Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:06:11 +0200 I don't want to bother all of you with very frequent reports, but this is a very good one. The people I met with last Thursday mentioned that they had seen a death notice for a Pickholz in Bene-Berak a few days earlier in the newspaper Hazofeh. This morning I spoke to the newspaper's archivist and after calling back to say that he had nothing, called again to say that there was a notice for Israel Dov Etzion (Pickholz) in Bene-Berak two weeks ago. No mention of family. This evening I'm drafting a letter to the Isak Pickholz in Flushing NY, hoping to find that he is donor in the Strij Yizkor book, and the phone rings. It is Gershon Etzioni from Nahariyya, to whom I wrote a couple of weeks ago. He apologized for not writing sooner but he had been abroad then his brother died. The one from Bene-Berak. Gershon has lots of old information and documents and the brother's daughter (Kibbutz Ein Zurim) is going to prepare a family tree in her father's memory. Great. I can help. Gershon continues and says that he goes back to the Hacham Zvi and I say "are you connected to Rabbi Yehudah Gershon" and he says "he's my ggf and I'm named for him." So I say that he must be Ephraim's second cousin - I met Ephraim last month - and he says "who is Ephraim?" And yes, he is connected to the ones in K. Motzkin who are partly from Argentina. And yes we must get together. (And I tell him that I have Rav YG's two books here as we speak!) So. Jacob, you'll fill Ephraim in on all this. And Rita will see if the South Africans are related to the same Argentines who are now in Motzkin. And we'll all try to share whatever information we have and chase what we don't. (Dan, I know I owe you an answer on your piece of the project. Be patient - I'm swamped and don't want to do something sloppy.) By the way, since the only family who is still in splendid isolation seems to be my own Pittsburgh branch, I had been hoping that Rav Yehudah Gershon's brother-in-law Yeroham Fischel would turn out to be my gggf Isaac Yeroham Fischel. However Rav YG (b. 1844) calls him a young scholar, so he is too young to be my gggf. More as it happens. Israel Pickholtz -- End --