GO TO DOREEN AND EITAN'S  HOMEPAGE

October 2026 - Dan and Noa marry

Mazal Tov to Dan Bortenstein and Noa Cohen on their marriage yesterday. Congratulations too to Dan's parents Yaakov and Ziva Bortenstein, Doreen's second cousin. (See  Schank family tree.). See another picture.

The Cohen and Bortenstein families (and dog as well)  at the chupa

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The Rons in Japan
We received many pictures of the Ron's visit to Japan. Some of Aviv's pictures of sites are beautiful, but eating in Japan is a unique experience.

Also unique is the Japanese geisha. Vered and Aviv enjoyed a most wonderful evening with the geisha Maiko san.

Click here for an interesting story about "Tomorrow".

NOTE: Aviv's pictures are copyrighted

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October 2026 - Mamas Restaurant

Despite worrying about my wallet we enjoyed a meal at Mamas Restaurant at Theodoras Beach on  the old coastal road between Larnaca and Zygi. This its the second time we've eaten there and we can recommend it for the food and the seaside location.

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October 2026 - A visit to Saint Nicolas Monastery of the Cats

See This Week's Picture for another picture and history of the Monastery of the Cats,

Waiting to great visitors at the car park  -  I think she likes me   -  Dinner time at the monastery gate

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September 2026 - Sukkot

We celebrated Sukkot at the home of the Rons and were joined by son Aviv and grandson Itamar. Delightful evening - atmosphere, delicious food, good company.

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September 2026 - Moran's motorbike trip in Thessaloniki Greece with friend Erez

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September 2026 -Ronni and Ben are married

Cousins: Yaffa Loew and Rachel Karlsbad (Schank family tree) with 2nd cousin, Doreen

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September 2026 - the Segolis in USA.

As a special treat for Zoe, the Segolis Moran, Maayan and Zoe  took part in a concert of  Pierce the Veil, Zoe's favourite rock band. The concert in San Diego was the final concert of the band's "I can't hear You" world tour of 69 concerts from May 2025 to September 2026. See picture here.

They also enjoyed tasting the various ethnic foods, visited Six Flags Amusement Park.

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September 2026
Cousin Caryn (Klaff) Sangupta with a snow leoard (No, not AI, just costume). See Goldberg family tree.

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September 2026 - Rosh Hashanah meal

With most of the family overseas or otherwise engaged we had a most pleasant secular Rosh Hashanah meal with good friends Ruti and Dani Erez.

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September 2026 - With Louse at the beach

Doreen and Minda took Louise to Herzliya Beach for a viewoif the sea - and an ice-cream

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September 2026 - Denise and Shai

New Year greetings from and to niece Denise Braverman and her partner Shai Arroyo

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September 2026 - The 1943 Rosh Hashanah card.

This is the Rosh Hashanah card that eight year old Zahava Kanarek made in a transit camp in 1943. It was kept by Zahava's mother through Bergen-Belsen and the postwar years that followed.
The card, and its message "I hope that next year we will be in better circumstances" is a timely reminder of hope in these fraught days as we face elections and hope for a return to democratic values in our country.
Read the inspiring story and history of this card written by Zahava's daughter, Hephziba Rudowsky. (Hephziba and Steve her husband Steve are close friends of our daughter Vered and Aviv. A year ago we celebrated Passover together with hope for "better circumstances" which we still await.)

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September 2026 - The Rons in Greece

The Rons and Lior's partner Gal, are enjoying a week in Greece.

Aviv, Vered, Gal, Lior, Danielle

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September 2026 - Itamar at the Larnaca Archeological Museum
Doreen needed to be in Larnaca to organize some things connected to our apartment there and she asked grandson Itamar to accompany her. Among other things they visited the Larnaca Archaeological Museum and thoroughly enjoyed it, so much so that Itamar took his friends to visit it too.

