Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

One of the highlights of our trip to Israel was finding my great uncle Zimel Resnick. After his death in 1971, Uncle Zimel's body was flown to Israel for burial in a military cemetary outside of Tel Aviv, with the "Fighters of Gallipoli" from the First World War. We've known that he was buried in Israel, a land that he loved dearly for all of his adult life, but I was the first from our family to locate his grave. A 35-year search, and one that I'll remember for quite some time.

I have only vague memories of Zimel. He was always larger than life; hanging out with politicians and soldiers and sometimes shady characters. He was a mix of Tony Soprano and Tony Bennett, ever the showman, ever the fixer. By day, Zimel was part owner of Palace Amusements in Asbury Park, NJ, made famous later by the other Boss of New Jersey. By night, he was a devout Zionist, and campaigned endlessly for planting trees in Israel, sold bonds for Israel, and more surreptiously, procured weapons to be used in the 1948 War for Israeli Independence. Visits to Zimel's home in Asbury Park for holidays were a test of your endurance, as his pre-food services sometimes lasted hours and included both the official version of the service as well as his own interpretation of the texts.

My favorite Zimel story comes from the nephew he called, in his still-thick Russian accent, "Zhoe", using the Cyrillic double-X in place of the Latin J. Zimel would meet various sources for guns, ammunition, parts of tanks and airplanes, and other weapons at the top of the ferris wheel that rotating through the main building of the Palace. Zhoe would send them up, and Zimel and and his suppliers would have a business meeting overlooking the Atlantic. Physical isolation provided security. Whatever Zimel acquired typically was loaded onto a small boat and later ferried out to a freight ship headed toward the fledgling Israeli state.

Last week we had one of those Israeli visitor moments where bits of history snap together like the borders of a jigsaw, framing what you've heard, read, and experienced. At the Palmach Museum, we heard a fictionalized account of a dozen friends who joined the first Israeli defense forces, and were told "Don't despair, there's a ship coming from America with guns". Earlier in the day we had visited Zimel's grave, and that ship was a storied account of one that he helped to load. And when this registered with my kids, I told them the story of the ferris wheel and Zhoe, whom they better know as their grandfather Joel.

During the reading of the Passover Hagadah, we hide a piece of matzah and later encourage the children to search for it, rewarding the finder. Looking for the afikomen, as it's called, was always a bit more of an adventure in Zimel's house as you might run into a state assemblyman, a soldier, or an unmarked box you shouldn't open. In Zimel's interpretive Hagadah, he wrote that the purpose of hunting for the afikomen is "to remind us that what is broken off is never lost as long as our children remember the search." After 35 years, and through three generations of our family, the search has returned results.

Down, as in the lowest point on earth. Yours truly sporting an OpenSolaris t-shirt in the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. And on that August day, one of the hottest places on the planet as well, with the temperature reaching into the 40s on our friend Mr. Centigrade scale. Translating to Fahrenheit, it's about the melting point of good fashion sense. Black isn't a good color in the desert, but I promised Claire Giordano that I'd promote OpenSolaris to the ends of the earth. One end done, speaking topographically and not pre-Columbus cartographically.

Given the mineral content of the Dead Sea, almost everything floats in it, except for my first attempt at baking, which would sink in mercury. While your favorite ocean gets its salty flavor from a few percent (by volume) of salt and such, the Dead Sea is nearly 30% mineral by volume. Dissolve a magnesium-cased laptop in a tub full of water and you get about the right proportions; it feels like thinned down Italian dressing.

The thatched roof on the right is part of a sitting area built by the resort hotel, so you can bathe in the mineral wonders of the Dead Sea without feeling like a turkey being basted. The thin beige line along the horizon is Jordan, home of former Princeton Tiger Queen Noor, who gets a big locomotive cheer for her work in eradicating land mines.

I'm back from nearly three weeks in Israel, and many more pictures, blogs and observations are queued up.

Yesterday was the double header of new beginnings: first day of public school and the first day of ice hockey practice. Ice hockey and education match strides in New Jersey, with the Devils and teachers reporting for the new season at the same time, and the Stanley Cup playoffs reaching their conclusion at about the same time schoolwork winds down. For those of us decades removed from a classroom, the regular candence of (sports) seasons gives us something by which to look for a rejuvenation, the sense of anticipation that you used to get from a brand-new notebook and a fresh box of pencils.

Each year I love watching the new Devils youth hockey players come to their first games and practices, realizing they are sharing the facility with their older and better-paid namesakes. Last year our team had to wait while Scott Gomez and Patrik Elias finished a workout; last night some of our players had to look for their gear bags because the Devils' minor league equipment manager mistakenly put them in the locker room where the Devils' prospects have been dressing. I always think of that room as "our" room, for the youth players, but when you have twenty young men working hard for the last roster spots on an NHL team, they are forced to live in the DMZ between youth and pro hockey -- not in the pro dressing area, not completely removed from the smells and sounds of getting dressed in the hallway.

Poking my head into the locker room, I saw the nameplates hastily added above the dressing stalls -- Varana, Voros, Parise -- names that may be important to Devils fans in the next few years. Zach Parise's stall, though, was empty. I asked, and was told it's because he's at Olympic camp, shooting (literally) for a trip to Turin in Feburary. We'll see how America's focus on youth plays out during the Olympics, and by then maybe we'll find the first set of gloves to go missing this season.