August 11

— Spending a weekend at a hotel on the of Lake Kinneret
— The Syrian tanks which attacked Kibbutz Degania in 1948

“I saw the Kibbutz Dagania yesterday & the destroyed Syrian tanks. This was one of the most remarkable feats of Israel’s army in 1948.”

August 11, 1957 Sunday Morning 7:20 AM
Dear Mom, Dad and Alan,

I spent the weekend at a hotel on the shores of Lake Kinneret. I saw the Kibbutz Degania yesterday & the destroyed Syrian tanks. This was one of the most remarkable feats of Israel’s army in 1948.

I haven’t heard from you for 3 or 4 days now but I guess it’s just the mail. I’m sorry I didn’t write more often but every time you get set to write everyone’s leaving for some interesting place.

Mom, how do you feel, Dad, the same, & Alan are you being a good boy? I’m keeping a diary and taking plenty of pictures so all my adventures will be explained when I return home. It’s time to leave so till tonight when I write again.

Love
Bob

My Mother, Elaine recalls:
“I remember leaving the Ohalo Hotel. Our bus climbed the hills to Har (Mt.) Arbel where we had a breathtaking view of the Kinneret below. There was a picture taken of Bob and myself as we were sitting atop Har Arbel. I was in total shock not only when David found the 1957 letters to Bob’s parents but also the pictures from our trip. This picture was my favorite.”

Comments:

August 11, 1957 Sunday Morning 7:20 AM

“I spent the weekend at a hotel on the shores of Lake Kinneret”
The Kinneret is Israel’s harp shaped lake, hence the name “Kinneret” from the Hebrew word “kinor”, meaning “harp”.
My father always loved the Kinneret. During the trip, the group stayed at the hotel, “Ohalo”. Years later my father would bring our family to go swimming and boating in the Kinneret almost every summer. At the end of our trip, we would donate the rubber boat which we had brought from the USA, to Israeli soldiers.

“I saw the Kibbutz Degania yesterday and the destroyed Syrian tanks. This was one of the most remarkable feats of Israel’s army in 1948”
Degania was founded in 1920 and was the first planned kibbutz in Israel.
During the 1948 War of Independence, a column of six Syrian tanks reached Kibbutz Degania. The kibbutz members were farmers equipped with mismatched rifles and possessing no armored vehicles. But it was a victory of the weak over the strong. One version of the battle claims that a young man named Shalom Hochbaum hurled a molotav cocktail under the lead Syrian tank, setting it ablaze, repelling the Syrian assault. To this day, the disabled tank sits at the gate of the kibbutz, and is what my father was referring to in this letter.

“I’m keeping a diary and taking plenty of pictures so all my adventures will be explained when I come home.”
After finding the letters, I looked for the diary and never found it. But I did find many picture of his 1957 trip to Israel.