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.