in the afternoon - they still had a two-hour drive back to Haifa!  We promised to see each other again soon - either at their place in Haifa, or mine in Shaker Heights.  I hope it happens soon!