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September 2026 -fruit trees

We are having an amazing pawpaw (papaya) season. They're still mostly green and ripening and a few ripe ones we've eaten were delicious.

Less successful is our mango tree. We had about 10 only and for some reason we're still investigating some of the flesh was too soft. The variety we have is Maya and we decided to graft another variety that ripens earlier. Miki, the agronomist who assists us (in the tree below), persuaded us to graft an additional 3 varieties that ripen at different times. We'll wait and see.
We also had a smaller but reasonable crop of delicious lychees, and a large crop of cherry tomatoes.
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preparing to graft    -    some of the papayas     -    waiting for the grafts to take

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August 2026 - Help from our grandchildren

Itamar helping me with a computer problem, and Amit showing how to make a delicious Mango salad.

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August 2026 - Elephants
Daughter Vered and Aviv Ron have returned from their US visit. In Boston they went to see  The Great Elephant Migration Adventure  on a very special day. Aviv writes:
"My mother, Tova Ron, loved elephants and had a beautiful collection of miniatures and small elephants sculptures, which I was fortunate to inherit when she passed twenty years ago. In a wonderful coincident I had a chance to visit The Great Elephant Migration Sculptures exhibition in Boston on her Birthday 8/24 (and in the evening before it...) I thoroughly enjoyed the amazing show of real size animals made by people from India - each elephant sculpture made after a real one with their names presented. "

We remember Tova with affection and this was a great way to celebrate her birthday.

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August 2026 - A visit to Kibbutz Yizrael

Errol Hackner, our good friend from Durban, and fellow Durbanite Issy Levitan invited us to Kibbutz Yizrael to meet some friends. It was terrific meeting again and sharing memories from a long ago.

Hylton Lotkin, Doreen, Errol Hackner, Eitan, Keith Greenberg, (Issy Levitan, hidden), Coliun Kessel, Maureen Fain, Anthea Muller, Louise Kessel, Jewel Hackner

Issy also took us to his friend, the well known sculptor Bernie Fink, and it was very interesting listening to him and seeing some of his works.

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August 2026 - The Rons go hiking

Daughter Vered and Aviv and granddaughter Danielle are in USA for a wedding.
While there they also enjoyed hiking in the White Mountain area in New Hampshire. I imagine that  that the highlight of the trip was waterfall rappelling. Sounds scary!

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July 2026 - Lunch with Lotem

A seafood lunch in Haifa at the Shawatina with granddaughter Lotem Segoli, Granny Doreen, Saba Avram and Saba Eitan

A brunch with friends
The day after our lunch with Colin and Louise Kessel we saw them again when we were invited to brunch with Sarah and Dudley Kessel. Another delightful meeting.

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The breakfast was more than I eat at home; a snuggle with Doreen when the nurses weren't looking.

The first time we crossed over to Turkish Cyprus, a few years ago, it was by foot. We were amazed that Turkish Lefkosia (Nicosia) looked so poor and slum-like.

We were pleasantly surprised this time when we crossed over by car at a different crossing. Passing with Israeli passports was not a problem. We saw established towns with nice houses and apartment buildings, cars and shops. Turkey must invest a lot of money in the towns on the northern side of Cyprus.  It was Sunday and since the Turkish side is Moslem, we presumed that it would be a normal day, but almost all shops were closed. We saw one sign for Burger King, but no other well-known brand names.

An interesting thing is that this castle is thought to be the inspiration of the castle of the wicked queen in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

Angelica then drove us to Bellapais. It is a delightful village, with many interesting houses.

The author Lawrence Durell (Alexandra Quartet) lived in Bellapais in the early 1950’s where he
wrote Bitter Lemons, describing the struggle for independence from the British occupation.

The village is best known for its splendid Abbey, built by the Augustine monks who fled Jerusalem when it was captured by Saladin in 1187.

Surrounding this village are many orange groves, so when we passed a stall
offering freshly squeezed orange juice, we couldn't resist.

