Don Lavin, one of the promoters of the Chicago Pen Show recently traveled to Israel to attend the wedding of his daughter Erica in the northern sea shore town of Nahariya. Since the wedding was to be a traditional Sephardic ceremony, many family and religious events were planned for the week leading up to the wedding. This included religious ceremonies and a week of breakfasts, lunches, snacks and dinners to meet all the relatives.

The Israel Pen Club extended their invitation for Don to be the honored guest at their meeting on July 26th. So Don, a seasoned traveler, finally packed his bulging bags with the bare essentials for the very long journey, including laptop, several cameras and probably several pounds of essential pens and related “stuff.” Here is the report recently filed by Don Lavin on his visit to the Pen Club meeting, with additional commentary and photo by Dov Randel, one of the founders of the IPC

The experience here has been overwhelming from the pen club meeting to the activities with the kids and Rami's parents to all of the parties leading up to the wedding, the wedding and as of today the Shabbat Chitan ceremony in the synagogue. Dov Randel was very nice to meet and has been a wonderful host.

The guys were great and apparently more people showed up for this meeting than in the past. Israel Zang attended and showed a number of his more rare and interesting pens, which impressed a number of attendees. I enjoyed meeting the Ambassador from India, Raminder Jassel who impressed me as a really nice man. The group was very attentive and inquisitive and made for a great audience, not too dissimilar to our own group of the Chicago Pen Club.

Many pens were shown to me so that I could answer questions, such as “does this cap go with this barrel” type of thing. The answer was usually “No.” Some collectors had questions about minor pen manufacturers, many had repair questions, others questions about eBay. They seemed to enjoy my stories and many of the members asked for my email address for future assistance, which I was more than happy to give out. I wish I could tell you the names of all the people in the pictures but alas, I cannot put the names with the faces other than in a few instances.

I am grateful to Sami Dann for the use of his lovely house and great hospitality. Also I enjoyed the company of each and every collector with whom I had an opportunity to meet.

One quick story — one guy asked me if I knew a Judperl in Chicago. I laughed pretty hard at that one. (Note : I first met him through pen collecting in the 80's when we were meeting at the Maywood racetrack. Judd sells on eBay under this name and is well known in the Chicago pen community ).

This is a picture of Ambassador Jassel, me, and the young owner of the pen shop in Haifa, Shalif Friedman.

Here is Sami Dann at whose house the meeting was held. I don’t know the women’s names.

Typical pen meeting shot

The gentleman on the left is from Tel Aviv and has collected pens for over 40 years and his collection numbers around 1,200 pens. He is a symphony conductor and muscian who is the head of the muscian's union in Israel. A really wonderful gentleman. The gentleman on the right is a dental surgeon and performs facial reconstruction. He has been making overlays for modern pens in his spare time as a hobby. He does some fascinating work and was most interesting.

Me giving my commentary, Uri, Arye Levanon the LE and music nib guy, chair of Israel Musicians' union, Indian Ambassador Jassal Raminder. The ceramic ducks are part of the collection of host Sami Dan’s wife Nadia.

From left, an unidntified member of the club; Dov; me with my problematic Pelikan Toledo; Zvi Galil of Haifa, co-founder of the IPC. All in all a very good meeting.

The IPC was recently formed, in April, 2002 and boasts about 40 very enthusiastic members and growing as word spreads to other collectors in the area. Founders of the Club are Zvi Galil, Silviu Pincu, Dov Randel and Tsachi Mitsenmacher. Zvi, Dov and Silviu often contribute to Pentrace and other pen related chat sites.

The Israel Pen Club is planning to hold their first International Israel Pen Show in 2004, and has been very fortunate to establish many contributing friends from all ranks in the pen community world wide.

Copyright 2002 by Don Lavin. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted in any form without permission of the author except for brief editorial quotes sarcastic or otherwise.