Word: bryna
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...Last Look Bryna and Sammy Hilburg...
...Bryna at a Bnei Akiva (a Zionist youth group) meeting in New York City, married her and made aliyah (literally, the ascent) to Israel. Bryna too was reared to Zionism, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Born there in 1950, she went to religious school in her early years. Bryna says her photographer father longed to move to Israel, but his mother, who had fled to a better life in the U.S. from Russia, wouldn't accept it. "They were secular, and when he said he wanted to move to Israel in 1953, my grandmother said, 'You're crazy...
...ultra-Orthodox to secular. Their second son Yochanan was killed in 1997, at age 22, while serving in an élite Israeli commando unit during a raid into Lebanon. The Hilburgs defied family members who urged that Yochanan receive a military funeral in Jerusalem. "He loved it here," says Bryna. "We decided he would be buried here, where he lived, where we can get to him." Now the Hilburgs face a second heartbreak: the Gush Katif cemetery housing 48 Jewish graves will have to be evacuated too. "They have to get out every single particle," says Bryna as she stares...
...Hilburg house, no steps have been taken to leave. Like so many Gaza residents, they are counting on denial and faith to save their community at the zero hour. Bryna folds her hands in her lap and says, "The simple fact is, I don't want to go. It's my home of 26 years. My roots are here. Netzer Hazani has what I need and want. We built it up. We made a beautiful place, beautiful in spirit." So the Hilburgs say they will do anything peaceable and lawful that will stop the clock, but nothing more. They obeyed...
...force, he says, "we'll lock the house, chain ourselves together and pray." He believes such images of resistance, pitting Jew against Jew, will spur the nation to reject any more withdrawals from occupied land. But when the knock on the door comes at the Hilburg house, the moment Bryna calls "a calamity," her family "will be here at the table, drinking coffee. And when the soldiers arrive, we'll offer them a cup." Sammy breaks in. "And then they have to carry me out." Over at the Bentolila house in Gadid, Gabriel is talking about the need for dignity...