The Brenners, Formerly of Los Angeles

Ullian, Frances

THEBRENNERS, FORMERDTOF LOS ANGELES FRANCES ULUAN Many weeks prior to their departure for Israel, Alice and Walter Brenner paid $1600 for a four-month stay at a private Ulpan. They had not been...

...If she hadn't known it already, she discovered, after one meeting with the city's lawyer, that it's not easy to fight city hall...
...Several U.S...
...It was installed even before I returned from Jerusalem...
...We were starving and freezing," Alice reports, "although our last few months there were better because we were able to move to a lovely room in Michmoret...
...Alice and Walter Brenner are fighters...
...The date, of course, was pure fiction...
...A social worker by training, she never received her degree, "thanks to Hitler...
...Yet there is still a great deal more that the Brenners would like to accomplish...
...It was Gary, formerly a member of the Radical Zionist Movement, a small splinter group of the Labor Zionists, who was responsible for the Brenners' decision...
...We also work with Tour v'Aleh, a Jewish Agency department that encourages tourists to investigate the possibility of aliyah...
...The postponement nearly cost Alice her life, for she was later deported to Auschwitz, emigrating finally to the United States in 1946...
...And so the Brenners decided to devote themselves, as volunteers, to the task of making klita (integration of new immigrants into the society) easier for others than it had been for them...
...they were inexperienced, and so they paid...
...But he was helpless as an emissary...
...In Israel, he was a bus driver and was undoubtedly good at that, and polite in the bargain...
...often they knew the rights—and the needs—of new immigrants even better than many government and Jewish Agency personnel...
...when they arrived, they were told they owed $1000 more...
...In spite of careful planning, their move to Israel did not go smoothly...
...Our shaliach (emissary from the Jewish Agency) was no help...
...We paid half in advance and the rest in December 1973, the promised date of completion...
...I learned that Rehovot had had a good deal of trouble with this particular builder, who had sued the city for not renewing his building permit...
...We were scared, and almost cancelled our plans altogether at that point...
...Newcomers to America are on their own, in ways that many cannot even begin to understand...
...A few years ago, she was almost blind, a direct result of her concentration camp experience...
...And Alice has taken upon herself a personal mission—that of discouraging Israelis from leaving the country...
...I was a manufacturer's representative, a salesman who knows the benefit of a smile, the art of persuasion, the quiet force of the 'soft sell.' " And the proof of his success...
...Three months later, the contractor informed the Brenners that he could not finish the building...
...Alice, for example, works as a hospital volunteer one day a week...
...Our carpenter's son and the son of our Peugot service agent were making plans for yeridah...
...Their home has become a central address for English speaking immigrants in the Rehovot area, and their telephone rings at all hours...
...They are their own best volunteers...
...Alice prevailed, however, forcing the city to act...
...That's the time when many need help most...
...hours, those unfortunate parents had their phone...
...There have been many small triumphs, but the greatest, according to the Brenners, occurred on the day they took their contractor to court...
...We were members of a klita committee which we later headed and which went regularly to the Oshiot Absorption Center located on the outskirts of Rehovot...
...Then they reconsidered...
...Says one co-worker of Alice and Walter, "They are an inspiration to all of us...
...Within two weeks, the law was rescinded, with the following explanation: Yes, duty is now required for car air conditioners, but it is not retroactive as in the previous regulation...
...Brenner has become known as the one to see to acquire a telephone, no easy feat in a country in which it can take years before an application is honored...
...They have established an unofficial office of immigrant absorption to assist newcomers through the maze of bureaucratic procedures which can end an aliyah almost before it begins, offering advice in every area from jobs and housing to education, and finding solutions to such frustrating problems as acquiring a telephone or forcing a "bankrupt" contractor to honor a commitment...
...Their citation, which barely covers the highlights of their work, includes assistance to new immigrants, adoption of "singles"—those who are alone and without family in Israel—organization of a corps of drivers to take women volunteers to the Schmuel Harofe Hospital, organization of Chanukah and Purim parties for the mentally disturbed children at the Ness Ziona Hospital, and visiting a home for the aged in nearby Rishon l'Zion...
...I imagine I was the only person in the world who had the audacity to send the Prime Minister a registered letter—return receipt required—but I wanted to be absolutely sure that she had received it...
...Two years of treatment and two successful operations have restored her failing sight...
...learn from our agent in Israel that the government was putting a retroactive 140 percent duty on the air conditioner...
...Not only are they setting an example to others in the Jewish tradition of mutual help, but they have also discovered that it is their very involvement that creates the strong bond of indentification they feel for their new land...
...Brenner drove to Jerusalem, and went directly to the Ministry of Communications...
...Theirs is a 24-hour-a-day commitment...
...We established a good relationship with the housemother who learned that she could call upon us when there was a conflict between an oleh and the establishment...
...They have the time for volunteer work, but often lack the motivation...
...But they are more than organizers...
...This past October, Alice and Walter Brenner were the recipients of one of the ten prestigious President's Award for Volunteer Service...
...Originally from Los Angeles, they emigrated in order to be reunited with their son, Gary, a member of Kibbutz Hatzor...
