By Lorraine Mirabella, The Baltimore Sun
Updated July 20, 2014
[EDITOR’S NOTE: David Brenner is son of deaf parents Stephen & Dorothy Brenner, long-time community leaders in the Jewish Deaf community.]
Ever since spending their honeymoon in Israel in 2000, David and Helaine Brenner had dreamed about returning to live and raise a family in what they believe to be their ancestral Jewish homeland.
Photo: Helaine (left) and David Brenner (right) and their sons are moving from Baltimore to Israel, undeterred by fighting in Gaza.
On Monday, the Northwest Baltimore couple and their sons, ages 13 and 11, will board a flight from New York to Tel Aviv and head for a Jewish settlement of about 700 families in a rural, mountainous patch about 20 miles south of Jerusalem. It’s a place they already have begun to think of as home, where neighbors are welcoming and look out for each others’ children.
But the region, at the heart of a decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, also has become one of the world’s most troubled hot spots, with fighting escalating in recent days. Just a day before the Brenners were to fly to Israel with 230 and U.S. or Canadian immigrants, casualties rose during a two-week Israeli offensive into Gaza. Israel’s military has said it was targeting Hamas militants, whom it accused of firing rockets into Israel. Officials from Gaza’s Health Ministry have said more than 400 Palestinians have been killed and about 2,600 wounded.
Heading into a war zone was never part of the plan for the Brenners, both observant Jews. But the erupting tensions haven’t deterred them either, the couple said Sunday, as they drove to New York in a rented minivan crammed with eight oversized duffel bags, four carry-on suitcases, four backpacks and one bass guitar.
“We are both people of faith,” David Brenner said. “You have to have a trust in God if you’re going to do something like this.