In addition to the delicious glass of orange juice I received two oranges as a present.

We then made our way to Kyrenia on the coast. Known to Israelis for its reasonably priced all-inclusive luxury hotels, beaches and casinos which we didn’t manage to see, having added St Hilarion castle to our itinerary.

We had a very expensive lunch at the marina and then made our way up stairs to the Kyrenia castle.

We wanted to see the remains of a shipwreck, displayed in the castle museum, discovered in 1965 by a scuba diver searching for sponges. The ship with a single sail was in use at the time of Alexander the Great and sank 2300 years ago just off the coast of Kyrenia. It has amazing finds: stone grain mills acting as ballast, over 500 amphora that contained the remains of wine and olive oil, and other ceramic jars with seeds of grapes, figs, and olives and 9,000 unshelled walnuts! Spear points and javelins were stuck in the hull, suggesting it may have been attacked by pirates.

Exhausted, we were quite happy to return to Larnaca after a delightful day.

May 2026 - Visit to Cyprus

On our eventful visit to Cyprus at the end of May we still managed to experience some new things:

We've been wanting to visit a trout farm and restaurant for some time. We ate grilled trout at the Psilo Dentros restaurant in the Trodos area but a heavy rain downpour prevented a visit to the trout farm.


We visited the beautiful Kykkos Monastery. The monastery displays hundreds of mosaics. Mary is usually portrayed holding baby Jesus but sometimes, as here, she is cradling the dead Jesus after the crucifixion. Many mosaics depict biblical characters or scenes, like Noah's Ark.


The Larnaca Archeological Museum was a pleasant surprise. The museum is not large but well laid out with excellent descriptions in English. We were especially pleased that we have been to many of the sites represented at the museum. We liked the burial site with the fossilized body of a man buried under the floor of a neolithic building. There were many depictions of women holding their breasts or bellies and were amused to see the earrings from the ear lobes which has now become a fashion among our youth.

May 2026 - Thank you, Minda

Minda is the caregiver for Louise, Doreen's sister. She is doing a wonderful job, ands we expressed our thanks to her and celebrated her birthday.
Me, Minda, Denise, Louise, Doreen

The Jewish wedding  ---- the lovely bride Viv ....the Xhosa wedding

Gideon and Daliah marry
Congratulations to Jose and David Keyson and the Reijzer clan on the marriage of Gideon and Daliah. The Reijzers have been part of our family since we met Hans and Lottie on Ulpan in 1965. Although they returned to Amsterdam we have kept constant contact with them.  Our friendship has passed to our respective children who are close friends of their children.

April 2026 - Doreen and Louise go for a walk

Doreen and her sister Louise Braverman with her caregiver Minda went on lovely walk along the Netanya beach promenade.

Son Aviv and granddaughter  Ilay were visiting (and helping) so we took the opportunity to go to Haifa (about 60 Kms north)  to have a  delicious dinner at the Najma Restaurant with our two grandchildren living there Itamar Levy and Lotem Segoli. It's always a pleasure being with our grandchildren.

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• The Academic and General Book Store is a remarkable bookstore like bookstores from old. Shelves upon shelves of books on every subject with staff who know every book they have and where to find it - without the use of computers. Itamar asked for a book which he couldn't find in Israel and he was taken immediately to where it lay.
• Usually the picturesque Chantara Waterfall has very little water but the effect of the recent rains was evident in the amount of water loudly pouring down.
  
• The visit to the Medical museum showing the the various old instruments and methods used was a first for us . We can recommend a visit. Many of the instruments are in working order, like the one generating an electric current which still works as Itamar can testify.
  

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Morris Kahn 1930 - 2026

Lake Paralimni is a fresh water lake that is dry in summer.
The lake is not a salt water lake but it is brackish and is also
visited by the migrating flamingos.

We had read that this year the number of Flamingos at
Paralimni lake had greatly increased and were not disappointed
by the large number of flamingos there.