...This was the beginning of what Walter Brenner calls his "new profession as trouble-shooter," a role that puts him on a first-name basis with high officials in government ministries where he "runs interference" for new immigrants...
...Walter mans one of the driving shifts to the hospital...
...The Brenners had the contractor's property attached...
...She believes that Americans can help to stem yeridah by reminding Israelis that "there's no Jewish Agency in America to provide initial housing, pocket money, subsidies for rental housing and unbelievable mortgages for apartments...
...Alice Brenner is efficient and organized...
...Groups of potential settlers are brought to the city to meet residents...
...Gary, now 30, came to Israel in 1971 and studied at the Ulpan at Kibbutz Hatzor, where he met and married a daughter of the settlement...
...Today, Walter is studying Hebrew at an Ulpan on the grounds of the Weizmann Institute, located close to his Rehovot apartment...
...The answer has become the Brenners' way of life in their new country...
...In 1972, the Brenners visited their son...
...They finally moved into their apartment, unfinished though it was, a year after the promised completion date...
...Actually, the seeds had been sown many years earlier...
...And the parents had no phone...
...Her first task after she and Walter decided to make aliyah was to send letters to every conceivable group and organization that potentially might be helpful, "in order to find out about conditions and life here...
...Alice recalls the time she brought pressure to have a fine imposed on a builder who was clogging the main street with sand, making it impossible to walk on the sidewalks...
...They had to run up and down four flights of stairs to a neighbor's apartment each time a call came through with word of another development...
...After all, if such retroactive legislation is possible, what's the use of making any plans at all...
...I convinced them that the streets of America are not paved with gold and persuaded them to stay in Israel...
...give it up for someone who had to leave in a hurry...
...Very soon, the Brenners became unofficial ombudsmen...
...He'd gone off on a fishing trip with some friends and never returned...
...The Brenners are modest about their efforts, which are even more remarkable because Alice is not a healthy woman...
...It was the smartest move we ever made," states Walter...
...We must reach out to include more Israelis in our projects, especially people who—like us—are retired...
...He had lost his case in the lower court, but the decision was reversed by a higher court which claimed that no municipality has the right to deprive a person of his livelihood...
...They had not been informed about the many other options that were available to them...
...We match visitors with people in similar professions who invite the guests to their homes and answer questions about the lifestyle and work opportunities here...
...We came strictly as tourists," Alice says, "but fell in love with the country...
...All these negative experiences left the Brenners with a question: Are we going to simply accept things as they are, or are we going to try to help make them better...
...Before we left the States," Alice says, "we had ordered a car with an air conditioner...
...It is open to everyone, as are any number of other Ulpanim in the country...
...Within two...
...Initially, the Brenners began their klita work within the framework of the AACI (Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel...
...What is the secret of Walter Brenner's success in breaking down bureaucratic barriers...
...We had to find the answers to almost every question ourselves," she explains...
...And our work doesn't stop when people leave the Absorption Center...
...Congressmen were involved, as well as the American Embassy here...
...He claimed bankruptcy, although he had used the Brenners' money—and that of sixteen other tenants, fourteen of whom are Israelis—to buy another piece of land...
...We collect our immigrants—at the supermarket, at the post office, on the street...
...I convinced them that the streets of America are not paved with gold and persuaded them to stay in Israel...
...The Brenners' initial Ulpan experience was most negative...
...they fired off a letter directly to Prime Minister Golda Meir...
...His incompetence led the Brenners to register for that private Ulpan—Akiva, in Netanya— "because he told us—incorrectly, we learned later—that there are no government or organization sponsored Ulpanim for people over 65...
...We were dumbfounded to Their greatest triumph occurred on the day they took their contractor to court...
...Our son had bought our apartment Israeli-style, that is, from a blueprint...
...In 1936," she relates, "in Berlin, I had an affidavit, but had to Frances Ullian is the pen name for a Boston-born Israeli journalist who made aliyah in 1951...
...We did what we did not only for ourselves, but for all newcomers," he says...
...There are many, many opportunities for pensioners, as well as for everyone else, to learn Hebrew at practically no cost, but we simply didn't know...
...This was in 1973, the year that the Brenners made aliyah...
...Some are sponsored by municipalities, others by the Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) and others by private organizations, but they all charge only nominal, almost token fees...
...Of course, we had been Zionists alt our lives," they recall...
...In addition to solving all manner of problems for newcomers, the Brenners' work has a far broader scope: to make the country more appealing and attractive—for everyone...
...Alice and Walter don't wait for people to come to them...
...As a result, her first trip to Israel was postponed for twenty-six years...
...My telephone work," he says, "began with a tragic case, that of a neighbor's son, a Coast Guardsman, who was reported missing off Hiroshima...
...But their difficulties did not begin with the Ulpan...
...The United States government has since declared him dead, but at the time he was the object of a massive search...
...We were even members of a General Zionist group in our native Berlin, but settlement had never been a conscious priority...
...Now, a little more than five years later, they have at last finished painting, wallpapering and putting the final touches to their home...

Vol. 5 • July 1980 • No. 7


 
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