In July, 2002, I made my first visit to Israel. It was a sweet and rich experience for me and my family, marred only by the terrorist bombing at Hebrew University. We returned to Israel this past summer during the false peace of the murderers’ so-called hudna. We were delighted by the profusion of energy and enterprise and optimistic spirit that had blossomed during even this brief period of quiet—like wildflowers that spring up in the Negev after a surprise rain.
But when I returned to Kansas this August, I knew that my time as a tourist had ended. These brief trips had awakened within me a love of Israel that demanded I commit myself, that I contribute, rather than simply observe. So I want to tell you now about my recent trip to Israel as an Emergency Medical Volunteer.
When Israel goes to war, the entire nation joins the ranks. Factory workers, kibbutzniks, businessmen, physicians—all become soldiers overnight. For doctors, this may mean assignment to a combat brigade or a special trauma center for the wounded. Stripped of medical personnel, civilian medical care grinds to a halt.
In a general war, or catastrophic mass terror event, Israeli medical manpower will be insufficient to treat casualties, much less deliver babies and deal with heart attacks. To address this problem, the American Physicians Fellowship for Medicine in Israel, or APF, was founded in 1950 to provide Israel with a reserve
cadre of American physicians in time of need. The APF is the sole designated agent of the IDF Medical Corps for this purpose, and takes its orders from the Israel Defense Forces in time of emergency.
Last month I traveled to Israel with thirteen physician colleagues as an APF Emergency Medical Volunteer. There was a neurosurgeon from Delaware, an anesthesiologist from Pennsylvania, this cardiologist from Kansas, and others. We were a dedicated and focused group: wholeheartedly Zionist and enthusiastically
Jewish. Kippot were de riguer.
After settling in at a hotel in Jerusalem, and explaining to each other how we came to be there, we spent our first day at IDF Medical Headquarters near Tel Aviv. We were introduced to IDF war doctrine and then immersed in presentations regarding the treatment of conventional and nonconventional casualties.
“Nonconventional casualties” is a euphemism: a euphemism for men and women seizing from nerve gas intoxication, or children dying from smallpox or anthrax infection, or soldiers blinded and asphyxiated by mustard gas. The IDF fully expects our enemies to use, or try to use, these nightmare weapons not only against Israeli soldiers, but also against the general
civilian population.
We were then taken to the decontamination facilities at Tel Hashomer Hospital, one of three chemical warfare treatment centers near Tel Aviv. There we learned how to scrub down a victim drenched in nerve gas, how to administer antidote, how and when to intubate. As we observed a chemical terror attack preparedness
drill, we were struck by the meticulousness of planning and organization in evidence everywhere. Each activity for every participant is planned and drilled, down to the last detail. In time of war or catastrophe, the goal of Israeli medicine is to have thousands of people operating with the precision of machines—for the purpose of saving lives.
The next day at the Ministry of Health in Tel Aviv, our credentials were reviewed and we were instructed in the logistics of our real time activation should it become necessary. In the first 24 hours of crisis, fifty seats for physician volunteers will be reserved on IDF- commandeered El Al flights. On day six, when
casualties are expected to peak, and the civilian medical system is likely to be overwhelmed, the IDF has requested 600 physicians, and will provide two jetliners to fly us to Tel Aviv. From Lod, we will be transported to our designated medical facilities, and get to work.
I’ve been assigned to Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, where I spent the last two days of my trip.
In Jerusalem, Shaare Zedek is second in size only to Hadassah and is home to one of Israel’s premier cardiovascular programs. At Shaare Zedek Dr. David Appelbaum worked to revolutionize the emergency treatment of terrorist casualties, until he and his daughter died last September in a Palestinian bomb blast, the night before his daughter’s wedding. Shaare Zedek means: Gates of Righteousness.
As I reviewed the facilities of the Heart Institute there, learned their operating procedures and met my colleagues, I saw that this was not just another hospital, but a unique environment, new to me, where Jewish identity and commitment are inseparable from the practice of medicine; where being an observant Jew is the
norm, where Torah and Halacha influence medical decision making in a substantive fashion. Perhaps it is this amalgam of Jewishness and scientific medicine that made the nurses seem so gentle and the doctors so compassionate, and the care so rigorously excellent. And the patients I met all benefited from this unique environment.
There was the grateful Israeli Arab farmer who underwent emergency bypass surgery and, the day he left the hospital, delivered one hundred grape vines, ready to plant, to the home of his Jewish surgeon. There was the physicist from the Weizmann Institute of Science, who was resuscitated from cardiac arrest, and was
made ready to return to work, and his family, with a new defibrillator.
And there was an elderly Israeli lady, an immigrant from Ukraine, hospitalized with heart failure, who began to sob when she heard why I was there. I feared I’d said something wrong and I asked here why she was crying. Half in English, half in Hebrew, and half in Russian, she replied: “I am crying because I am happy you have come to help. I am crying because these last
years we have felt so alone. I am crying because we are afraid that you American Jews have forgotten us.”
On Friday afternoon, after making rounds, I was invited to spend Shabbat with the chief physician and his family at their home. Several hours later we set out in his car for Allon Shevut, an Israeli town south of Jerusalem, in the Gush Etzion bloc of communities. The original settlement there was Kfar Etzion which was
overrun by Arabs in 1948. The kibbutz was burned to the ground and most of its inhabitants killed. Kfar Etzion was rebuilt immediately after the Six Day War by children who escaped the massacre and reclaimed their families’ land.
As we drove, I learned about the history of this beautiful region of terraced vineyards and olive trees, cultivated by Jewish settlers long before the creation of the State. I learned of the crucial strategic importance of the Gush Etzion bloc, which guards the southern approaches to Jerusalem, which was lost in the
War of Independence and which, Baruch Hashem, returned to Israeli hands again in 1967.
As we approached Allon Shevut, and the sun began to sink, we rounded a bend in the road and found it blockaded by four Arabs who motioned for us to stop the car. We slowed, considered our options and prepared for the worst. Then we looked to our right and saw….. hundreds of goats and sheep climbing onto the road, and
we started to breath again. We were delighted to let them pass peaceably. The Arab shepherds smiled at us and we smiled back and the rest of the journey was uneventful.
But this same road has seen countless terrorist ambushes during Arafat’s intifada, including the two IDF soldiers killed this week. I learned that there is no family in Allon Shevut that has not lost a relation, or a friend or a colleague to senseless murder.
My Shabbat in Allon Shevut was like none I’ve ever known, and is the first I’ve ever properly observed. The entire community is shomer Shabbat, and the air of the place was filled with anticipation and excitement before sunset, and peacefulness and joy afterwards. Shabbat dinner was preceded and concluded with
z’mirot and a d’var Torah was presented by our host and then hotly debated by all of us.
In synagogue the next morning, there was energy and a spirit to the prayer that literally shook the windows. Adon Olam was led by a handsome eight year old boy who sang with a clarity and a power and a determination that gave me hope for the future of our People. As a visitor, I was honored with an aliyah.
As I walked to the bimah and made the beracha for the Torah there in Israel I felt joyous and proud and strong.
And as I gazed out the window of the synagogue, with Yerushalayim straight ahead and the Judean desert to the right, I saw more than topography: I saw Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel—a land of chesed and ahava, of kindness and love, surrounded by a sea of hate; a Land that strives for justice and aches
for peace, but which will not, cannot, surrender; a Land of promise and destiny, the Land of our past and our future.
And as I looked out to Yerushalayim I understood the true meaning of my journey: that by promising to commit myself to the Land of Israel, I had made the Land my own.
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