Not quite twenty-five years ago ###e natives of Palestine, and even ###e Jews coming there from Eastern European countries, lived a life ###at was in its hygienic aspect almost medieval. Conjurings, ###mearings, amulets, weird incanta###ons and the applications of hot ###ons were used to drive out the #evil of illness. Of scientific meth###ds, of curative and preventive #edicine, the natives were as ig###rant as bushmen are of similar ###atters.
Into this superstition-ridden en###ronment Hadassah sent two American-Jewish nurses to institute a health program. Their adventures in this strange setting ###ere as marvelous as any fairy ###ale. Greeted first with distrust #nd suspicion, the beneficial influence of the service of those pioneer #omen soon became so apparent ##at suspicion changed into ven##ration, and the Hadassah nurses ##ere regarded as supernatural be##ags.
COVERS WIDE FIELD
From this nucleus Hadassah has built up an organization which {SPAN}#mbraces{/SPAN} every phase of health work an organization that has {SPAN}###{/SPAN} a material factor in the up-building of the Jewish Homeland. In 1917, when Palestine was the meeting ground of the eastern {SPAN}#rmies{/SPAN} of the Central Powers and {SPAN}#he{/SPAN} Allies, and the country was left {SPAN}###sease{/SPAN}-ridden and prostrate, {SPAN}Ha###assah{/SPAN} equipped a unit of forty-four physicians, nurses, dentists {SPAN}#nd{/SPAN} sanitarians with medical {SPAN}sup###ies{/SPAN}, and sent it to Palestine to {SPAN}###egin{/SPAN} a service that culminated {SPAN}###{/SPAN} the extensive network of hospitals and other institutions and services all now maintained under the leadership of Hadassah.
The influx of German and Polish refugees during 1934 demanded new educational work of Hadassah. The organization was not only called upon to protect the health ### the newly arrived immigrants, but also to teach them how to adapt themselves to the subtropical country. All these new demands were triumphantly met and now Hadassah is launching a new and even larger undertaking. Together with the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee Hadassah will erect in the very near future the Rothschild – Hadassah – University-Hospital on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem. This institution will serve as a graduate school of medicine; it will be a center of intensive scientific and research work and will maintain a 300-bed hospital that is bound to be a model for the entire country.
EVIDENCE OF INFLUENCE
The very fact of this constantly more comprehensive service, the very fact that the membership of Hadassah is steadily growing—in the year ending October, 1934, 5,000 new members joined—is a token of the vital force of Hadassah, of the deep influence this organization exerts not only in the life in Palestine but also on the Jewish life in our own country. For Hadassah offers the Jewish woman the rare opportunity to help in the up-building of the Homeland and to derive thus for her own home the consciousness of Jewish ideals and the intellectual and spiritual satisfaction to work for her people and with her people for the benefit and the future of mankind.
The national officers of Hadassah are: Miss Henrietta Szold, Jerusalem, honorary president; Miss Alice Seligsberg, New York, honorary associate; Mrs. Edward Jacobs, New York, president; Mrs. Robert Szold, Pelham, N. Y.; Miss Pearl Franklin, Chicago; Mrs. Moses P. Epstein, New York; and Mrs. Henry Harris, San Francisco, vice-presidents; Mrs. Samuel J. Rosensohn, New York, treasurer; and Mrs. Herman Shulman, New York, secretary.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
