From maternity wards to maturing adults: An in-depth look at Herzog Medical Center

• Published date: 30 March 2024
• Author: JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The Jewish hospitals founded in the Old City were Bikur Cholim in 1826, followed by Misgav Ladach in 1854, and the Meir Rothschild Hospital in 1870. An English Christian missionary organization also built a small hospital in 1844

While these primitive institutions were better than none, they neglected one vital field – gynecology and especially childbirth, so the death rate of pregnant and postnatal women residents was high. Finally, in 1894, a women's association called Ezrat Nashim (Help to Women), dedicated to the improvement of medical problems of women, was founded by Tzipi Pines, wife of Yehiel Pines of the Hibat Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement – founded in 1881 as a response to the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. But Ezrat Nashim soon realized that a completely different field of medicine was even more ignored – the treatment of the mentally ill.

The only hostel for the mentally disabled that operated in the city was a small, neglected building that was able to provide board to only five patients. The association adopted and rehabilitated this facility until it could care for and treat many more patients. Needing more space, Ezrat Nashim moved to a building outside the city walls in 1896.

Soon after the turn of the century, the association bought a 2.8-hectare (6.9-acre) plot of land at the western end of Jaffa Road—near Shaare Zedek Hospital, established in 1902 and across the street from where today's Jerusalem Post editorial office is located. At that time, the neighborhood was almost empty, except for camels and wagons passing by.

Ezrat Nashim's two-building complex—the first psychiatric hospital in the Middle East—accommodated a large number of patients and a significant staff.

Rabbanit Sarah Herzog—the wife of Rabbi Yitzhak Halevi Herzog, the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel, mother of diplomat Yaakov Herzog and Chaim Herzog (Israel's sixth president), and grandmother of the current (and 11th) President Isaac Herzog—entered the scene. She was instrumental in promoting the development of Ezrat Nashim Hospital, which moved to a very large plot of land in Givat Shaul quarter near the western exit from the capital.

Born in 1896 in Riga, Latvia, Rabbanit Herzog grew up in London, the daughter of Rabbi Shmuel Yitzchak Hillman – who invited Belfast-born Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog to his home for a conference on kosher dietary laws during World War I rationing in 1917. According to family stories, she was so attracted to her future husband that she dropped a tea tray and – according to some – spilled the tea all over him.

She died in 1979, and the center was later named in her honor – the Sarah Herzog Hospital, which specialized in diagnosing and treating geriatric and psychiatric patients. Today, it is the comprehensive Herzog Medical Center, which looks like a major university campus. It is the only center in Israel that integrates into one place the treatment of patients of all ages suffering from psychiatric, geriatric, and cognitive disorders, psycho trauma, and those needing physical and emotional rehabilitation. It has done all this as a nonprofit institution, with no help from the governments of Israel.

As a result of the horrendous Hamas terror incursion on Oct. 7 and the Gaza war – with so many emotionally traumatized and physically wounded – all of these types of medicine will be foremost for many years, even decades, for Israelis of this and future generations.

Herzog Medical Center will soon offer hundreds of places for patients needing respiration and kidney dialysis in a huge underground, protected space in the event of a...