Israel - Erev Shabbat - Haifa

In late afternoon on Friday, driving north with the sun low over the Mediterranean to our left, the taxi from Moshav Avihail passed a high tech center on our right, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Yahoo, Motorola, etc.  Then the cab starts a slow winding up the Carmel, but then enters into Hadar, an old ramshackle neighborhood with a lot of construction, passes a few down-and-outers, and pulls up in front of the Hotel Theodor on Herzl Street.  It is decidedly not a 5-star hotel.  Probably not even 3-star.   There is a constant "balagan" (ruckus) in the lobby with people shouting, some religious coming in looking for a beit knesset (shul).  Our room is on the 17th floor; the renovation looks nice enough, the air conditioning blew on the bed, there is a funky sewer-y smell in the bathroom, and Richard found a cockroach in the sink.  So after he unpacked, we decide this time it's too late to find another hotel, and we stay over.  In a "new" lobby (with some very nice art), the breakfast was the worst of our trip, with a lot of unidentifiable food with strange colors.  I did get a short video of some older religious people singing an old sad shabbat song that we used to sing at Etz Chayim.  With some effort, Richard was able to get us The Crown Plaza Hotel on the Carmel for our last night, with no refund from the Theodor.   Sometimes it's hard to tell what you're going to get when you make reservations online, even through Hotels.com.   We had decided to go to Akko on Shabbat, since it was open and there was sherut service, and Richard hadn't been there on our last trip.

On that friday night we met Edith Katz (widow of dad's good friend Dov) at this hotel, where she is now a resident.  She was to turn 85 on Shabbat.  She had invited us up for "dinner" and for some reason, I thought she was going to take us to a dinner in the hotel.  Turns out she just put out her leftovers, yogurt, stale-ish bread, kreplach; and offered to scramble an egg for me.  The traditional light Israeli dinner on a hot day.  Richard said he wasn't hungry.  I thought it would be a good idea not to insult her, and to eat what we could.  She did bring out a very nice "ugah" (cake).   She talked about various pictures, and one I asked about with Dov's photo and photos of items.  She recounted the story that she only discovered these items among Dov's things after he passed away - some 15 years ago - items that were given to him to help him escape from Germany during the war.  She photographed them and then gave them to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.  Dov never talked about the episode, even with her.   She had written a book and gave me a copy of the book (with a summary in English), "Prof. Dov Katz: Chapters in his Life During the Second World War 1939-1946".   On the inside cover: "Based on his letters to uncle Moshe and stories of friends with whom he shared the ordeal of the escape.  These notes were written by his wife Edith after his demise and were completed in February 1999".  [elaborate here] She also gave me a copy of a book that Dov had written.  I wish I had asked her for an inscription.

Edith also offered to translate Smadar's Hebrew notations of the wedding group photo I had photographed w/ my iPhone.  I just now found her translation folded in the book.  Edith gave me a copy of another book she had written about her own experiences during the war, "Edith Katz: My Life - and the Second World War" [summarize English forward]

He never had to stay in the Theodor Hotel...